Misplaced Pages

#95904

97-600: Most of the modern population have an estimated 1-2% non-European DNA, though jumping up to 20% or more in some groups, such as the Lumbee. Despite non-European DNA being in the minority for these groups, the impact of the one-drop rule either did, or had the potential to, label them as non-white . This redesignation resulted in some individuals being sterilized by state governments , most notably in Virginia . Many groups have historically been referred to as Melungeon, including

194-557: A Native American paternal haplotype . Estes, Goins, Ferguson, and Crain wrote in their 2011 summary "Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population" that the Riddle family is the only Melungeon participant with historical records identifying them as having Native American origins, but their DNA is European. Among the participants, only the Sizemore family is documented as having Native American DNA. "Estes and her fellow researchers "theorize that

291-600: A binary system under its Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He also classified people as black who had formerly self-identified as Indian. When the United States Supreme Court struck down Virginia's law prohibiting inter-racial marriage in Loving v. Virginia (1967), it also declared Plecker's Virginia Racial Integrity Act and the one-drop rule unconstitutional. Many people in the U.S., among various ethnic groups, continue to have their own concepts related to

388-435: A cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed; to statements on the witness stand that the father or grandfather or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half

485-594: A decade after the passage of Virginia's eugenics laws, he wrote to Walter Gross , director of Nazi Germany 's Office for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare . Plecker described Virginia's racial purity laws and requested to be put on Gross' mailing list. Following the Third Reich's sterilization of 600 Rhineland bastards , children in the Rhineland who were born of German women by Black French colonial fathers, Plecker commented: "I hope this work

582-621: A decreasing number of mulattoes , as classified in the census, meant that more of them were passing as white . With the help of John Powell and Earnest Sevier Cox , Plecker drafted and the state legislature passed the " Racial Integrity Act of 1924 ". It recognized only two races, "white" and "colored" (black). It essentially incorporated the one-drop rule , classifying any individual with any amount of African ancestry as "colored". This went beyond existing laws, which had classified persons who had one-sixteenth (equivalent to one great-great-grandparent) or less black ancestry as white. In 1967,

679-553: A devout Presbyterian , and throughout his life, he supported the denomination's fundamentalist Southern branch, funding missionaries who believed, as he later would, that God had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah as punishment for racial intermixing . Plecker settled in Hampton, Virginia , in 1892, and before his mother's death in 1915, he worked with women of all races and became known for his active interest in obstetrics and public health issues. Plecker educated midwives , invented

776-484: A group of multiracial families of mostly European and African ancestry whose ancestors were free in colonial Virginia. They migrated to the frontier in Kentucky and Tennessee. Their descendants have been documented over the decades as having tended to marry persons classified as "white". Their descendants became assimilated into the majority culture from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Pursuant to Reconstruction later in

873-557: A home incubator , and prescribed home remedies for infants. Plecker became the public health officer for Elizabeth City County in 1902. In 1912, Plecker became the first registrar of Virginia's newly created Bureau of Vital Statistics, a position he held until 1946. An avowed white supremacist and an advocate of eugenics , he became a leader of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America in 1922. He wanted to prevent miscegenation , or marriage between races, and he also thought that

970-540: A large number of ahistorical and dubious myths regarding their origins. Some myths involve physical characteristics and genetic diseases that are claimed to indicate Melungeon descent, such as shovel-shaped incisors , an Anatolian bump , Familial Mediterranean fever , polydactyly , dark skin with bright colored eyes , and high cheekbones . Other myths claim that the Melungeons are descendants of lost Spanish colonists, marooned Portuguese sailors, descendants of

1067-515: A letter warning against "colored" families trying to pass as "white" or "Indian" in violation of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. He identified these as being "chiefly Tennessee Melungeons". He directed the offices to reclassify members of certain families as black, causing the loss for numerous families of documentation in records that showed their continued self-identification as being of Native American descent on official forms. In

SECTION 10

#1732784041096

1164-791: A male citizen. In contemporary practice, tribal laws around citizenship and parentage can vary widely between nations. Between 1904 and 1919, tribal members with any amount of African ancestry were disenrolled from the Chitimacha tribe of Louisiana, and their descendants have since then been denied tribal membership. In 20th-century America, the concept of the one-drop rule has been primarily applied by European Americans to those of native African ancestry, when some Whites were trying to maintain some degree of overt or covert white supremacy . The poet Langston Hughes wrote in his 1940 memoir: You see, unfortunately, I am not black. There are lots of different kinds of blood in our family. But here in

