Mixed Race Studies

The Triracial Experience in a Poor Appalachian Community: How Social Identity Shapes the School Lives of Rural Minorities

Ohio University
June 2005
176 pages

Stephanie Diane Starcher

A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Education of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education

This study investigates the ways racial labeling and the stigmas associated with a poor rural community influence the life circumstances of a group of triracial families living in Appalachia. Qualitative interviewing techniques are used as a way of understanding what is going on in the daily lives of participating triracial families. The data reveal that markers of distinctiveness associated with race, class, and place shape the identities of participants, which, in turn, influence their school experiences. Participants who identify with the African-American sociocultural group experience a “caste-like” status because of the compounding effect of racial stigmas and stereotypes of place and class. Faced with such oppressive life conditions, participants report that social advancement is nearly impossible. The values of competition, achievement, and securing an ever higher standard of living that are promulgated by the school compete with participants’ version of what constitutes the “good life” in this rural setting. Students must often choose between the beliefs of their own culture and those advanced by the school. Participants report that community members who do not share these multiple markers of distinctiveness are less likely to experience such cultural conflict and the same degree of marginalization at school.

Read the entire dissertation here.

A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States

Annals of the Association of American Geographers
Volume 43, Number 2 (June 1953)
pages 138-155

Edward T. Price
Los Angeles State College

A Strange product of the mingling of races which followed the British entry into North America survives in the presence of a number of localized strains of peoples of mixed ancestry. Presumed to be part white with varying proportions of Indian and Negro blood,** they are recognized as of intermediate social status, sharing lot with neither white nor colored, and enjoying neither the governmental protection nor the tribal tie of the typical Indian descendants. A high degree of endogamy results from this special status, and their recognition is crystallized in the unusual group names applied to them by the country people.

The chief populations of this type are located and identified in Figure 1, which expresses their recurrence as a pattern of distribution. Yet each is essentially a local phenomenon, a unique demographic body, defined only in its own terms and only by its own neighbors. A name applied to one group in one area would have no meaning relative to similar people elsewhere. This association of mixed-blood and particular place piques the geographic curiosity about a subject which, were it ubiquitous, might well be abandoned to the sociologist and social historian. What accounts for these cases of social endemism in the racially mixed population?

The total number of these mixed-bloods is probably between 50,000 and 100,000 persons. Individually recognized groups may run from fewer than 100 to as many as 18,000 persons in the case of the Croatans of North Carolina. The available records, the most useful being old census schedules,’ indicate that the present numbers of mixed-bloods have sprung from the great reproductive increase of small initial populations; the prevalence in each group of a small number of oft-repeated surnames is in accord with such a conclusion.   The ancestors of the mixed-bloods…

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Review of Kessler, John S.; Ball, Donald B., North From the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio

H-Net Reviews
June 2002

Penny Messinger, Assistant Professor of History
Daemen College, Amherst, New York

John S. Kessler, Donald B. Ball. North From the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2001. xiii + 220 pp., ISBN 978-0-86554-703-2; ISBN 978-0-86554-700-1.

Ethnic Diversity in Appalachia and Appalachian Ohio

Scholars of the Appalachian South have begun to explore the ethnic and racial diversity of the region as part of an attempt to go beyond the one-dimensional stereotype of the white, “one hundred percent American” hillbilly that has frequently prevailed in depictions of the area’s residents. Kessler and Ball offer an interesting contribution to this effort. The title, North from the Mountains, while specifically describing migration from the mountains of eastern Kentucky to the hills of southern Ohio, also refers to a migration from South to North that took place in several steps, over several generations. The group that established the settlement in the small crossroads community of Carmel, Ohio had its origins, the authors explain, in a multi-racial community that formed in the mid-Atlantic colonies between the mid-1600s and 1800. Members of the group relocated to the disputed borderlands of the Virginia and North Carolina mountains during the 1790s, where they were called “Melungeons,” and from there to Magoffin County (then part of Floyd County), Kentucky, by 1810. Migrants from Magoffin County settled in Highland County, Ohio, around 1864, forming the Carmel Melungeon settlement. The Melungeon settlement straddled the borders of Highland and Pike counties and spread south and east from Carmel, a small crossroads community not far from the current Fort Hill State Memorial. Although it never grew into a town, during the 1940s Carmel was large enough to sustain a store, schools (later absorbed during the consolidation process), two churches, and several cemeteries. At its peak size around 1900, Carmel had included additional stores and businesses, an attorney, and a post office (operating from 1856 until 1921). The Melungeon settlement in Carmel appears to have reached its peak size of around 150 people during the 1940s.

