Michigan Technological University Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open Reports 2005 Through the back door : Melungeon literacies and 21st century technologies Katherine G. Vande Brake Michigan Technological University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etds Part of the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Copyright 2005 Katherine G. Vande Brake Recommended Citation Vande Brake, Katherine G., "Through the back door : Melungeon literacies and 21st century technologies", Dissertation, Michigan Technological University, 2005. https://doi.org/10.37099/mtu.dc.etds/96 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etds Part of the Rhetoric and Composition Commons THROUGH THE BACK DOOR: MELUNGEON LITERACIES AND 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES By KATHERINE G. VANDE BRAKE A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Rhetoric and Technical Communication) MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2005 Abstract The Melungeons, a minority recognized in Southern Appalachia where they settled in the early 1800s, have mixed heritage—European, Mediterranean, Native American, and Sub-Saharan African. Their dark skin and distinctive features have marked them and been the cause of racial persecution both by custom and by law in Appalachia for two centuries. Their marginalization has led to an insider mentality, which I call a “literacy” of Melungeon-ness that affects every facet of their lives. Just a century ago, while specialized practices such as farming, preserving food, hunting, gathering, and distilling insured survival in the unforgiving mountain environment, few Melungeons could read or write. Required to pay property taxes and render military service, they were denied education, suffrage, and other legal rights. In the late 1890s visionary Melungeon leader Batey Collins invited Presbyterian home missionaries to settle in one Tennessee Melungeon community where they established a church and built a school of unparalleled excellence. Educator-ministers Mary Rankin and Chester Leonard creatively reified the theories of Dewey, Montessori, and Rauschenbusch, but, despite their efforts, school literacy did not neutralize difference. Now, taking reading and writing for granted, Melungeons are exploring their identity by creating websites and participating in listserv discussions. These online expressions, which provide texts for rhetorical, semiotic, and socio-linguistic analysis, illustrate not solidarity but fragmentation on issues of origins and legitimacy. Armed with literacies of difference stemming from both nature and nurture, Melungeons are using literacy practices to embrace the difference they cannot escape. Acknowledgments When I look back over the last six years, I realize it has been the very best time of my life and that going for the Ph.D. was my very best decision. There are many thanks due. First I must thank King College, the institution where I have taught for 27 years. The Dean of Faculty and the President applauded my decision to return to graduate school, funded a one-semester sabbatical at the outset, and granted me two years’ leave of absence to complete my coursework. When I returned after my comps, they looked the other way when I said no to almost everything except teaching my classes, so I could finish my research and dissertation. So to King College, thank you. I am also grateful to the Appalachian College Association for two years of funding that helped pay for my time in residence at Michigan Tech. There is a group of important people who were at Michigan Tech and are now scattered abroad. Thanks go to Cindy Selfe for believing in me from the beginning and encouraging me to apply to the grad program, to Anne Wysocki who saw my dissertation topic long before I did and pointed it out to me, to Marilyn Cooper for inspiration and direction. Thanks, too, to my committee: Diana George (Chair), Bob Johnson, Kedmon Hungwe, and Vicky Bergvall. You all encouraged me, met with me, and made so many helpful suggestions. Diana said from the outset, “Think book, Katie.” So, I did. To my colleagues Charlene Kiser at Milligan, Kim Holloway and Craig McDonald at King goes unmitigated gratitude. Your encouragement was so important. Then, too, there are the King College IT staffers, Don Walters and Joel Robertson, who rescued me the day one chapter suddenly multiplied to 3000 pages in a matter of 60 seconds. I couldn’t have done it without them. Crystal Davidson in the library helped me procure countless books and articles on inter-library loan. My personal support team was both tolerant and sustaining. Friends Allen Radtke, Nancy Cook, Kathy and John Viskant, Kate Tingley, and Nancy White cheered me on day by day. Sandra Grubbs prayed me through the long months of research, the tedious days of writing, and the heartbreak of losing both parents during the writing project. Finally, I must thank my family, children and grandchildren: Peter and Susan and their children Olivia and Annake; Tim and Julie and their children Sarah, Emma, and Timothy; Matthew and Shane and their son Miles. You allowed me to be preoccupied and inaccessible; you let me talk with you about the Melungeons and about my analysis of their situation, and you told me you were proud of me. To each one, thank you. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Definition and Speculation: 2 What “Melungeon” Means and Where They Originated Chapter 2 The Powerful Ties That Bind: 35 A Community Created by Shared Experience Chapter 3 One Way to Tackle Barriers: Get Help 86 Chapter 4 Chester Leonard: Going Beyond the Basic Blueprint 130 Chapter 5 Assessing the Vardy Experiment: 188 Intervention in Culture and Sponsorship of Literacy Chapter 6 A World Depicted and Displayed: Melungeon Websites 216 Chapter 7 Two Contemporary Melungeon Rhetors: 285 Jack Goins and Brent Kennedy Chapter 8 It Was A Wired Neighborhood: 306 One Discussion Thread on Melungeon-L Conclusion Conclusion: A View from Outside 344 Bibliography 348 iv Vande Brake 1 Dissertation Introduction Introduction 2 X 2: TWO TELLING INTERVIEWS, TWO RESEARCH PROBLEMS Six years ago I wrote a book about Melungeon characters in Appalachian fiction. I perceived my audience for that book to be Melungeon people who, if I were to believe postings to the Melungeon email list, found portrayals of Melungeons in fiction to range from demeaning to slanderous. I knew no one personally who claimed to be Melungeon. At the Sneedville Fall Festival in October of 1999, I met very briefly several list contributors and three members of the Vardy Community Historical Society. Nonetheless, despite my ignorance, I felt certain that by clear analysis and cogent prose, I could convince my chosen audience that the Appalachian authors meant no ill will toward these people and that being represented in fiction was more of an honor than an insult. I was wrong. I may never convince them, and that’s no longer my aim. I did not then understand the power of long years of prejudice and discrimination. For people with Melungeon blood, their history has shaped their perceptions of the society around them and their expectations for the future. Since I wrote that book in the summer of 2000, I have continued my quest not only to know but also to understand. I have read countless books and articles; I spoke as an “expert” about Melungeon characters in fiction at both Fourth and Fifth Union, Melungeon Gatherings in Kingsport, Tennessee, in 2002 and 2004; and I have met and talked with many people inside the Vande Brake 2 Dissertation Introduction Melungeon community. By far, the most mind-altering part of my research has been getting to know Melungeon people. This has happened in a variety of ways. Some I “met” first through their postings to Melungeon-L. Others had written books, which I read before I met them face-to-face. Still others were, initially for me, voices from Wayne Winkler’s PBS documentary or from their presentations at the Unions. Putting faces with the familiar voices widened my circle. And, finally, there are the men and women I have interviewed. They have probably been the most influential. Their stories, insights, and answers to my questions sent me back to the books, articles, and websites with a new perspective and hints about what to look for in those texts. They have lived the “legend” and are willing to talk about it in a focused way. Two incidents during the process of my interviews stand out and were the springboard for a refocused perspective. The first incident occurred at the home of one of my informants. We were sitting at her kitchen table poring over Vardy Presbyterian Church records, letters, her scrapbook, and family photographs. Pointing to old pictures of both her mother and grandmother when they were at boarding schools in North Carolina, she was telling me that both women left their home in Vardy, the valley community between Newman’s Ridge and Powell Mountain along Blackwater Creek near Sneedville, Tennessee, to get high school and college education. Suddenly she paused: “You know they never could have gone to school in Sneedville; they wouldn’t have been allowed.” They were excluded, not wanted, not welcomed—two generations of women from a landowning Tennessee family. The grandmother would have gone away to school around the turn of the twentieth century; the mother in the 1920s. Both of them attended one-room schools in Vardy: the grandmother at the log cabin meeting house/school built Vande Brake 3 Dissertation Introduction just after the Civil War and her daughter at the one-room primary school built by the Presbyterian missionaries in 1902. The second incident happened when one of my informants was taking me on a drive up the Vardy Valley and over Newman’s Ridge to the main road that runs from Sneedville to Kyle’s Ford.