1261-482: A molecular anthropologist at Penn State University, published results of a study regarding the racial admixture of Americans who identified as white or black: Shriver surveyed a 3,000-person sample from 25 locations in the United States and tested subjects for autosomal genetic make-up: Black people in the United States are more racially mixed than white people, reflecting historical experience here, including

1358-473: A one-drop rule. When a proposal was made by Travis H. Eppes and debated in 1853, representatives realized that such a rule could adversely affect whites, as they were aware of generations of interracial relationships . During the debate, a person wrote to the Charlottesville newspaper: [If a one-drop rule were adopted], I doubt not, if many who are reputed to be white, and are in fact so, do not in

1455-403: A person of color." (This was the equivalent of one great-grandparent.) Additionally, the act outlawed fornication, as well as the intermarrying of white females with men of color. However, the act permitted the continuation of marriages between white persons and persons of color that were established before the law was enacted. The one-drop rule was not made law until the early 20th century. This

1552-453: A person's racial status were questioned, not their documented ancestry. Based on late 20th-century DNA analysis and a preponderance of historical evidence, US president Thomas Jefferson is widely believed to have fathered the six mixed-race children with his slave Sally Hemings , who was herself three-quarters white and a paternal half-sister of his wife Martha Wayles Jefferson . Four of them survived to adulthood. Under Virginia law of

1649-465: A proposal for a one-drop rule to include in these laws. George D. Tillman said the following in opposition: If the law is made as it now stands respectable families in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton, and Orangeburg will be denied the right to intermarry among people with whom they are now associated and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected to my knowledge. They have sent good soldiers to

1746-620: A role in classification, along with economic origin or social class (13.5%) and political or ideological choice (2.9%). 96% of those surveyed said they can identify their race, which debunks the myth that many people in Brazil do not recognize the concept of race. During the Spanish colonial period, Puerto Rico had laws such as the Regla del Sacar or Gracias al Sacar, by which a person of black ancestry could be considered legally white so long as

1843-444: A very short time find themselves instead of being elevated, reduced by the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction, to the level of a free negro. The state legislators agreed. No such law was passed until 1924, apparently assisted by the fading recollection of such mixed familial histories. In the 21st century, such interracial family histories are being revealed as individuals undergo DNA genetic analysis. The Melungeons are

1940-447: Is Melungeon differ. Historians and genealogists have tried to identify surnames of different Melungeon families. In 1943, Virginia State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Walter Ashby Plecker, identified surnames by county: "Lee, Smyth and Wise: Collins, Gibson, (Gipson), Moore, Goins, Ramsey, Delph, Bunch, Freeman, Mise, Barlow, Bolden (Bolin), Mullins, Hawkins (chiefly Tennessee Melungeons)". In 1992, Virginia DeMarce explored and reported

2037-552: Is complete and not one has been missed. I sometimes regret that we have not the authority to put some measures in practice in Virginia." In 1943, Plecker remarked, "Our own indexed birth and marriage records, showing race, reach back to 1853. Such a study has probably never been made before. Your staff member is probably correct in his surmise that Hitler’s genealogical study of the Jews is not more complete." On August 2, 1947, Plecker

SECTION 20

#1732784041096

2134-413: Is considered black ( Negro or colored in historical terms). It is an example of hypodescent , the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups. This concept became codified into the law of some U.S. states in the early 20th century. It was associated with

2231-541: Is difficult enough to accept a new language and culture without the additional burden of having to transform from white to black. Yvette Modestin, a dark-skinned native of Panama who worked in Boston , said the situation was overwhelming: "There's not a day that I don't have to explain myself." Professor J. B. Bird has said that Latin America is not alone in rejecting the historical US notion that any visible African ancestry

2328-433: Is drawn from colonial tax lists and local court from across Virginia , Maryland , North Carolina , Delaware , and South Carolina . Anthropologist E. Raymond Evans wrote in 1979 regarding Melungeons: "In Graysville, the Melungeons strongly deny their Black heritage and explain their genetic differences by claiming to have had Cherokee grandmothers. Many of the local whites also claim Cherokee ancestry and appear to accept

2425-607: Is enough to make one black: In most countries of the Caribbean, Colin Powell would be described as a Creole , reflecting his mixed heritage. In Belize , he might further be described as a "High Creole", because of his extremely light complexion. People in many other countries have tended to treat race less rigidly, both in their self-identification and how they regard others. Unlike the United States, in Brazil, people tend to consider phenotype rather than genotype . A person who

