Melungeon
The true story is unknown. The word is said to come from the French word mélange, which means mixture. Or from the Afro-Portuguese word melungo, meaning shipmate. Some say it’s from the Greek word for black, melan. Still others hypothesize it came from the word melun can, which is Turkish for cursed soul. Melungeon. As mysterious as its etymology, the people called Melungeon have been said to descend from a range of ethnicities including Africans, Native Americans, Europeans, Moors, Portuguese, Turks and Jews. They have claimed to be descendants of Phoenician sailors, Spanish explorers, shipwrecked Portuguese slave traders, survivors of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony, a Cherokee princess and even Mary, the mother of Jesus.
In the earliest days and even up to the mid-twentieth century, the word was synonymous with a kind of boogieman who kidnapped children if they misbehaved. The word Melungeon was also considered a racial slur. Now it is a catch-all phrase for over 200 mixed-race communities in the southern and eastern United States. The community that interests me in particular settled in the mountains and shadowy pockets of East Tennessee, in Hancock County, bordered by an area called Newman’s Ridge that for decades was a hilltop sanctuary overlooking the town of Sneedville. This was the epicenter of the Melungeon people.
In the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the Melungeons were considered neither white nor black nor native but a tri-racial isolate. In the 1700s and 1800s, they were mostly called “free people of color” and not enslaved. But they were regarded with suspicion and ostracized. Physically, their skin color was often called “swarthy,” but ran the spectrum from light to dark as well as red. What is known is they are considered to have some of the oldest family lines in the country, descending from people who predated slavery, and they share a handful of common surnames: Collins, Mullins, Bunch, Gibson, Goins, Bolin, Powell, Sizemore, among others. They settled up on Newman’s Ridge and the hollows below it because the land was hard to get to and they were less likely to be kicked off by white settlers and traders.
I learned of their existence years ago when the DNA testing phenomenon hit popular culture, and the people once demonized and isolated now spoke proudly of their heritage. My curiosity around the Melungeon culture renewed after my partner, within the first hour of meeting me, announced abruptly that he was a Melungeon. I was surprised and a little embarrassed that I initially felt inexplicably frightened. Like all things that frighten me, I was also intrigued. Over the years of our knowing one another, I have traveled to this remote area around Sneedville many times and during my Guggenheim Fellowship I lived in a small camper set down in the middle of town. From there I ventured out into this mysterious world to record with my camera to finally explore this enchanting landscape and make a record of these historical people, the ones who never moved.
The region looks like Mother Nature took her fingers and raked them across the landscape, creating high ridges and hollows in between. Since the 1960s, with the mobility of modern times, more people have married outside their kin. Many have left. But a few final elders remain. My intent was to learn about the Melungeon people’s relationship to this unforgiving landscape, how they identify with it, the way the land has shaped and affected them. The deep need to hide.
The conversation in America right now has been about the privilege that separates whites from blacks and the glaring differences in the experiences and opportunities for people of color versus those for white people. But the mixing of races is also a central part of American history. Today, with the resurgence of white supremacists and Nationalism, the story of the Melungeons is important to reevaluate. It’s a story of persecution and isolation, of those who chose seclusion. It’s a story that challenges ideas of racial purity and the whiteness of the settlers and traders, a story that perhaps reflects the true America or at least what more and more of the population is and will be.
When I go to Sneedville and the land around it, there is an element of the past that seems to warp the present. My hope is that my photographs will inspire the viewer to reflect on the very real amalgamation of the people that make up our country. I want to challenge the viewer to consider a complicated American history, where everything is not black and white, the beauty of a hard existence, and a people descended from those who belonged but were never welcomed.