#Walter Plecker

[blackbrownfamily]

[bemusedlybespectacled]

since @sketchy-scribs-n-doods asked why birth certificates are racist:

preface: read this post about eugenics so that I don't have to write that overview again.

anywho! the very very short version is that there was a guy named Walter Ashby Plecker (hereafter "the Plecker fucker") who was a doctor in Virginia in the late 1800s/early 1900s. like he was born right around when the Civil War ended and his family owned slaves, if you want to get an idea of the time and place we're talking about.

the Plecker fucker, along with a couple of his good buddies John Powell and Ernest Sevier Cox(1) from the Anglo-Saxon Club(2), wrote and lobbied for a law called the Racial Integrity Act (incidentally, one of the blueprints the Nazis used for their own laws), which did a couple of things:

it legally categorized every person into either "white" or "colored," with "white" being only people with a completely unbroken and provable white European heritage – with a teeny tiny exception for people who were less than 1/16th Native American that he was bullied into including(3) – and "colored" being literally everything else, with no specificity as to whether it meant Black or Asian or Native American or whatever;

it prohibited white people from marrying colored people (though notably not banning having sex with them: we're talking about a guy whose family owned slaves here, so you can do the math on that)

it allowed for the sterilization of certain undesirable people, such as the mentally ill; and, most importantly for our purpose:

it required all births and marriages to be registered in a big state-wide database, with the races of all parties listed.

and he also set himself up as the first guy in charge of that registry, so that it would be done exactly the way he wanted it.

prior to this, if you could get away with passing as white, you were (generally) treated as white. this was to prevent any white-passing mixed race people from marrying into white society (because their birth certificate records would show that their parents had nonwhite heritage), and eventually eliminate mixed race people, period.

now, obviously birth certificates weren't in common use before this law, so at least the first wave of people affected by the law could still (in theory) lie about their ethnicity and establish themselves as white on their birth certificates, thus allowing them to continue marrying "real" white people.

not a problem! the Plecker fucker fancied himself a bit of a genealogist (meaning he thought everyone with the same last name was related, somehow), so he'd just go in and edit people's records to say "colored," invalidating their marriages in the process, and ordered all of the people under him to do the same. like, there's a letter he sent out to the county-level people that was like, "anyone with the last name Collins [yes, really] is actually mixed race, DO NOT LET THEM GET MARRIED TO WHITE PEOPLE, EDIT ALL THEIR RECORDS."(4)

outside of the obvious negative effects of the law in general not allowing interracial marriages (until it was overturned by Loving v. Virginia in 19-fucking-67) and sterilizing anyone disabled or "feebleminded," him going in and literally erasing Native heritage from records has prevented Virginian Native Americans from being able to claim federal tribal recognition, because it's all just "white" or "colored," which could mean anything nonwhite.

anyway, that's why birth certificates are racist. they were made up by a racist guy to do more racism. and then that racist guy got hit by a car and died.

I stg this is the short version. the longer version was idk how many pages before I melted into a depressed puddle of goo and almost flunked out of my senior year of college.

(1) Ernest Sevier Cox was a weird fucking dude in that he was really good friends with Marcus motherfucking Garvey, to the point that they attended each other's events, dedicated books to each other, and wrote each other a lot of letters even after Garvey was deported to Jamaica (and Cox personally tried to get Garvey released from jail when he was imprisoned for mail fraud). This was partly because white nationalism and black separatism accomplished the same ultimate goals (i.e. Black people leaving the US) from different angles, but I think they just also genuinely liked each other? For some reason??

(2) Basically the KKK but for genteel, refined, upper-class people instead of violent, disorderly peasants (yes, they legit disliked the KKK because it was a poor person thing). Also, I can't find it again, but at one point when I was researching all this in college, I was looking through old school newspapers and either William & Lee or William & Mary had a junior Anglo-Saxon Club, sort of like a Young Republicans, and one of their contributions to the student newspaper was a piece about how they definitely weren't racist and how dare they be accused of racism, they just didn't want blacks or whites mixing! How is that racist? (Yes, they used the word "racist," and I have no idea what their definition of racism was, if it wasn't what they were doing) Anyway, I think about that a lot.