2522-560: Is half Negro and half Indian." In the 1890s, during the age of yellow journalism , the term "Melungeon" started to circulate and be reproduced in U.S. newspapers, when the journalist Will Allen Dromgoole wrote several articles on the Melungeons. In 1894, the US Department of the Interior , in its "Report of Indians Taxed and Not Taxed," under the section "Tennessee" noted: In a number of states small groups of people, preferring

2619-420: Is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of ... colored blood ... It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed. The one-drop rule

2716-643: Is phenotypically Caucasian will be considered white, even if they have some degree of ancestry from other races. Brazil has a racial category "pardo" ( mestizo or mulatto ) specifically for people who, in terms of appearance, do not fully fit as white, nor fully as black. According to an survey of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistic , to define their own race, Brazilians take into account skin color (73.8%) and family origin (61.6%), as well as physical features (hair, mouth, nose), mentioned by 53.5%. For 24.9%, culture and tradition also play

2813-496: Is such a group, popularly known as Melungeans, in addition to those still known as Cherokees. The name seems to have been given them by early French settlers, who recognized their mixed origin and applied to them the name Melangeans or Melungeans, a corruption of the French word "melange" which means mixed. (See letter of Hamilton McMillan, under North Carolina.) In December 1943, Walter Ashby Plecker of Virginia sent county officials

2910-539: Is the titular protagonist and narrator of Barbara Kingsolver 's Demon Copperhead , which was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction . The novel takes place primarily in Lee County, Virginia and environs. One-drop rule The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of African ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")

3007-545: The American Civil War , free individuals of mixed race ( free people of color ) were considered legally white if they had less than either one-eighth or one-quarter African ancestry (only in Virginia). Many mixed-race people were absorbed into the majority culture based simply on appearance, associations and carrying out community responsibilities. These and community acceptance were the more important factors if

Melungeon - Misplaced Pages Continue

3104-584: The Cherokee , making the Melungeons a branch of the tribe, though no documentation of this event exists. The last male in Micajah's bloodline, Michael Joseph Bullard, died in a swimming accident at the age of 15 in 1991. Many free people of color , white-passing or otherwise, served in the American Civil War on both sides of the conflict. Some served in the Confederate military , though others resisted

3201-594: The Goins genealogy as a Melungeon surname. Beginning in the early 19th century, or possibly before, the term Melungeon was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border, but it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry. Through time the term has changed meanings but often referred to any mixed-race person and, at different times, has referred to 200 different communities across

3298-930: The Hampton area to be educated alongside blacks, at times inter-marrying, although Hampton's Indian schools had closed down as racial discrimination against Native Americans and the eugenics movement both grew in the state. Plecker refused to recognize the fact that many mixed-race Virginia Indians had maintained their culture and identity as Native Americans over the centuries despite economic assimilation. Plecker ordered state agencies to reclassify most citizens who claimed American Indian identity as "colored", although many Virginian Native Americans continued to live in their communities and maintained their tribal practices. Church records, for instance, continued to identify them as Native Americans. Specifically, Plecker ordered state agencies to reclassify certain families whom he identified by surname, because he decided that they were trying to pass and evade segregation . This remained legal in

3395-499: The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, instead determining tribal status on the basis of kinship, lineage and family ties. However, many land cession treaties, particularly during Indian removal in the 19th century, contained provisions for " mixed-blood " descendants of European and native ancestry to receive either parcels of land ceded in the treaty, or a share in a lump sum of money, with specifications as to

3492-631: The Inquisition , were one of the pre-cursor populations to these groups. Many creoles, once in British America , were able to obtain their freedom and many married into local white families . In the general US census , Melungeon people were enumerated as of the races to which they most resembled. The term Melungeon likely comes from the French word mélange ultimately derived from the Latin verb miscēre ("to mix, mingle, intermingle"). It

3589-587: The South until federal legislation overturned it in the 1960s. In addition, Plecker lobbied the US Census Bureau to drop the category "mulatto" in the 1930 and later censuses. This deprived mixed-race people of recognition of their identity and it also contributed to a binary culture of hypodescent , in which mixed-race persons were often classified as part of the group with lower social status. Plecker sympathized with Nazi eugenics efforts. In 1935,

3686-544: The Virginia General Assembly declared that an individual could be considered white if having no more than one-sixteenth Indian "blood" (the equivalent of one great-great-grandparent). The eugenist Madison Grant of New York wrote in his book, The Passing of the Great Race (1916): "The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro;

