Mixed Race Studies

16th Union Report

Melungeon Heritage Association: One People, All Colors
16th Union at the Southwest Virginia Historical Museum State Park
2012-07-11

K. Paul Johnson

Every Melungeon Union combines an extended family reunion with a scholarly conference featuring authors and researchers sharing the latest perspectives on our heritage.  All presenters come at their own expense, as volunteers receiving no compensation or travel costs, as do MHA members who organize and direct the conference.  We travel considerable distances to attend this annual event, to learn and celebrate this heritage we share and treasure…

…My presentation on links between Pell Mellers and Melungeons began with family stories, examined genealogical evidence, and concluded with a description of DNA testing and its mixed results in answering historical questions about my own mixed ancestry. This was intended as a preview of the keynote address, since my genealogical quest centered on the same county in North Carolina, Bertie, about which Dr. Smallwood had written a book in 2002 and which continues to be a research focus for him.

Phyllis Starnes spoke informally about the promises and pitfalls of genetic testing for genealogical research, helping us through the labyrinth of Y-DNA, mitochondrial, and autosomal studies of Melungeons. We owe Phyllis thanks for generating more questions in the q&a than the rest of us combined, and for answering them deftly and capably.

Arwin D. Smallwood, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Colonial American History at the University of Memphis, was the keynote speaker at 13th Union in 2009, and has been a presenter in every subsequent Union, returning this year at 16th to give a keynote address that featured new dimensions of the research he has been pursuing for several years on the Tuscarora tribe’s diaspora from his native Bertie County. This year Dr. Smallwood included a detailed accounting of Virginia’s legal oppression of people of color, a tightening noose of restrictions throughout the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth. This becomes a factor in the migration of African-European mixed families southward into North Carolina and westward into mountainous regions of Virginia, away from the plantations and slavery and into frontier communities where they interblended with Indians who had likewise been displaced. MHA is indebted to Dr. Smallwood for his ongoing work which tends to incorporate the traditionally-accepted triracial explanation of Melungeon origins with the more exotic possibilities of Mediterranean ancestry suggested by folklore. He was extensively interviewed by a local newspaper reporter so we look forward to seeing the coverage…

…Wayne [Winkler] followed up on the DNA issue by explaining that the negative spin of the recent AP story and especially the headlines were not intended by the report authors. Yet the headlines were undeniably negative—in that our Native American and Mediterranean ancestry were allegedly disproven and relegated to the status of racist mythology—more than positive about what was proven. After all, the study authors selected “a multi-ethnic population” as a subtitle, and not “mulatto wannabe Indians” which nonetheless has been the stereotypical insult applied to Melungeons in the wake of the AP story. Conferees were left feeling that the air had been cleared of some misunderstandings and hard feelings. What the study does prove beyond dispute is the subsaharan African Y DNA lineage of many families of the Newman’s Ridge Melungeon community. But by its very nature, such a study cannot disprove the triracial status of Melungeons in general—which has been unanimously attested by generations of social scientists as well as testimony of Melungeons themselves. Mediterranean ancestry was repeatedly claimed by 19th century Melungeons in addition to Native American, English, and African ancestry, and not as a cover story to deny the triracial foundations of their communities. In his closing remarks, Wayne stated clearly that nothing in any DNA evidence conflicts with the triracial-and-beyond understanding of Melungeons presented in Dr. Smallwood’s keynote address the night before…

Read the entire report here.

Carolina Genesis: Beyond the Color Line

Backintyme Publishing
April 2010
258 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780939479320

Edited by

Scott Withrow

Borderlands of “Racial” Identity

Some Americans pretend that a watertight line separates the “races.” But most know that millions of mixed-heritage families crossed from one “race” to another over the past four centuries. Every essay in this collection tells such a tale. Each speaks with a different style and to different interests. But taken together, the seven articles paint a portrait, unsurpassed in the literature, of migrations, challenges, and triumphs over “racial” obstacles.

Stacy Webb tells of families of mixed ancestry who pioneered westward paths from the Carolinas into the colonial wilderness, paths now known as Cumberland Road, Natchez Trace, Three-Chopped Way, and others. They migrated, not in search of wealth or exploration, but to escape the injustice of America’s hardening “racial” barrier.

Govinda Sanyal’s astonishing research uses mtDNA markers to trace a single female lineage that winds its way through prehistoric Yemen, North Africa, Moorish Spain, the Sephardic diaspora, colonial Mexico, and finally escapes the Inquisition by assimilating into a Native American tribe, ending up in South Carolina. He fleshes out the DNA thread with documented genealogy, so we get to know their names, their lives, their struggles.

Cyndie Goins Hoelscher focuses on a specific family that scattered from the Carolinas. One branch fled to Texas, becoming friends with Sam Houston and participating in the founding of that state. Other bands fought in the war of 1812, or migrated to Florida or the Gulf coast. Nowadays, Goins descendants can be found in nearly every state and are of nearly every “race.”

Scott Withrow (the collection’s editor) concentrates on the saga of one individual of mixed ancestry. Joseph Willis was born into a community of color in South Carolina. He migrated to Louisiana, was accepted as a White man, founded one of the first churches in the area, and became one of the region’s best-loved and most fondly remembered Christian ministers.

S. Pony Hill recounts the historic struggles of South Carolina’s Cheraw tribe, in a reprint of Chapter 5 of his book, Strangers in Their Own Land.

Marvin Jones tells the history of the “Winton Triangle,” a section of North Carolina populated by successful families of mixed ancestry from colonial times until the mid-20th century. They fought for the Union, founded schools, built businesses, and thrived through adversity until the civil rights movement of 1955-65 ended legal segregation.

K. Paul Johnson traces the history of North Carolina’s antebellum Quakers. The once-strong community dissolved as it grew morally opposed to slavery. Those who stayed true to their faith migrated north. Those who remained slaveowners left the church. The worst stress was the Nat Turner event. Its aftermath helped turn the previously permeable color line into the harsh endogamous barrier that exists today.

Table of Contents

• Introduction by Scott Withrow
• They Were Other: Free Persons of Color, Restrictive Laws and Migration Patterns by Stacy R. Webb
• The Amorgarickakan Lineage of Sarah Junco by Govinda Sanyal
• Judging the Moore County Goings / Goyens / Goins Family 1790-1884 by Cyndie Goins Hoelscher
• Joseph Willis: Carolinian and Free Person of Color by Scott Withrow
• The Leading Edge of Edges: The Tri-racial People of the Winton Triangle by Marvin T. Jones
• The Cheraws of Sumter County, South Carolina by S. Pony Hill
• Dismal Swamp Quakers on the Color Line by K. Paul Johnson
• Meet The Authors

A Mystery of  a People

WUNC 91.5, Chapel Hill
The State of Things
North Carolina Public Radio
2011-07-28

Isaac-davy Aronson, Host

Questions of racial identity and cultural heritage have long surrounded a group of Appalachians called the Melungeons. In recent years, curiosities have been piqued about this loosely connected group of people, spawning DNA testing, numerous books, Web sites and a documentary film. Guest host Isaac-Davy Aronson talks with K. Paul Johnson, corresponding secretary for the Melungeon Heritage Association; and Julie Williams Dixon, a Raleigh-based writer and director of the film “Melungeon Voices.”

Listen to the interview (00:19:10) here.