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
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Published: 09/01/1996
Pages: 180
Weight: 0.6lbs
Size: 8.96h x 5.97w x 0.48d
ISBN: 9780865545168
Language: English
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