3783-510: The ancient Israelites or Phoenicians , Romani slaves, or Turkish settlers. From 2005 to 2011, researchers Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson, and Janet Lewis Crain began the Melungeon Core Y-DNA Group online. They interpreted these results in their (2011) paper titled "Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population", which shows that ancestry of the sample is primarily European and African, with one person having

3880-458: The 18th and the early 19th centuries, census enumerators classified them as "mulatto," "other free," or as "free persons of color." Sometimes they were listed as "white" or sometimes as "black" or "negro," or even "Indian." One family described as "Indian" was the Ridley (Riddle) family, as was noted on a 1767 Pittsylvania County, Virginia , tax list. Another tri-racial family described as “Indian”

3977-674: The 1924 Virginia law in such a way that vital records were changed or destroyed, family members were split on opposite sides of the color line, and there were losses of the documented continuity of people who identified as American Indian, as all people in Virginia had to be classified as white or black. Over the centuries, many Indian tribes in Virginia had absorbed people of other ethnicities through marriage or adoption, but maintained their cultures. Suspecting blacks of trying to " pass " as Indians, Plecker ordered records changed to classify people only as black or white, and ordered offices to reclassify certain family surnames from Indian to black. Since

Melungeon - Misplaced Pages Continue

4074-581: The 19th century, southern states acted to impose racial segregation by law and restrict the liberties of blacks, specifically passing laws to exclude them from politics and voting. From 1890 to 1908, all of the former Confederate states passed such laws, and most preserved disfranchisement until after passage of federal civil rights laws in the 1960s. At the South Carolina constitutional convention in 1895, an anti- miscegenation law and changes that would disfranchise blacks were proposed. Delegates debated

4171-589: The 20th century, during the Jim Crow era, some Melungeons attended boarding schools in Asheville, North Carolina , Warren Wilson College , and Dorland Institution which integrated earlier than other schools in the southern United States. During the American Revolution , there was purportedly a Melungeon "king" or "chief" named Micajah Bunch (1723–1804). Local folklore claims he intermarried with

4268-466: The 20th century, during the Black Power movement, black race-based groups claimed all people of any African ancestry as black in a reverse way, to establish political power. In colonial Spanish America , many soldiers and explorers took indigenous women as wives. Native-born Spanish women were always a minority. The colonists developed an elaborate classification and caste system that identified

4365-556: The Census Bureau stopped using the classification of mulatto. Documentation of the long social recognition of mixed-race people was lost, and they were classified only as black or white. The binary world of the one-drop rule disregarded the self-identification both of people of mostly European ancestry who grew up in white communities, and of people who were of mixed race and identified as American Indian. In addition, Walter Plecker , Registrar of Statistics, ordered application of

4462-525: The Confederate Army, and are now landowners and taxpayers. Those men served creditably, and it would be unjust and disgraceful to embarrass them in this way. It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of ... colored blood. The pure-blooded white has needed and received a certain infusion of darker blood to give him readiness and purpose. It would be

4559-625: The Confederate government, such as Henry Berry Lowry . There is no uniquely Melungeon culture, though specific groups have formed into their own tribal entities on the basis of ancestral connections to historical Native American communities. Due to the lasting impact of colonialism , the decimation of initial contact tribes , and the legacy of American chattel slavery , culturally these mixed-race groups resemble their white settler neighbors in culture, with few exceptions. Melungeon cuisine includes chocolate gravy . Definitions of who

4656-682: The Eastern United States. These have included Van Guilders and Clappers of New York and Lumbees in North Carolina to Creoles in Louisiana. Award-winning genealogist and engineer Paul Heinegg created a website listing some 1,000 family histories of free people of color, categorized by surname and county . Many families regularly denoted as Melungeon are listed throughout his research, as well as other families listed as being Native American, mulatto, and East Indian. Data

4753-541: The Jacob F. Perkins vs. John R. White, Carter County, July 1855 Abstract of depositions to support her conclusions made about identity and citizenship in 19th-century United States. In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act that codified hypodescent or the " one-drop rule , suggesting that anyone with any trace of African ancestry was legally Black and would fall under Jim Crow laws designed to limit

4850-516: The Melungeon claim. ..." In 1999, historian C. S. Everett hypothesized that John Collins (recorded as a Sapony Indian who was expelled from Orange County, Virginia about January 1743), might be the same man as the Melungeon ancestor John Collins, who was classified as a "mulatto" in 1755 North Carolina records. However, Everett revised that theory after he discovered evidence that these were two different men named John Collins. Only descendants of

