Мелунжины: История смешанного происхождения в Аппалачах.

Mixed race group from the South Central Appalachian region of the United States

The term Melungeon likely comes from the French word mélange ultimately derived from the Latin verb miscēre ("to mix, mingle, intermingle"). this word has been reclaimed by members of the community. The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time.

The earliest historical record of the term Melungeon dates to 1813. In the minutes of the Stoney Creek Baptist Church in Scott County, Virginia, a woman stated another parishioner made the accusation that "she harbored them Melungins." The second oldest written use of the term was in 1840, when a Tennessee politician described "an impudent Melungeon" from what became Washington, D. C., as being "a scoundrel who is half Negro and half Indian." In 1894, the US Department of the Interior, in its "Report of Indians Taxed and Not Taxed," under the section "Tennessee" noted: <blockquote>In a number of states small groups of people, preferring the freedom of the woods or the seashore to the confinement of regular labor in civilization, have become in some degree distinct from their neighbors, perpetuating their qualities and absorbing into their number those of like disposition, without preserving very clear racial lines. Such are the remnants called Indians in some states where a pure blooded Indian can hardly longer be found. In Tennessee is such a group, popularly known as Melungeans, in addition to those still known as Cherokees. The name seems to have been given them by early French settlers, who recognized their mixed origin and applied to them the name Melangeans or Melungeans, a corruption of the French word "melange" which means mixed. (See letter of Hamilton McMillan, under North Carolina.) In the 20th century, during the Jim Crow era, some Melungeons attended boarding schools in Asheville, North Carolina, Warren Wilson College, and Dorland Institution which integrated earlier than other schools in the southern United States.

Definitions of who is Melungeon differ. Historians and genealogists have tried to identify surnames of different Melungeon families. Beginning in the early 19th century, or possibly before, the term Melungeon was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee Virginia border, but it has since become a catch all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed race ancestry. In 1999, historian C. S. Everett hypothesized that John Collins (recorded as a Sapony Indian who was expelled from Orange County, Virginia about January 1743), might be the same man as the Melungeon ancestor John Collins, who was classified as a "mulatto" in 1755 North Carolina records. However, Everett revised that theory after he discovered evidence that these were two different men named John Collins. Only descendants of the latter man, who was identified as mulatto in the 1755 record in North Carolina, have any proven connection to the Melungeon families of eastern Tennessee. Jack D. Forbes speculated that the Melungeons may have been Saponi/Powhatan descendants, although he acknowledges an account from circa 1890 described them as being "free colored" and mulatto people. On May 25, 2012, The Associated Press wrote in an article titled "DNA Study Seeks Origins of Melungeons" to promote Estes et al. 's 2011 paper titled "Melungeons, A Multi Ethnic Population" and explains that: "For years, varied and wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps Turkish slaves or Gypsies". which shows that ancestry of the sample is primarily European and African, with one person having a Native American paternal haplotype. Estes, Goins, Ferguson, and Crain wrote in their 2011 summary "Melungeons, A Multi Ethnic Population" that the Riddle family is the only Melungeon participant with historical records identifying them as having Native American origins, but their DNA is European. Among the participants, only the Sizemore family is documented as having Native American DNA. In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act that codified hypodescent or the "one drop rule, suggesting that anyone with any trace of African ancestry was legally Black and would fall under Jim Crow laws designed to limit the freedoms and rights of Black people. Anti miscegenation laws in the United States were not declared unconstitutional until the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case.

By the mid to late 19th century, the term Melungeon appeared to have been used most frequently to refer to the biracial families of Hancock County and neighboring areas. Several other uses of the term in the print media, from the mid 19th to the early 20th centuries, have been collected by the Melungeon Heritage Association. Internet sites promote the anecdotal claim that Melungeons are more prone to certain diseases, such as sarcoidosis or familial Mediterranean fever. Academic medical centers have noted that neither of those diseases is confined to a single population.