The questions “Who are the Melungeons?” and “Where did they come from?” have intrigued anthropologists, novelists, and regional scholars for many decades. To an even greater degree than is the case for other residents of the Southern Appalachians, the group has been the subject of stereotype and myth. The term “Melungeon” is explained as an adaptation of the French “mélange,” meaning “mixture,” and has sometimes been used as an epithet. Kessler and Ball use the Spanish “mestizo,” meaning a person of mixed racial ancestry, to characterize members of the Melungeon communities. The term “Melungeon” describes several insular, multi-ethnic, or multi-racial communities within the Appalachian region, notably those located in Hancock and Hawkins counties in Tennessee, and Lee, Scott, and Wise counties in Virginia. However, Kessler and Ball argue that this definition should be expanded to include “genetically comparable and similarly named families throughout an area covering at least twenty-nine adjacent counties variously located in northwestern North Carolina, southwestern Virginia, northeastern Tennessee, and southeastern Kentucky,” in addition to the Carmel settlement (p. 2). These mixed-race communities were often held in low regard by their neighbors, creating a sense of shared identity among residents within the community that was reinforced by hostility from outside. Historically, the attitude of residents of the communities surrounding mestizo settlements was often manifested in a refusal to intermarry with the community members, a pattern that served to reinforce group identity and to preserve racial composition. Kessler and Ball also provide concise discussions of other mestizo populations within the Appalachian area that are unrelated to the Melungeon groups and delineate the points of distinction among the groups.

During the 1940s and 1950s, anthropologists described Melungeon communities as “tri-racial isolates,” a term that emphasized a mixed heritage of white, African, and Native American ancestry. The authors note that group members generally emphasized their Native American rather than their African ancestry, although both races contributed to the group’s ethnic mix. A more controversial aspect of Melungeon identity is the group’s claim of Portuguese and/or Middle Eastern ancestry. Molecular biologist Kevin Jones is currently coordinating a project to analyze genetic material from Melungeon community members in order to answer the question of ancestry. N. Brent Kennedy, who edits the series “The Melungeons,” addresses the issue of identity in the book’s foreword. Kennedy is also the author of a recent book on the Melungeons and a leader in the movement for Melungeon pride and identity.[1] In discussing the ancestry of the group, Kennedy writes, “No doubt some of us are primarily Native American; others more Turkish and/or central Asian; still others more Portuguese, or Semitic, or African. But, despite the old argument that the Melungeon claim to be of various origins is ‘proof’ against all origins, there is no conflict in such a multiplicity of claims. We were more multicultural than the average Englishman when we first arrived. And, like all Americans, we Melungeons have also become even more multicultural and multiethnic with the passage of time.” Kennedy continues, “Early America was far more ethnically and racially complex than we have been taught. Some whites were not northern European, some blacks were not sub-Saharan African, and some Indians and some mulattos were not Indians and mulattos….We Melungeons and, indeed, other mixed groups have irrefutable ties not only to northern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and early America, but also to the eastern Mediterranean, southern Europe, northern African, and central Asia” (pp. ix-x)…

Read the entire review here.

North from the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio

Mercer University Press
2001
220 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780865547032

John S. Kessler

Donald B. Ball

The newest book in Mercer University Press’ new series The Melungeons: History, Culture, Ethnicity, and Literature is North from the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio by John S. Kessler and Donald B. Ball. It is the first substantive study of the Carmel Melungeon settlement since 1950. Tracing their history from about 1700, this book contains extensive firsthand information to be found in no other source, and relates the Carmel population to the Melungeons and similar mixed-blood populations originating in the Mid-Atlantic coastal region. This study combines a review of documentary evidence, extensive firsthand observations of the group, and information gleaned from area informants and a visit to the Carmel area. The senior author, until about age eighteen, was a resident of a community nearby, hence the personal insight and perspective into the lifestyle and inter- and intrarelationships of the group.