4947-663: The Melungeons of Newman's Ridge , the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina , the Chestnut Ridge people , and the Carmel Indians . Free people of color in colonial Virginia were predominately of African and European descent; however, many families also had varying amounts of Native American and East Indian ancestry. Some modern researchers believe that early Atlantic Creole slaves, descended from or acculturated by Iberian lançados and Sephardi Jews fleeing

SECTION 50

#1732784041096

5044-615: The Registrar of Statistics, Plecker insisted on labeling mixed-race families of European-African ancestry as black. In 1924, Plecker wrote, "Two races as materially divergent as the White and Negro, in morals, mental powers, and cultural fitness, cannot live in close contact without injury to the higher." In the 1930s and 1940s, Plecker directed offices under his authority to change vital records and reclassify certain families as black (or colored) (without notifying them) after Virginia established

5141-1260: The Supreme Court allowed racial segregation of public facilities, under the "separate but equal" doctrine. Jim Crow laws reached their greatest influence during the decades from 1910 to 1930. Among them were hypodescent laws , defining as black anyone with any black ancestry, or with a very small portion of black ancestry. Tennessee adopted such a "one-drop" statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923, Alabama and Georgia in 1927, and Virginia in 1930. During this same period, Florida , Indiana , Kentucky , Maryland , Missouri , Nebraska , North Dakota , and Utah retained their old "blood fraction" statutes de jure , but amended these fractions (one-sixteenth, one-thirty-second) to be equivalent to one-drop de facto . Before 1930, individuals of visible mixed European and African ancestry were usually classed as mulatto , or sometimes as black and sometimes as white, depending on appearance. Previously, most states had limited trying to define ancestry before "the fourth degree" (great-great-grandparents). But, in 1930, due to lobbying by southern legislators,

5238-461: The United States Supreme Court invalidated the law in Loving v. Virginia . In particular, Plecker resented African Americans who passed as Native Americans, and he came to firmly believe that the state's Native Americans had been "mongrelized" with its African American population. In fact, since shortly after the Civil War , Native Americans from all over the country had been brought to

5335-576: The United States' definition of black has left many feeling attacked from all directions. At times, white and black Americans might discriminate against them for their lighter or darker skin tones; African Americans might believe that Afro-Latino immigrants are denying their blackness. At the same time, the immigrants think lighter-skinned Latinos dominate Spanish-language television and media. A majority of Latin Americans possess some African or American Indian ancestry. Many of these immigrants feel it

5432-407: The United States, the word 'Negro' is used to mean anyone who has any native African blood at all in his veins. In Africa, the word is more pure. It means all African, therefore black. I am brown. This rule meant many mixed-race people, of diverse ancestry, were simply seen as African-American, and their more diverse ancestors forgotten and erased, making it difficult to accurately trace ancestry in

5529-522: The Virginia legislature; it institutionalized the one-drop rule . Plecker was killed after being struck by a car in 1947. Plecker was born in Augusta County , the son of a returned Confederate veteran and slave owner. After being sent to Staunton as a boy, he graduated from Hoover Military Academy in 1880 and obtained a medical degree from the University of Maryland in 1885. He was

5626-747: The Y-chromosome and mtDNA ( mitochondrial DNA ) fails to pick up the heritage of many other ancestors. DNA testing has limitations and should not be depended on by individuals to answer all questions about heritage. Duster said that neither Shriver's research nor Gates' PBS program adequately acknowledged the limitations of genetic testing . Similarly, the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB) notes that: "Native American markers" are not found solely among Native Americans. While they occur more frequently among Native Americans, they are also found in people in other parts of

5723-448: The ancestry of prominent figures was explored. His experts discussed the results of autosomal DNA tests, in contrast to direct-line testing, which survey all the DNA that has been inherited from the parents of an individual. Autosomal tests focus on SNPs . The specialists on Gates' program summarized the make-up of the United States population by the following: In 2002, Mark D. Shriver ,

5820-608: The anecdotal claim that Melungeons are more prone to certain diseases, such as sarcoidosis or familial Mediterranean fever . Academic medical centers have noted that neither of those diseases is confined to a single population. Author Jesse Stuart 's 1965 novel Daughter of the Legend , set in Tennessee, depicts a love story between a Melungeon girl and a timber cutter from Virginia, and explores socioeconomic and racial tensions among mountain-dwelling families. A Melungeon character

