Melungeons, history, genealogy, research, articles - 1st Arena article

Melungeons, history, genealogy, research, articles - 1st Arena article: "'The Malungeons'

The Arena, March 1891
Were you ever when a child half playfully told �The Malungeons will get you?� If not, you were never a Tennessee child, as some of our fathers were; they tell all who may be told of that strange, almost forgotten race, concerning whom history is strangely silent. Only upon the records of the state of Tennessee does the name appear. The records show that by act of the Constitutional Convention of 1834, when the �Race Question� played such a conspicuous part in the deliberations of that body, the Malungeons, as a �free person of color,� was denied the right of suffrage. Right there he dropped from the public mind and interest. Of no value as a slave, with no voice as a citizen, what use could the public make of the Malungeon? When John Sevier attempted to organize the State of Franklin, there was living in the mountains of Eastern Tenessee a colony of dark-skinned, reddish-brown complexioned people, supposed to be of Moorish descent, who affiliated with neither whites nor blacks, and who called themselves Malungeons, and claimed to be of Poruguese descent. They lived to themselves exclusively, and were looked on as neither negroes nor Indians."