(3) This is informally called the Pocahontas Exception, because a lot of really, really influential, prominent and rich Virginians actually took a lot of pride in claiming to be descended from Pocahontas and John Rolfe (even if they weren't), and without the exception, they'd all be classified as "colored." Plecker didn't want any exceptions at all (he was, at the very least, not a hypocrite about what he thought "white" meant), but given that some of the people the law would make "colored" would potentially be voting on the law, he had to include the exception or risk it not being passed at all.

(4) The reason I even got into this subject in the first place is that one of my family tree names is on that list and we're pretty sure they moved to Kentucky because of it, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're related to us OR that they were white-passing mixed-race people: they could well have been just plain white people who happened to have the same surname.

[thechanelmuse]

National Archives

Below is a document from the National Archives, which you can download here. Read what I highlighted:

This is both correct and incorrect 🙃. They think they slick. This is unnecessary confusion as usual. The part about there being no distinction is accurate. However, the classifications of "free Blacks and Native Americans" are both misleading and incorrect. "Native American" and "American Indian" are not the same thing, especially in this sentiment.

Just as the indigenous prisoners of the ongoing wars against European invaders on American soil (1609-1858) who became the first of the chattel enslaved (before the arrival of 170,597 shipped Africans during the 1790-1810 period), those who were Christianized and allowed to maintain a free status in that time, they were all American Indians from whichever of 500+ tribes were or still exist here. They were either called free persons or slaves. That's it. All of the treaties in America speaks about American Indians who were simply called "Indians" (of the land). The classification for American Indians (simply the letter "I" as in "eye") doesn't appear on the US Census until 1850 during chattel slavery.

👇🏽

Incomplete and inaccuracies 🤔. You know why. The US corporate government is always telling on themselves. They become divided into Black or Mulatto, depending on the language for those in different states.

"Native American" was first introduced in the 1960s. American Indians who were already reclassified into the classifications of Black or Mulatto before the full overhaul of Negro during Dawes Rolls era (with the likes of Walter Plecker and Naomi Drake) were never the term "Native American." Personally, when I think of Native Americans I think about the European-Americans who purchased stolen documents, by way of the government for five dollars, allowing them to become $5 Indians on by blood Dawes Rolls. They use that term. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I'm still doing research when it comes to the classification Black that we made our distinct ethnic and cultural identity. Classifications in different states did not mean the same thing. I first learned this when it came to my lines in Virginia that were Mulatto. I was confused af when census docs didn't align with the fleshed out background of my people in non-census docs and books. The lines were blurred. The meanings back then tend to differ with today's meanings.

Things were based on blood (by your mama) and phenotype. If you've ever come across any Freedmen's Bank records, you'd know what I mean even more. Next to the word complexion, you'll see anything from white and swarthy to dark brown and black and anything in between to describe our freed ancestors.

Here's an example from a Family Search article:

What is "black" skin and what is "brown" skin? 🤔🤷🏽‍♀️

What is the difference when you add "dark brown" in the mix? 🤔

Then when you throw in "white" 🤔.

Keep in mind, the bank was only for those classified as Black or Mulatto, freed by Emancipation Proclamation.

Lastly, I know what the National Archives is tryna say, but there was no such thing as a "Free African Americans" between 1790 to 1840. There was a Free African Society tho if any of y'all had free fam in specific parts of Philly during that time. African American, was a reclassification done to the ethnic identity of Black Americans in the year 2000 by Jesse Jackson. A misnomer. One of the problems we've always had in this country is the umpteenth reclassifications only done on us to cause confusion. We need clear, specificity and explanations for each period. But when you know, you know.

