The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People

As Alex Haley's book Roots encouraged African-Americans to search for their African history through family stories and "myths," Kennedy's own search for identity through family history has encouraged a population of mixed-race people to search for their origins. This has led to the recovery of lost pride and a new self-identity. The book has also forced academics to admit their long history of denial of the diversity of American people and to recognize the multicultural composition of the American population. Helen M. Lewis, Retired Professor of Sociology and Appalachian Studies

Brent Kennedy is the prime mover behind the recent, and astonishing, revival of Melungeon identity. His determination to uncover and to understand his heritage makes for a fascinating story, which is still in the process of unfolding. But this is the book that started it all.
John Shelton Reed, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

For fifty years, since I first heard the word "Melungeon" and visited their home-sties in the hills of Tennessee, I have been intrigued by the history, and mystery, of my distinctive neighbors. Plagued by two centuries of rumor, superstition, and deliberate misinformation about their origin and character, they were third-class citizens in an Appalachia already burdened by second-class stereotypes. How welcome then is Brent Kennedy's scholarly and wide-ranging search for the truth behind the Melungeons' origin. It is a fascinating work carrying an implicit reminder of the worth and pride of every human being.
Wilma Dykeman, Tennessee State Historian and author of The Tall Woman, Tennessee: A Bicentennial History, and The French Broad

The Melungeons shares the story of a people ravaged by the senseless excesses of racism, a people who were, a century and a half later,crushed beneath the violent onslaught of unbridled Anglo jingoism. Recognizing the truth of who the Melungeons were, and are, will redefine our view of the settlement of this nation, and, more to the point, of our own self-identity. It will also render incomplete and possibly obsolete much of what has been written and preserved about our Southern ethnic heritage.

$18

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