The construction of ethnoracial identity within situational contexts: A study of triracial family histories

University of Pennsylvania
2007
263 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3270863
ISBN: 9780549087526

Samuel M. Lemon, Director of Master of Science in Strategic Leadership Program
Division of Continuing Adult and Professional Studies
Neumann University, Aston, Pennsylvania

Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education

Based largely on data collected from oral history interviews, this study examines the construction of triracial ethnoracial identities (African American-Caucasian-American Indian). Here in-depth narratives and analyses of two triracial family histories surface the complex, dynamic, and interactional social contingencies that act on individual and family psychologies to share ethnic identity; these processes are illustrative of the anthropological construct of situationality. In the role of a participant observer, the author reports the history of his own family, the Ridleys of Media, Pennsylvania, which he compiled from the family’s oral tradition, genealogies and archival documents, and the U.S. Census. His narrative revolves around three prominent family members on his mother’s side: Cornelius, a venerated, light-complexioned ancestor who escaped from slavery on an antebellum plantation in southeastern Virginia, and “passing” as white fled north to Pennsylvania on the Underground Railroad in the 1860s; Josefa, a mysterious, legendarily clairvoyant woman from the Danish West Indies, who married into the Ridley family in the 1880s; and Maud, the author’s remarkable maternal grandmother, whose story begins in Media, Pennsylvania, in the 1890s. The author’s narrative history of the Harveys, another triracial family of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, well known to the author, offers illuminating points of comparison and contrast with the Ridleys. Concepts and arguments drawn from the fields of cultural theory, social history, and Southern literature provide the theoretical framework for the study.*

*This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Photoshop; Roxio; CD Now.

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Background of the researcher
  • 1.2 Mulatto identity versus Native American identity
  • 1.3 The Original Impetus to Construct a Family History:
  • A Grandmother’s Inspiration
  • 1.4 Purpose, Significance, and Conceptualization of the Study
  • 1.5 Research questions
  • 1.6 Families selected for the study
  • 1.7 The Harvey Family
  • 1.8 The Ridley Family
  • 1.9 Supporting Families Tangentially Included in this Study
  • 1.10 Notes for Chapter One
• 2 The Nexus of Ethnoracial Identity and Culture
  • 2.1 Etymological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity
  • 2.2 Difficulties in Discerning Ethnic and Cultural Differences
  • 2.3 Methods Used in the Study
  • 2.4 Interview Script
  • 2.5 Notes for Chapter Two
• 3 Culture, Ethnicity, and Assimilation: A Literature Review
  • 3.1 Historical and contemporary examples of the construction of culture
  • 3.2 The Great Melding Pot: Perspectives on Immigration and Globalization
  • 3.3 New country, new culture, new people
  • 3.4 Notes for Chapter Three
• 4 New People: Triracial Families and Their Traditions
  • 4.1 The Harvey Family: background
    • 4.1a Mrs. Lee Ethel Gregory Harvey
    • 4.1b Life in the North for the Harvey Family
    • 4.1c The Children of Dr. Reginald and Mrs. Lee Harvey
    • 4.1d LeRoy Harvey
    • 4.1e Reginald Olive Harvey, II
    • 4.1f Robert Bruce Harvey
    • 4.1g Bonnie Lee Harvey Elliot
  • 4.2 The Ridley Family
  • 4.3 Situational Variables in the Construction of Ethnoracial Identity
  • 4.4 A Gift and a Curse
  • 4.5 Ridley Family Belief System
  • 4.6 Experientially Based Beliefs
    • 4.6a Helena Ortiga Miller
    • 4.6b Tomas Ridley Ortiga, Sr.
    • 4.6c Josepha Ortiga Allen
  • 4.7 Samuel M. Lemon
  • 4.8 Notes for Chapter Four
• 5 The Self-Determination of Ethnoracial Identity: Findings
  • 5.1 Importance of Oral Tradition
  • 5.2 Ethnoracial identities are constructed within situational contexts
  • 5.3 Conflicts in Cultural Perspectives
  • 5.4 Self-determination of ethnoracial identity
  • 5.5 Crossing Ethnic Boundaries
  • 5.6 Conclusion
  • 5.7 Notes for Chapter Five
• Index to Photographic Appendices
• Bibliography
• Appendices (on compact disc)
  • Ridley Family Photographs and Documents
  • Harvey Family Photographs
  • Oye Family Information
  • Genograms: Ridley and Harvey Families

