Shrouded
in mystery for hundreds of years, the Melungeons of
Southwest Virginia, and East Tennessee, have oral traditions
claiming Portuguese ancestry, though academicians have
traditionally written them off as a 'tri-racial
isolate.' Living deep in the Appalachians, some claim
these people were here as early as the late 1500s, and
might be descendants of Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish
soldiers and sailors who intermixed with Native
Americans. Others lambaste this theory as simply “a cover
story for African heritage.” In this film we follow Dr. Brent
Kennedy’s search for his ancestor’s true ethnicity, and see how his
theories set off a firestorm of controversy. Part genealogy,
part genetics, part geography, the story of the Melungeons is
ultimately a story of how divergent cultures banded together to
survive in the earliest days of America.
melungeon
voices
a documentary film by Julie Williams Dixon and Warren Gentry