5917-601: The black populations with the highest percentage of white ancestry lived in California and Seattle, Washington. These were both majority-white destinations during the Great Migration of 1940–1970 of African Americans from the Deep South of Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi. Blacks sampled in those two locations had more than 25% white European ancestry on average. As noted by Troy Duster, direct-line testing of

SECTION 60

#1732784041096

6014-479: The case of mixed-race American Indian and European descendants, the one-drop rule in Virginia was extended only so far as those with more than one-sixteenth Indian blood. This was due to what was known as the " Pocahontas exception ". Since many influential First Families of Virginia (FFV) claimed descent from the American Indian Pocahontas and her husband John Rolfe of the colonial era,

6111-415: The celebrities interviewed. However, many critics point to the limitations of DNA testing for ancestry, especially for minority populations. During World War II, Colonel Karl Bendetsen stated that anyone with "one drop of Japanese blood" was liable for forced internment in camps . Today there are no enforceable laws in the U.S. in which the one-drop rule is applicable. Sociologically, however, while

6208-594: The close living and working conditions among the small populations of the early colonies, when indentured servants, both black and white, and slaves, married or formed unions. Mixed-race children of white mothers were born free, and many families of free people of color were started in those years. 80 percent of the free African-American families in the Upper South in the censuses of 1790 to 1810 can be traced as descendants of unions between white women and African men in colonial Virginia, not of slave women and white men. In

6305-688: The colonial period, the tribes mostly had treaties with the King of England rather than with the United States government . Plecker's policies destroyed and altered records that individuals and families now need in order to prove their cultural continuity as Indians. In 2007, the House of Representatives passed a law to recognize the Virginia tribes at the Federal level. In January 2018, the Senate passed

6402-497: The colonial slave societies, the United States was nearly unique in developing the one-drop rule; it derived both from the Southern slave culture (shared by other societies) and the aftermath of the American Civil War , emancipation of slaves, and Reconstruction . In the late 19th century, Southern whites regained political power and restored white supremacy , passing Jim Crow laws and establishing racial segregation by law. In

6499-492: The community. The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time. According to the 1894 Department of Interior Report of Indians Taxed and not Taxed within the "Tennessee" report, "The civilized (self-supporting) Indians of Tennessee, counted in the general census numbered 146 (71 males and 75 females) and are distributed as follows: Hawkins county , 31; Monroe county , 12; Polk county , 10; other counties (8 or less in each), 93. Quoting from

6596-482: The concept has in recent years become less acceptable within the Black community, with more people identifying as biracial, research has found that in White society, it is still common to associate biracial children primarily with the individual's non-White ancestry. Both before and after the American Civil War , many people of mixed ancestry who "looked white" and were of mostly white ancestry were legally absorbed into

6693-472: The cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew." As noted above, Native American tribes which had patrilineal descent and inheritance, such as the Omaha, classified children of white men and Native American women as white. Through the 1940s, Walter Plecker of Virginia and Naomi Drake of Louisiana had an outsized influence. As

6790-482: The degree of tribal ancestry required to qualify. Though these did not typically apply a one-drop rule, determining the ancestry of individual claimants was not straightforward, and the process was often rife with fraud. Among patrilineal tribes, such as the Omaha , historically a child born to an Omaha mother and a white father could belong officially to the Omaha tribe only if the child were formally adopted into it by

6887-529: The early 20th centuries, have been collected by the Melungeon Heritage Association. Since the mid-1990s, popular interest in the Melungeons has grown tremendously, although many descendants have left the region of historical concentration. The writer Bill Bryson devoted the better part of a chapter to them in his The Lost Continent (1989). People are increasingly self-identifying as having Melungeon ancestry. Internet sites promote

6984-818: The early colony, conditions were loose among the working class, who lived and worked closely together. After the American Revolutionary War , their free mixed-race descendants migrated to the frontiers of nearby states along with other primarily European Virginia pioneers. The admixture also reflects later conditions under slavery, when white planters or their sons, or overseers, frequently raped African women. There were also freely chosen relationships among individuals of different or mixed races. Shriver's 2002 survey found different current admixture rates by region, reflecting historic patterns of settlement and change, both in terms of populations who migrated and their descendants' unions. For example, he found that

7081-478: The four entered white society as adults. Subsequently, their descendants identified as white. Although racial segregation was adopted legally by southern states of the former Confederacy in the late 19th century, legislators resisted defining race by law as part of preventing interracial marriages. In 1895, in South Carolina during discussion, George D. Tillman said, It is a scientific fact that there