Introduction

In late July 2006, my next-door neighbor, Gilbert, a quiet and dignified black man with graying hair and a large and spirited extended family, invited me to his backyard barbecue to celebrate his sixty-first birthday. Although I had made a prior commitment for that same evening to attend another barbecue (an asada, in Portuguese) at the home of my Brazilian neighbors across the street, I felt that it would be rude of me not to stop at least briefly at Gilbert’s house for a spare rib or bottle of beer. Although we are acquaintances rather than friends, I have known Gilbert’s family since they moved to my hometown of Media, PA, from the nearby city of Chester, about forty years ago. They are one branch of a larger family that includes cousins who live in Media who were among my childhood friends and classmates. And because my family has lived on the same block where I currently reside for over eighty years and on the same street for over one hundred and thirty years, we have strong communal ties and have always felt a social obligation to attend community events whenever we are invited. However, this invitation gave me some vague sense of trepidation, the reasons for which I could not pinpoint. My neighbor, Gilbert, although a man of very few words, has always been polite to me. But he readily admits that some of the members of his extended family who still reside in Chester are often ill-mannered, and he refers to them disdainfully as “Chester niggers”

As I walked around the side of Gilbert’s house and approached the gathering, I heard the quiet rumblings of imaginary thunder in the distant regions of my mind. I chided myself for having qualms, and reassured myself that this was just a party I was visiting briefly. But I sensed that something unpleasant was about to happen. Upon entering Gilbert’s back yard, I spoke to several individuals sitting under a canopy that shaded them from the still hot, late afternoon summer sun. I recognized a few of his guests as members of his family, and another as a neighbor who lives two doors down from me. By virtue of their cool stares and lack of an audible greeting, the rest of the group seemed to view me as an uninvited guest. I also noticed that there were no white people present. As a person of color, I immediately notice the racial or ethnic composition of any large group, as it gives me clues about the nature of the event and the social and cultural dynamics at work—all of which are helpful in assessing and navigating an unfamiliar social situation.

Normally, there would be one or two white people—often, one male and one female, though not necessarily related—conspicuously present at Gilbert’s parties. But on this occasion, they were conspicuous by their absence. I didn’t see Gilbert in the crowd, so I asked his daughter if he was around. When she called for him, he came out of the house and we exchanged pleasantries. He then invited me to sample some of his array of could still hear that quiet, distant, imaginary thunder.

Gilbert’s daughter, a tall, slightly muscular, dark brown woman in her late thirties with a charming smile, led the way. As I stepped into the house, she introduced me to a group of mostly middle-aged black women who were enjoying the air conditioner on this steamy ninety-five degree day. I recognized one woman as Gilbert’s girlfriend—a stocky, serious, street-tough woman in her late fifties, from Chester. His girlfriend and I exchanged casual hellos. Next, Gilbert’s daughter introduced me to another woman who looked resembled the girlfriend enough for me to assume that they were sisters, explaining to the woman that my brothers and I had grown up in this neighborhood. She exclaimed in a very loud voice tinged with derision, “Oh you mean, them ‘yallow’ [sic] brothers who used to live up the street?”

