BBC News | Americas | Lost people of Appalachia
BBC News | Americas | Lost people of Appalachia: "In the segregated South, local bureaucrats described Melungeons as mongrels and half -breeds, and they were classified black and denied education or the right to vote.
Connie Clark from Wise, Virginia, told me how her Grandmother had hidden her when the census man came by in the 1960s, so that he couldn't record her identity as black.
Others moved away in the hope of escaping the racism of the South. Those who stayed kept to themselves.
Brighter future
Climbing the steep tracks up Newman's Ridge, home to many Melungeons, the poverty is still obvious.
Hancock County is the sixth poorest in America. Many people still live in flimsy wooden houses scratching an income from tobacco, or occasionally as one man told me, Marijuana plants, half a dozen of which are worth about an acre of the legal weed. "
Connie Clark from Wise, Virginia, told me how her Grandmother had hidden her when the census man came by in the 1960s, so that he couldn't record her identity as black.
Others moved away in the hope of escaping the racism of the South. Those who stayed kept to themselves.
Brighter future
Climbing the steep tracks up Newman's Ridge, home to many Melungeons, the poverty is still obvious.
Hancock County is the sixth poorest in America. Many people still live in flimsy wooden houses scratching an income from tobacco, or occasionally as one man told me, Marijuana plants, half a dozen of which are worth about an acre of the legal weed. "
posted by Helen Campbell @ 5:35 PM
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