Pop and Politics

Pop and Politics: "Got Indian in Your Family?

by Cherryl Aldave

Growing up in the sweaty-neck, dusty leg town of Tarboro, North Carolina, I quickly learned that Bible belters don't mince words when it comes to race.

In Southern towns like Tarboro it's not unusual to hear the question, 'Do you have Indian in your family?' especially if the person asking suspects you're 'too light to be all Black' or 'too dark to be all White.'

I was asked this a lot as a child, and my mother insists that one of our ancestors was indeed Native American. But in doing research for my forthcoming book of essays I discovered that, while thousands of Americans share this history of Indian ancestry, sometimes 'Indian' may have been Melungeon.
I know. What the heck is a Melungeon?

As I discovered, Melungeons are a group of ethnically diverse people who came together early in American history to form one community. According to Dr. Brent Kennedy, author of two books on Melungeon history, 'Melungeons are a mixed ethnic population pushed together through the mutual experience of discrimination.'

There isn't a lot of scholarship on Melungeon history, so there's still a lot of debate about who exactly the Melungeons are, even amongst themselves. But current research suggests that they were among the first pioneers to settle in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky. These early settlers could have been a mix of Mediterranean, Jew, Gypsy or Rom culture people, Portuguese, Moors and Africans, with some Northern Europeans in the mix as well.

So how did some members of this diverse population magically become 'Indian?' And why?
Questions like these were at the heart of 'Melungeons: Fact and Fiction,' held the weekend of July 29th in Frankf"