I was taken aback by her verbal slap and had a visceral reaction to it. I punctured the sudden pregnant pause in the room with an assertive, visibly annoyed and equally voluminous, “Yeah, that’s right.” I shot a glance at Gilbert’s brown-skinned daughter across the room, who was smiling an uncomfortable smile of embarrassment. I replied to her smile with a classic rolling of my eyes, which she appeared to enjoy and gestured to me that it was the appropriate response to the offensive remark. Though it was difficult, out of respect for my host, I succeeded in controlling my anger. But I was seething as I exited the room with the racial insult still stuck in my craw. Passing by the food table, I picked up a massive beef rib and moments later found myself absent-mindedly gnawing on it—sitting at a table under the canopy, chatting with my host, who was unaware that anything awkward had just occurred. After making customary small talk, I excused myself, wished Gilbert a happy birthday, and headed for the cultural comfort of my Brazilian friends, in whose multiracial culture of origin, or so they tell me, this incident would probably never have occurred—because most people in Brazil consider themselves mixed-race. As I crossed the street, still seeing only the ignorant woman’s face in my crosshairs, I muttered quietly to myself: “It never ends. It just never f— ends!”

This incident was just the most recent in a lifetime of similar disquieting experiences—actually, many lifetimes of such experiences—in the history of my family, always posing the same question: “Why? Why do they say these things to us?” This deeply personal and perennial question has in large part prompted my interest in the construction of ethnoracial identity within situational contexts. Why have so many of our African American neighbors routinely treated us with such disdain? This vexing question once inspired me to write the following poem entitled, Who Am I? during my early teenage years—circa 1963.

Who am I?
My skin is light,
Why not black
Why not white?

Where are my roots?
And were they born,
To hold African spear
Or English horn?

Perhaps I am,
The bubbling foam,
Some inward ocean
Washes home.

The quandary and frustration regarding the challenges of racial hybridity are palpable in this poem. The last three lines of verse may at first blush seem simplistic. However, the metaphor refers to the desire to be genetically restored to one original racial identity prior to miscegenation—i.e. either black or white—rather than to be forever condemned to the racial limbo inhabited by mixed-race people in America. Regarding the personal construction of ethnoracial identity, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed this very query when he stated “Every man must ultimately confront the question of ‘Who am I?’ and seek to answer it honestly. One of the first principles of personal adjustment is the principle of self-acceptance. The Negro’s greatest dilemma is that in order to be healthy he must accept his ambivalence. The Negro is the child of two cultures—Africa and America. The problem is that in the search for wholeness all too many Negroes seek to embrace only one side of their natures… The old Hegelian synthesis still offers the best answer to many of life’s dilemmas. The American Negro is neither totally African nor totally Western. He is Afro-American, a true hybrid, a combination of two cultures.”…

Purchase the dissertation here.

The Melungeons: A Mixed-Blood Strain of the Southern Appalachians

Geographical Review
Volume 41, Number 2 (April, 1951)
pages 256-271

Edward T. Price, Professor Emeritus of Geography
University of Oregon

In the native vocabulary of East Tennessee and adjacent parts of neighboring states the word “Melungeon” is widely used. To some people it is only a general derogatory term to be bestowed on anyone who momentarily arouses their antagonism. Middle Tenneseeans are said to have applied it to their former East Tennessee enemies in the bitter period after the Civil War. And at times the Melungeons have had to fill the place of the bogeyman in holding children in the straight and narrow path “The Melungeons will get you!”‘

The persistent folk tale, however, insists that the Melungeons are unusual racially; it identifies them as a dark-skinned mixed-blood group of uncertain origin whose center is on Newman’s Ridge in Hancock County (Fig. 1). An Oriental appearance is occasionally attributed to them, but they are most commonly thought to be at least partly of Portuguese descent. The peculiarity of the mixture, however, is its supposed inability to blend color in crosses with whites: the Melungeon appearance may be lost for a generation or two, only to show up again in full strength. Relatively few people know the Melungeons as a group; more have seen individuals. But the elements of the legend are widely known, even to those who may not seriously entertain the possibility of its reality.

