The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780865545168)

As early as 1654, English and French explorers in the southern Appalachians reported seeing dark-skinned, brown- and blue-eyed, and European-featured people speaking broken Elizabethan English, living in cabins, tilling the land, smelting silver, practicing Christianity, and, most perplexing of all, claiming to be Portyghee. Declared free persons of color in the late 1700s by the English and Scottish-Irish immigrants, the Melungeons, as they were known, were driven off their lands and denied voting rights, education, and the right to judicial process. The law was enforced mercilessly and sometimes violently in the resoundingly successful effort to totally disenfranchise these earliest American settlers.

Author: N. Brent Kennedy
ISBN-10: 0865545162
ISBN-13: 9780865545168
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Language: English
Published: 09/01/1996
Pages: 180
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.96h x 5.97w x 0.48d