"Melungeon College"

Dr. Kennedy himself was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, a multi-system disorder characterized in affected organs by a type of inflammation called granulomas. He said the disorder affects primarily three groups of people in this country: African-Americans living in the southeastern United States, Portuguese immigrants in New England and Appalachian whites.

He said all these things did not make sense in a Scots-Irish family, and it made him search harder for the answers.

"I made people angry with my questions, but little by little I began to discover that my family's history was very different from what I was told. I discovered that my four grandparents had this strange heritage called Melungeon. I discovered the history of our family name. The little Kennedy history book and the Kennedy coat of arms are bogus. I found that my Kennedys were here 20 years before the ship arrived that carried them."

Kennedy came from the word "kannada" or "canada" ("alley" in Portuguese); later it went through an evolution and became Kanaday, and finally Kennedy.