01/08/2026
This publication is over 200 pages long, there is probably great information for Melungeons of any pocket/kinnet. Since we are from the diaspora that migrated to Detroit I noted those excerpts and their pages below for anyone this might interest.
"The mass exodus from the coal mines and hills of southern Appalachia to the industrial conglomerates of Detroit and Chicago illustrate the desire to escape not only the social hierarchies but also imposed ethnicity: hillbilly, redneck, white trash, poor, Melungeon. Our society’s emphasis on multiculturalism imbedded in pop-culture and mass media may offer a back door entrance into balancing the dichotomy of power between ascribed and chosen ethnic identities." (pg 14)
"Winkler (2005) wrote one of the most complete, thorough, and authentic texts about Melungeons to date. Noting his own family background, Winkler researched the geopolitical contexts of the mixed race group. Although his family migrated in the 1950s during the out
migration to industrial cities like Detroit, Winkler recalls holidays and summer visits to southern Appalachia and Hancock County, Tennessee. [...] When I asked him how he knew he was Melungeon, Winkler paused a moment, then explained that his family was always considered Melungeon. He told me [...] that others had always considered his family Melungeon. Winkler’s (2005) book, Walking Toward the Sunset, outlines his discovery of his ethnicity." (pg 29)
"Fraley (2009) examines the history of discrimination that has
continued against people of Appalachian origin that migrated to urban areas like Detroit and Cleveland. The discrimination is identified from early instances of newspaper ads suggesting, Hillbillies need not apply and employing racial profiling in city riots, as well as in the local ordinances regarding housing. Fraley (2009) finally reflects on the implications of legal protection methods for Appalachians as an “emergent ethnic-regional identity within an established democracy” (pg. 38)
"I ask her about her grandmother. “She said she was Indian?” I asked. “Yes,” Sylvia answered, "Cherokee. But she told the census taker that she was Black Irish,” she said pausing and reflecting, “and I couldn’t understand that ‘cause I looked at her and she didn’t look black to
me,” she says giggling. “You have to understand this is through the eyes of a child, a toddler.” Sylvia was left by her mother for several years to live with her maternal grandparents after divorcing her husband. She went to Detroit to escape the life she had known in the mountains. I believe my mother is looking not just for an identity, but a connection to the only family she knew as a child. She had been ripped away from Kentucky to be reunited with a mother she no
longer knew. Answers to questions about a culture and heritage will be easier to find than those regarding her mother’s decisions.
“I’m curious and question, who I am, what I am, why was I raised the way I was raised." (pg 75)