Newman’s Ridge and the adjacent Blackwater Valley are said to have been settled by the Melungeons before the wave of white settlers from the eastern states reached the area;3 it is suggested that they stemmed from sailors shipwrecked on the Carolina coast.

The Melungeons are said to have been disfranchised by the restrictions placed on free persons of color in the Tennessee Constitution of 1834…

Read or purchase the article here.

The Mestizos of South Carolina

The American Journal of Sociology
Volume 51, Number 1 (July 1945)
pages 34-41

Brewton Berry

There are several communities of white-Indian-Negro hybrids in South Carolina, the members of which do not fit into the biracial caste system upon which the state’s whole social structure is built. Similar groups are found in other states. Some of these are amalgamating with the Negroes, while others have won an intermediate status as “Inidans.” Those in South Carolina have resisted both of these accommodations and have persistently fought for white status. Their present position in etiquette and is local institutions, such as churches and schools, is a particular one, being the status of neither Negroes nor whites.

There are in South Carolina today fully five thousand people—perhaps even ten thousand—who do not fit into the biracial caste system upon which the state’s whole social structure is built. These out-castes insist that they are white, and they claim the privileges and courtesies of white people. Some of them, if pressed, will not deny a strain of Indian, though they take no pride in the fact; and most of them are offended even at that suggestion. The dominant whites, on the other hand, are convinced that there is a trace of Negro blood in them and, on the theory that “one drop of Negro blood makes one a Negro,” are reluctant to accept them and regard their claim to white status with various and mixed emotions, ranging from amusement to horror.

This failure of a sizable group of people to fit into the social system creates many problems. It is, in fact, a threat to the whole structure, undermining the popular faith that the system functions adequately and will continue to function forever. “We simply cannot admit them to the white schools,” confessed one trustee, “because, if we did, pretty soon the Negroes would want to come in, and then where would we be?” The same question arises with respect to churches, hospitals, political parties, parks, playgrounds, moving pictures, hotels, restaurants, clubs, and cemeteries. These institutions, in all of which rigid racial segregation is the rule, are operated upon the assumption that every person is either white or black and that there are absolute criteria to determine in which group one belongs. It is so with regard to the etiquette of race relations. “I wish you would tell me what these Brass Ankles are,” said a bank teller, “so I would know whether to ‘mister’ them or not.” Most disturbing of all is the threat to the assumed purity of the white race; for if these doubtful ones are being absorbed without dire consequences, as seems to be the case, what is to prevent an inundation of Negro blood?

These outcastes, whom I call “mestizos,” are designated by a wide variety of names, none of them flattering. In Richland County they are known as “Red Bones.” In one section of Orangeburg County they are “Red Legs”; in another, “Brass Ankles.” The degrading name “Brass Ankle” is also commonly used in Dorchester, Colleton, Berkeley, and Charleston counties. In Sumter they arc called “Turks”; in Bamberg, “Buckheads”; while in Marlboro, Dillon, Marion, and Horry they are “Croatans,” a name that is sometimes shortened to the even more unflattering “Cro.” In Chesterfield they are known as “Marlboro Blues,”a slur on the adjoining county, whence they came. In some localities…

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The Guineas of West Virginia

Ohio State University
1952
139 pages

John P. Burnell, Jr.

A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirments for the Degree Master of Arts.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Methodology
2. Geographical and Social Setting
3. History and Origin
4. Who Is A Guinea?
5. Social Participation
6. Attitudes and Beliefs
7. Summary and Conclusions

Bibliography
Map (See back folder)

Sociologists are becoming increasingly aware that there exists in the United States an “outcast element” the study of which has been neglected. This element is comprised of groups of people who are generally thought to be of tri-racial origin, that is, Negro, Indian and white. The whites tend to relegate these people to the status of Negroes, a status which most of them resent.

To mention but a few of these hybrid groups which have been reported on to date, there are those in parts of Tennessee and Kentucky referred to as “Melungeons“; in North Carolina, “Indiana of Robeson County” in the southern part of Ohio, “Carmel Indians”.  Dr. Brewton Berry has applied the generic term “mestizos” to the racial hybrids of South Carolina, who are known there by various opprobrious names such as, “Brass Ankles”, “Red Legs”, “Buckheads”, and “Turks”.  In Delaware the hybrids are known as “Moors” and “Hantichokes”; in Alabama, Louisiana, and parts of Mississippi, “Creoles” and “Cajuns“, and in Virginia, “Issues”.