7178-404: The freedom of the woods or the seashore to the confinement of regular labor in civilization, have become in some degree distinct from their neighbors, perpetuating their qualities and absorbing into their number those of like disposition, without preserving very clear racial lines. Such are the remnants called Indians in some states where a pure-blooded Indian can hardly longer be found. In Tennessee

7275-410: The freedoms and rights of Black people. Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States were not declared unconstitutional until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. By the mid-to-late 19th century, the term Melungeon appeared to have been used most frequently to refer to the biracial families of Hancock County and neighboring areas. Several other uses of the term in the print media, from the mid-19th to

7372-516: The individual could prove that at least one person per generation in the last four generations had also been legally white. Thus persons of some black ancestry with known white lineage were classified as white, the opposite of the "one-drop rule" in the United States. Given the intense interest in ethnicity, genetic genealogists and other scientists have studied population groups. Henry Louis Gates Jr. publicized such genetic studies on his two series African American Lives , shown on PBS , in which

7469-427: The late 20th century, Virginia has officially recognized eight American Indian tribes and their members; the tribes are trying to gain federal recognition. They have had difficulty because decades of birth, marriage, and death records were misclassified under Plecker's application of the law. No one was classified as Indian, although many individuals and families identified that way and were preserving their cultures. In

7566-431: The latter man, who was identified as mulatto in the 1755 record in North Carolina, have any proven connection to the Melungeon families of eastern Tennessee. Jack D. Forbes speculated that the Melungeons may have been Saponi / Powhatan descendants, although he acknowledges an account from circa 1890 described them as being "free colored" and mulatto people. Dispute regarding the origin of Melungeons families has led to

7663-721: The mixed-race descendants of blacks, Amerindians , and whites by different names, related to appearance and known ancestry. Racial caste not only depended on ancestry or skin color, but also could be raised or lowered by the person's financial status or class. The same racial culture shock has come to hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned immigrants to the United States from Brazil, Colombia , Panama , and other Latin American nations. Although many are not considered black in their homelands, they have often been considered black in US society. According to The Washington Post , their refusal to accept

7760-550: The one-drop idea. They may still consider those multiracial individuals with any African ancestry to be black, or at least non-white (if the person has other minority ancestry), unless the person explicitly identifies as white. On the other hand, the Black Power movement and some leaders within the black community also claimed as black those persons with any visible African ancestry, in order to extend their political base and regardless of how those people self-identified. Among

7857-535: The present day. Many descendants of those who were enslaved native Africans and trafficked by Europeans and Americans have assumed they have Native American ancestry. Henry Louis Gates Jr. 's 2006 PBS documentary on the genetic makeup of African Americans, African American Lives , focused on these stories of Native American heritage in African-American communities. DNA test results showed, after African, primarily European ancestors for all but two of

7954-449: The principle of "invisible blackness" that developed after the long history of racial interaction in the South , which had included the hardening of slavery as a racial caste system and later segregation . Before the rule was outlawed by the Supreme Court in the Loving v. Virginia decision of 1967, it was used to prevent interracial marriages and in general to deny rights and equal opportunities and uphold white supremacy . Before

8051-471: The report: The Melungeans or Malungeans, in Hawkins county, claim to be Cherokees of mixed blood (white, Indian, and negro), their white blood being derived, as they assert, from English and Portuguese stock. They trace their descent primarily to 2 Indians (Cherokees) known, one of them as Collins, the other as Gibson, who settled in the mountains of Tennessee, where their descendants are now to be found, about

8148-487: The standard was changed to one sixteenth. In 1930 , even the one sixteenth standard was abandoned in favor of a more stringent standard. The act defined a person as legally "colored" (black) for classification and legal purposes if the individual had any African ancestry. Although the Virginia legislature increased restrictions on free blacks following the Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831, it refrained from establishing

8245-674: The time of the admission of that state into the Union (1796). The earliest historical record of the term Melungeon dates to 1813. In the minutes of the Stoney Creek Baptist Church in Scott County, Virginia , a woman stated another parishioner made the accusation that "she harbored them Melungins." The second oldest written use of the term was in 1840, when a Tennessee politician described "an impudent Melungeon" from what became Washington, D.C., as being "a scoundrel who

8342-429: The time, while their seven-eighths European ancestry would have made them legally white if they'd been free, being born to an enslaved mother made them automatically enslaved from birth. Jefferson allowed the two oldest to escape in 1822 (freeing them legally was a public action he elected to avoid because he would have had to gain permission from the state legislature); the two youngest he freed in his 1826 will. Three of

