A Melungeon HomePage: November 7, 1997 Update from Brent Kennedy

"Kennedy Announces New Focus in Personal Mission
All Truth Goes Through Three Steps:

FIRST, IT IS RIDICULED

SECOND, IT IS VIOLENTLY OPPOSED

THIRD, IT IS ACCEPTED AS SELF-EVIDENT

- Arthur Schopenhauer

A Ten Year Journey

Arthur Schopenhauer's comments reverberate with personal meaning and relevance as I enter the tenth year of my own truth-seeking journey. A journey I never intended to embark upon but one which I couldn't halt once commenced. An accident of life, if you prefer, or the hand of destiny as I prefer. Nevertheless, a journey filled with challenges, disappointments, new friends, new foes, and personal rewards which cannot be measured.

My original intent has not wavered: to attract - and force if necessary - scholarly and public attention to the story of the Melungeons and other mixed-race people of this Nation. To force the notion that our Nation has, from the beginning, been both multi-cultural and multi-racial, but that our institutions - from government census reports to mainstream history books - have conspired, sometimes unintentionally, to deny this truth. It has not been easy. My efforts have often been met with disdain, prejudice, and violent opposition. I've tried to take the positive criticisms to heart and learn from them. The personal attacks and the racist or other extreme diatribes I've learned to discard.

The Melungeons have been a generally ignored people whose experiences - good and bad - were not deemed worthy of historical or social consideration because those experiences could not be pigeon-holed into the broader contexts of 'black' or 'white' or 'red.' Such rigid and artificial boundaries ensured that the story of our people would never be accurately told, if told at all. E"