Editing Melungeon (section)

==History==
Many [[free people of color]], white-passing or otherwise, served in the [[American Civil War]] on both sides of the conflict. Some served in the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate military]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=CCW |date=2018-09-06 |title=Jacob Bryant: A Documented Lumbee Indian Who Fought in the Confederate Army |url=https://nccivilwarcenter.org/jacob-bryant-a-documented-lumbee-indian-who-fought-in-the-confederate-army/ |access-date=2024-05-27 |website=NC History Center on the Civil War, Emancipation & Reconstruction |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Rheinheimer |first=Kurt |date=2009-01-01 |title=The Melungeons: A New Journey Home |url=https://blueridgecountry.com/articles/melungeons-journey-home/ |access-date=2024-05-27 |website=Blue Ridge Country |language=en-us}}</ref> though others resisted the Confederate government, such as [[Henry Berry Lowry]].<ref>{{cite magazine |date=30 March 1872 |title=The North Carolina Bandits |url=https://cwnc.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/items/show/170 |magazine=Harper's Weekly}}</ref>

In the 1894 [[United States census|US census]], Melungeon people were enumerated as of the races to which they most resembled.<ref name="TennesseeDOI">{{cite web |title=1894 Report of the U.S. Department of the Interior, in its Report of Indians Taxed and Not Taxed |url=https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1890/volume-10/indians-taxed-not-taxed.pdf |access-date=6 April 2025 |website=www2.census.gov |publisher=Department of the Interior}}</ref>

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.<ref>Smith, J. Douglas. “The Campaign for Racial Purity and the Erosion of Paternalism in Virginia, 1922-1930: ‘Nominally White, Biologically Mixed, and Legally Negro.’” The Journal of Southern History, vol. 68, no. 1, 2002, pp. 65–106. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3069691. Accessed 3 Sept. 2023.</ref> [[Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States]] were not declared unconstitutional until the 1967 ''[[Loving v. Virginia]]'' case.<ref>{{cite web |title=Loving v. Virginia |url=https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/loving-v-virginia |website=History Channel |access-date=4 July 2023 |date=14 December 2022}}</ref>

In December 1943, [[Walter Plecker|Walter Ashby Plecker]] of Virginia sent county officials a letter warning against "colored" families trying to pass as "white" or "Indian" in violation of the [[Racial Integrity Act of 1924]]. He identified these as being "chiefly Tennessee Melungeons".<ref name="pleckerletter" /> He directed the offices to reclassify members of certain families as black, causing the loss for numerous families of documentation in records that showed their continued self-identification as being of Native American descent on official forms.<ref name="pleckerletter" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Schrift |first1=Melissa |title=Becoming Melungeon: Making an Ethnic Identity in the Appalachian South |date=2013 |publisher=[[University of Nebraska Press]] |isbn=978-0-8032-7154-8 |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1185&context=unpresssamples |chapter=Introduction}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The Racial Integrity Act, 1924: An Attack on Indigenous Identity |url=https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/racial-integrity-act.htm |website=[[National Park Service]] |access-date=25 August 2023 |date=June 21, 2023}}</ref>

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.<ref name="neal">{{cite news |last1=Neal |first1=Dale |title=Melungeons explore mysterious mixed-race origins |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/24/melungeon-mountaineers-mixed-race/29252839/ |access-date=7 July 2023 |work=USA Today |date=June 24, 2015}}</ref>

==="King of the Melungeons"===
During the [[American Revolution]], there was purportedly a Melungeon "king" or "chief" named Micajah Bunch (1723–1804). Local folklore claims he intermarried with the [[Cherokee]], making the Melungeons a branch of the tribe, though no documentation of this event exists. 
The last male in Micajah's bloodline, Michael Joseph Bullard, died in a swimming accident at the age of 15 in 1991.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Hicks |first1=Mark |title=King of The Melungeons |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130702011230/https://www.historical-melungeons.com/bunch1.html |access-date=19 April 2025 |work=web.archive.org |publisher=Knoxville Journal |date=17 Aug 1991}}</ref>

===Modern identity===
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.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}} 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.<ref name=neal/>

Since the mid-1990s, popular interest in the Melungeons has grown tremendously, although many descendants have left the region of historical concentration. The writer [[Bill Bryson]] devoted the better part of a chapter to them in his ''[[The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America|The Lost Continent]]'' (1989). People are increasingly self-identifying as having Melungeon ancestry.<ref name="kennedy">{{cite book |last1=Kennedy |first1=N. Brent |first2=Robyn Vaughan |last2=Kennedy |title=The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America |publisher=Mercer University Press |location=Macon, GA |year=1997 |edition=2nd |isbn=0-86554-516-2 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Jqhd3tVSJNkC |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>{{page needed|date=May 2017}}{{better source needed|date=July 2023}} 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.genome.gov/12510679 |title="Learning About Familial Mediterranean Fever", National Human Genome Research Institute |publisher=Genome.gov |date=November 17, 2011 |access-date=August 21, 2013}}</ref>