The writer1s interest in the racial hybrid grew out of a general interest In race relations per se, and a firm conviction that only as these various, often socially and geographically isolated, groups are investigated and reported upon will the sociologist be in a position validly to generalize about them.

The purpose of this study was to observe and describe one of these groups, thereby contributing to the knowledge of racial hybrids which is being amassed.   The group chosen for this purpose resides in the state of West Virginia, more specifically in the northeastern part of this state In Barbour and Taylor counties.

The people who constitute this group are generally considered by the white population as being a mixture of white, Negro, and Indian ancestry. Locally, they are referred to as “Guineas“, or “Guinea niggers”, both terms being of a derogatory nature.  Although the Guineas are for the most part very white in appearance, as will be noted in a later chapter devoted to a description of their physical characteristics, the whites in the area resist accepting them as social equals largely on the basis that “one drop of Negro blood makes a Negro“.   In spite of a substantial number of whites acknowledging “Indian blood”, and many more, not being quite certain as to what racial strains have gone into the make-up of these people, it seems to matter very little, for as one white Informant summed it up: “That one drop of nigger blood never washes away” The Guineas then, are referred to as “colored people.” In the areas where they reside and by virtue of this classification are subject to differential treatment by white society.

This particular group of people was chosen for study because: (1) they were conveniently located to the writer’s home; (2) the writer is a resident of the state in which they are located, and therefore it was felt that rapport could be more easily attained; and (3) only a modicum of information concerning these people Is to be found in the literature.

It must be pointed out from the very beginning that the primary object of going out into the field was to observe these people In their real life situation with a view toward describing that situation.

Lack of time and finances acted as definite limiting factors to the scope and comprehensiveness of the field work and largely contributed to limiting this study to a descriptive level.   It is hoped, however, that a more extensive and comprehensive piece of work, free from such limitations, will soon be forthcoming.   Moreover, it must be emphasized that the foregoing limitations, especially lack of finances, restricted most of the data gathered to Barbour County, even though many Guineas are to be found scattered throughout the southern part of Taylor County. To defray the expenses of the writer it was necessary for him to procure employment, and a position which permitted freedom of movement during daylight hours was found in Phillppi, the county seat of Barbour County thereby making this community a convenient center of operation.  It was felt by the writer that the latter limitation was not as much a hindrance to the study as It may at first appear because: first, there seem to. be more Guineas, or at least more people who are defined by the local populace as “Guineas”, residing in Barbour than in Taylor county; and second, they are more concentrated within specific areas in Arbour county.  Since several trips were made into Taylor county, some data which were gathered there pertaining to the Guineas has been utilized within the text. However, wherever any of these data appear, specific reference to Taylor county has been made.

It will be noted by the reader that the terms “white” and “Guinea” appear throughout the text. The writer uses the term “Guinea” as a means of identifying the people who are the aubject of this paper, but does not wish to convey the derogatory connotations generally associated with this term. In some cases the term “hybrid” is used interchangeably with Guinea. The term white applies to all of those people who are not considered either Negro or Guinea.

The methodology utilized in this study is explained in the following chapter…

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Memorandum Concerning the Characteristics of the Larger Mixed-Blood Racial Islands of the Eastern United States

Social Forces
Volume 21, Number 4 (May 1946)
pages 438-477
DOI: 10.2307/2572217

William Harlen Gilbert, Jr.
Library of Congress

Prefactory Statement

In many of the eastern States of this country there are small pockets of peoples who arc scattered here and there in different counties and who are complex mixtures in varying degrees of white, Indian, and Negro blood. These small local groups seem to develop especially where environmental circumstances such as forbidding swamps or inaccessible and barren mountain country favor their growth. Many are located along the tidewater of the Atlantic coast where swamps or islands and peninsulas have protected them and kept alive a portion of the aboriginal blood which greeted the first white settlers on these shores. Others are farther inland in the Piedmont area and are found with their backs up against the wall of the Blue Ridge or the Alleghenies. A few of these groups arc to be found on the very top of the Blue Ridge and on the several ridges of the Appalachian Great Valley just beyond.