8439-558: The various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery. They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee ." Melungeon ancestors were considered by appearance to be mixed race. During

8536-400: The white majority. State laws established differing standards. For instance, an 1822 Virginia law stated that to be defined as mulatto (that is, multi-racial), a person had to have at least one-quarter (equivalent to one grandparent) African ancestry. Social acceptance and identity were historically the keys to racial identity. Virginia's one-fourth standard remained in place until 1910, when

8633-412: The world with dynamite to prevent or avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother in the legitimacy or purity of the blood of his father. In 1865, Florida passed an act that both outlawed miscegenation and defined the amount of black ancestry needed to be legally defined as a "person of color". The act stated that "every person who shall have one-eighth or more of negro blood shall be deemed and held to be

8730-573: The world. Genetic testing has shown three major waves of ancient migration from Asia among Native Americans but cannot distinguish further among most of the various tribes in the Americas. Some critics of testing believe that more markers will be identified as more Native Americans of various tribes are tested, as they believe that the early epidemics due to smallpox and other diseases may have altered genetic representation. Walter Plecker Walter Ashby Plecker (April 2, 1861 – August 2, 1947)

8827-477: Was an American physician and public health advocate who was the first registrar of Virginia 's Bureau of Vital Statistics, serving from 1912 to 1946. He was a leader of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America , a white supremacist organization founded in Richmond, Virginia, in 1922. A eugenicist and proponent of scientific racism , Plecker drafted and lobbied for the passage of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 by

8924-1304: Was decades after the Civil War, emancipation , and the Reconstruction era . It followed restoration of white supremacy in the South and the passage of Jim Crow racial segregation laws. In the 20th century, it was also associated with the rise of eugenics and ideas of racial purity . From the late 1870s on, white Democrats regained political power in the former Confederate states and passed racial segregation laws controlling public facilities, and laws and constitutions from 1890 to 1910 to achieve disfranchisement of most blacks. Many poor whites were also disfranchised in these years, by changes to voter registration rules that worked against them, such as literacy tests , longer residency requirements and poll taxes . The first challenges to such state laws were overruled by Supreme Court decisions which upheld state constitutions that effectively disfranchised many. White Democratic-dominated legislatures proceeded with passing Jim Crow laws that instituted racial segregation in public places and accommodations, and passed other restrictive voting legislation. In Plessy v. Ferguson ,

9021-504: Was headlined: "Dr. Plecker, 86, Rabid Racist, Killed by Auto". Plecker's racial policies continue to cause problems for the descendants of what are now sometimes called the First Virginians. Members of eight Virginia-recognized tribes struggle to achieve federal recognition because they cannot prove their continuity of heritage through historic documentation, as federal laws require. First encountering European Americans during

9118-482: Was not formally codified as law until the 20th century, from 1910 in Tennessee to 1930 as one of Virginia 's "racial integrity laws" , with similar laws in several other states in between. Prior to colonization, and still in traditional communities, the idea of determining belonging by degree of "blood" was, and is, unheard of. Native American tribes did not use blood quantum law until the U.S. government introduced

9215-534: Was once a derogatory term, but is used by the Melungeon people today as a primary identifier. The Tennessee Encyclopedia states that in the 19th century, "the word 'Melungeon' appears to have been used as an offensive term for nonwhite and/or low socioeconomic class persons by outsiders." The term Melungeon was historically considered an insult, a label applied to Appalachians who were by appearance or reputation of mixed-race ancestry. Although initially pejorative in character, this word has been reclaimed by members of

9312-563: Was struck by a car while crossing a Richmond street, killing him, less than a year after his retirement. He was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery beside his wife, who had died more than a decade earlier. They had no children. For years Plecker never sought out friends, and he described his hobbies as "books and birds", and he gained a reputation for never smiling. His obituary in the Richmond Afro-American newspaper

9409-473: Was the Butler family, as was noted in the 1860 census for Whitley County, Kentucky , with the family patriarch (named Simon Butler) being born in Tennessee around 1776. Ariela Gross referenced the 1846 State v. Solomon, Ezekial, Levi, Andrew, Wiatt, Vardy Collins, Zachariah, Lewis Minor , Hawkins County Circuit Court Minute Book, 1842–1848, Hawkins County Circuit Court, Hawkins County Courthouse box 31, 32 and

#95904