How genealogy is used to track Black family histories

Our names are important to us. They tell us who we are and often, who we come from. So imagine suddenly discovering the last name you’ve always carried… might not actually be the name you should have. 

Alex Neason began looking into her family’s history after discovering her great grandfather’s name was different from what she believed for her whole life. In her search to discover the story of that last name, she enlisted genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith.

For Black Americans, genealogy can fill in the blanks left by the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. Services like the Freedmen’s Bureau and Slave Voyages provide free access to records and documents to help with that search. We talk about the power of genealogy in fostering knowledge and connection for Black Americans.

Source

If you click on the word “source,” it’ll take you to the article where you’ll see a LISTEN button. It’s a 30-minute audio that discusses the info provided in the article even further. Y’all know I’m big on getting people to trace their lineage. All that “we don’t know where we come from.” Who told you that? Everything in the US is in plain sight. Everything.

Discover your fam. 

I assist others when they reach a roadblock, like getting past the “1870 wall.” But you can’t beat the feeling of you discovering them on your own. Unearthing your history, seeing photos, reading stories that were stored, and saying their names that haven’t been said for centuries. I’ve been tracing mine (scanning, logging) since my family reunion in 2005 through oral family history and obituaries (those are records), and since 2011 through databases of US archived records like ancestry.com (purchased by BlackStone) and familysearch.org (free database owned by the Latter-day Saints Church). There are others, but those are the main two I use for comparative results.  

Archiving Centers, Census Records & Other Records

There are archiving centers in every state and DC that also keep records for those particular states and the federal capital. There’s a footnote on all records that tells you where they are housed. And please…Don’t just do a simple pedigree chart of your family tree. Get to know your great-aunts, great-uncles and cousins. It’s also helpful for seeing who lived around who (fam often lived next door to each other) and puts more of the pieces together of your complete family story. You can see the land and acres they owned or your fam today still owns, as well as if that land was stolen from them.

US census records go back to year 1790. Depending on when or if your ancestors were enslaved or free: you’ll find them attached to slave logs that have been made available online or kept in archiving centers (you go there), or or they’ll be listed on census records as free persons (1790-1710), free colored male/female (1820-1840), Black (1850-1920), Mulatto (1850-1890, 1910-1920) or Negro (1900, 1930-1950). “New” census documents are put on sites, like ancestry.com, every 10 years. As of 2023, you can only trace from 1950 to 1790. The 1960 census will be out in 2030. How to trace from 1950 to today, birth, death and residential records. So again, depending on the census year, you’ll notice your ancestors racial classification change throughout documents for obvious reasons. 

Keep in mind that the the largest slave trade for the United States was the domestic slave trade. In house human trafficking and selling (in addition to property insurance of enslaved people and the selling of enslaved people as the building block of Wall Street’s stock exchange) is how US capitalism was built. So just because you know a lot of your people are from Tennessee, for example, it doesn’t mean that’s where that line stayed. I’ve found my ancestors throughout 7 states (so far). Another example, people with Louisiana roots damn near always have ancestors who were trafficked from early Virginia. Going beyond year 1790, records were kept in Christian and Catholic churches and old family history books so most of those documents are scanned online and/or still kept in the churches. I’m talking books books. 

If your ancestors walked the Trail of Tears, or were caught as prisoners of war or trafficked to Indian Nations to be enslaved, you’ll find an Oklahoma Indian Territory and Oklahoma Freedmen Rolls section on ancestry.com. You can discover more info on sites, like the Oklahoma Historical Society. (Every state has its own historical society for archived genealogical records.) 

Here’s the National Archives.

Also for Oklahoma, you may also find your ancestors in Indian Census Rolls (1855-1940) as [insert tribe] Freedmen, depending if they weren’t rejected through the “blood quantum” Dawes Rolls for not being the new light to white status. You’ll see their application and the listed questions & answers with or without a big void stamp. And on the census, you’ll even see the letter I (pronounced like eye) changed to the letter B. This is also for those in Louisiana.