No satisfactory name has ever been invented to designate as a whole these mixed outcasts from both the white and Negro castes of America. However, their existence can be traced back practically to the beginning of settlement by whites in the various areas in which they occur. The early white settlers called these racial intermediates “free colored” or “free negroes” and considered them frequently as mere squatters rather than as legitimate settlers on the land. The laws were interpreted to the disadvantage of these folk and they were forbidden to testify in court. Acts were passed to prohibit their immigration from other States and they were considered as undesirables since they bridged the racial gap between free whites and slave Negroes.

After the Civil War these mixed folk were still classified as “colored” or as “mulattoes” but they were frequently encouraged to develop their own institutions and schools separate from the Negroes. In recent years there are some indications that the numbers of these intermediate mixed populations are growing rather rapidly and that they may total well over 50,000 persons at the present time.

There is little evidence for the supposition that they are being absorbed to any great extent into either the white or the Negro groups. Their native breeding grounds furnish a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of population which periodically swarms into cities and industrial areas. The characteristics of illiteracy, poverty, and large families mark them as members of the more backward section of the American nation. Draft boards and the armed forces have found it difficult to classify them racially for military service. As a sizable native minority they certainly deserve more attention than the meager investigations which sociologists and anthropologists have hitherto made of their problems. A recognition of their existence by social scientists can hardly prejudice their social prospects since the vast majority can not possibly hope to pass as “white” under the present social system. In the hope of enlisting the interest of scientific bodies and foundations in research on these mixed groups, then, the following brief memorandum outline of ten of these mixed “racial islands” is presented…

[The list described in the memorandum are:]

1. Brass Ankles and Allied Groups of South Carolina
2. Cajans and Creoles of Alabama and Mississippi
3. Croatans of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia
4. Guineas of West Virginia and Maryland
5. Issues of Virginia
6. Jackson Whites of New Jersey and New York
7. Melungeons of the Southern Appalachians
8. Moors and Nanticokes of Delaware and New Jersey
9. Red Bones of Louisiana
10. Wesorts of Southern Maryland

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Social Origins of the Brandywine Population

Phylon (1960-)
Vollume 24, Number 4 (4th Qtr., 1963)
pages 369-378

Thomas J. Harte
Catholic University of America

ALL RACIAL ISOLATES present problems of unknown or mysterious origins. [C. A.] Weslager notes the lack of specific information for the Nanticokes of Delaware and for the Moors as well.  There is some historical evidence that when white people first settled in Robeson County, North Carolina, in the 1730’s, they found a mixed blood people inhabiting the swamps there. However, proof that these people constituted the survivors of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “Lost Colony” of Roanoke Island is far from conclusive. A similar lack of specific historical data applies to the “Guineas” of West Virginia, although Gilbert believes that the history of this group can be reconstructed in a general way. Authentic historical information is also lacking for the Melungeons of Tennessee and for some Louisiana racial hybrids as well.

The present paper attempts to trace the Brandywine triracial isolate population of southern Maryland back to its earliest beginnings. Conclusive factual evidence cannot be expected for historical developments in the early period of the group’s evolution. There are, however, substantial materials to support some sound hypotheses which can serve as guides for future research on this and similar populations. The data presented below represent the cumulative results of a systematic search of public and parish records, supplemented on some points by data from personal interviews, for leads as to the origin of this deme. The analysis is largely confined to the late seventeenth century, the whole of the eighteenth century, and the early decades of the nineteenth century.

The hypothesis that racial isolates originated in illegal interracial unions between Indians, whites, and Negroes provides a particularly fruitful lead in tracing the history of the Brandywine group. This hypothesis has been proposed explicitly and implicitly by a number of students of…