Meet the Melungeons

We've been talking about some of the ways in which we mythologize the South--the narratives privileged and excluded, the complicated notion of "a simpler time," the way nostalgia can be a reductive practice, etc.  Last week, we read an essay by Jon F. Sensbach called "Before the Bible Belt: Indians, Africans, and the New Synthesis of Eighteenth-Century Southern Religious History."  Sensbach calls our attention to the fact that an evangelical Protestant "Bible Belt" was not at all a foregone conclusion in the American South. He situates the South as a transatlantic space, subject to market forces, myriad cultural interactions/confrontations and migrations of German, African, Native American, and French populations, etc., etc., etc.

In our efforts to complicate "the South" and begin looking at "Souths" that explode a seemingly monolithic tent, I thought I'd introduce you to another group of Southerners you may not be familiar with: the Melungeons.

"Melungeons" refer to groups of Appalachians with African, European, and Native American ancestries.

They were identified by some as Indian, Portuguese, mulatto, Creole, black, or white.  Whatever the case, they were--and still often are--called a very "mysterious" people, as their race(s) and "origins" are not easily pinned down.  Most were practitioners of various stripes of Protestantism (many were Baptist).  Speculations about these populations abound (we like for people and things to have easy and unchanging names, after all).  This trailer, apart from bad background music, gives you a sense of all the different ideas on how these groups should be identified:

The convergence of races and regions here offers a nice answer to why it's more than a little tricky to talk about "the South" as a singular experience.  Before--and after--something called "the Bible Belt" began to emerge, there were--and are--communities that complicate that very category.



If you want to find out more:
http://www.melungeon.org/node/4
http://www.melungeons.com/articles/jan2003.htm
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mtnties/melungeon.html

There are lots of other sites too...have some fun with Google and Wikipedia.