Down in the valley, up on the ridge

The Economist ^ | 27 Aug 2016 | The Economist

[Theoria]

An Appalachian people offers a timely parable of the nuanced history of race in America

Head into Sneedville from the Clinch river, turn left at the courthouse and crawl up Newman’s Ridge. Do not be distracted by the driveways meandering into the woods, the views across the Appalachians or the shadows of the birds of prey; heed the warnings locals may have issued about the steepness and the switchbacks. If the pass seems challenging, consider how inaccessible it must have been in the moonshining days before motor cars.

Halfway down, as Snake Hollow appears on your left, you reach a narrow gorge, between the ridge and Powell Mountain and hard on Tennessee’s north-eastern border. In parts sheer and wooded, it opens into an unexpected valley, where secluded pastures and fields of wild flowers hug Blackwater Creek—in which the water is not black but clear, running, like the valley, down into Virginia. This is the ancestral home of an obscure American people, the Melungeons. Some lived over the state line on Stone Mountain, in other craggy parts of western Virginia and North Carolina and in eastern Kentucky. But the ridge and this valley were their heartland.

The story of the Melungeons is at once a footnote to the history of race in America and a timely parable of it. They bear witness to the horrors and legacy of segregation, but also to the overlooked complexity of the early colonial era. They suggest a once-and-future alternative to the country’s brutally rigid model of race relations, one that, for all the improvements, persists in the often siloed lives of black and white Americans today.

[Theoria]

Melungeons, madoc, Appalachia ping

[miss marmelstein]

You see the same thing in rural Maine which is at the end of the Appalachian Trail.

[T-Bone Texan]

I am fascinated with all aspects of American history, including the Melungeons, but the phrase

"...a timely parable of the nuanced history of race in America..."

Reeks of political correctness. Do not want.

It's as if all media people in America have it as their core mission to raise up those ignorant white people with their wise, sacred wordiness.

[bigbob]

How interesting! I recently drove through that part of the country and was struck by how the Appalachains provided such formidable natural barriers to help maintain isolation. The USA is truly a land of a million stories.

[Ray76]

> the country’s brutally rigid model of race relations

With lines like that I’m not going to bother

[Ditter]

Thanks for posting this. We have always been interested in Melungeons. My paternal grandfather was a strange looking man. Black hair, darkish skin and bright blue eyes, he was always very thin. He was born in Texas in 1879 but his family had come from the part of Tenn where they lived.

[fella]

They were white and they were slaves

[Little Bill]

Known as pink eyes, incest is best.