The Melungeon Movement: Silent Lessons of Hidden Lives

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We have a challenge before us. We are not just an interesting ethnic conglomeration, but a people recovering their history and facing power. Our suppression came hand in hand with the rise of American patriarchy, the genocide of American Indians, and the institutionalization of slavery, not just in the American South, but throughout the Americas. Race classifications and class stratification enforced by colonial governments and by states divided people, even those who shared the same blood.

The Melungeon movement is a piece of the American mosaic of resistance, like the traditions manifested in fighting strip mining, organizing coal miners, and nurturing a deep and abiding pride of place. It was there in the Civil War, when the mountain areas in the South didn't follow behind the plantation slaveholders. I am profoundly proud to have grown up in the mountains of Kentucky. I stand in awe of the sacrifices my ancestors made to simply live and raise their families. Before I knew I was anything else, I knew I was Appalachian.

As a child during the War on Poverty, I was fed on the one hand the stereotype of the ignorant Beverly Hillbillies bumpkins while also being told by well-meaning liberals that my culture had no value except as a novelty. I have watched those stereotypes be used to justify the unfettered exploitation of this region; Appalachia is still one of America's national sacrifice zones, a place to rip apart the land, dump industrial waste, and poison the water. We are seen as a throwaway people from a throwaway place—the end result of centuries of racism and classism directed at people who were never quite white or rich enough to take power.

We are now at an exciting point in time, where yesterday and today merge to reveal all the possibility tomorrow holds. As we discover the silent lessons of hidden lives, it is critical that we commit ourselves to making sure those lessons are never forgotten. Without our past, without our identity, and without unity with those who share a common struggle, we are lost. The Melungeon movement is newly born. It's up to us to see that it gets raised right.

From The Appalachian Quarterly (June 1998). Subscriptions: $10/yr. (4 issues) from the Wise County Historical Society, Box 368, Wise, VA 24293.

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