Freedmen’s Bureau & Bank Records 

There were Freedmen’s Bureau records and Freedman’s Savings Bank records in other states. To see if your ancestors had their records in those systems, you can search by their name. The state and age will pop up with people having that name. It’ll give you a wealth of other info, like all of the kids and other fam if they were present or mentioned to the person who logged that info in. With the Freedmen Bank records, you can see how much money your ancestors put in there (that was later stolen from them by way of the United States government), which is still there today. It’s the biggest bank heist in US history (that they try to keep hush hush) with the equivalence of more than $80 million in today’s value stored in there today. Back then, it was valued almost close to $4 million. Stolen wealth met with bootstrap lectures. 

Here’s a short video on that heist:

Today the bank is called the Freedman’s Bank Building, located right on Pennsylvania Ave. Plain sight. 

Trace your lineage. 

There’s a lot more that I can list. But this is just the basics. Like I said before, it’s a more rewarding feeling when you discover your ancestors by yourself. You may reach roadblocks. Take a break. Try going the “Card Catalog” route on ancestry.com’s search engine. Don’t skip the small details. 

SN: Slave Voyages isn’t a genealogical site, but rather a database for slave ship logs and the estimates of purchased Africans who became human cargo to be enslaved by country like USA, or by colonizers like Spain, Great Britain, etc.

[musecove]

     walter plecker says he knew my great-7x (or somewhere in that area) grandfather personally and i’m,, seeing red rn

[diaryofamelungeon]

Melungeon Spiritual practices and Machisaba (Mekhashepha)

I won’t be answering anon questions here, but I have had a small influx of people asking about traditional Melungeon beliefs and more spicifically Machisaba.  This is a practice that is incredibly hard to research, but many Melungeons and Melungeon descendants have been looking into reconstructing and reconnecting with. Due to the relentless efforts to remain hidden and pass in a world of discrimmination much of these oral histories and practices have been lost to many descendants.  From what I have found many Melungeon families assimilated into more socially accepted belief systems like Chritianity, including my own family. However, there are a few families that I’ve spoken with that practice more traditional beliefs or other non-christian religions that they carried on from before assimilation. It seems many melungeon communites practiced a variety of different folk magic practices and religions likely deriving from the different cultures we descended from (we are a heavily mixed race community), one of these practices is known as Machisaba, believed to have evolved from European folk lore, African spiritual practices, and Indigenous beliefs brought together by the communities history of heavy endogamous mixing among the three groups. Machisaba is the only practice that appears to be unique to Melungeon communities and likely was born in the 1700′s in Melungeon communities in the backwoods of Southern Appalachia. (some other spiritual practices found in melungeon families include Hoodoo, Brauchrei, and Curanderismo). It is important to make a note here that most or all of these practices are viewed as closed by those within the communities that practice them and should be respected as closed practice. 

Machisaba is a mix of faith and holistic healing practices, conjure, and folk lore. It is a polytheistic belief system that recognizes multiple dieties known as Alma. Machisaba is centered heavily on Ancestor veneration, reincarnation, and animism. Many Machisaba practitioners are known as Vavo(a)’s or Broxo(a)’s and are considered sacred healers and conjure people in their communities. They were historically referred to as cursed souls, witches, and demons by outside communities for their traditions surrounding spiritual events such as death like “sin eating”, or birth ceremonies that invlove painting infants red in ochre. Due to their continued discrimination, many of these practices were held and taught in secret, and kept hidden to protect families from people like Walter Plecker.  It is most likely that Machisaba was influenced by our need to survive off the land and mountains we were forced into and being heavily outcast by all white christian communities. Today, most Melungeon people identify spiritually with some branch of Christianity, most commonly Southern Baptism, with mere remnants of Machisaba appearing in passing. Machisaba is by all means, a dying practice, but in recent years the shame that came with being Melungeon has began to lift and Melungeons today are beginning to speak openly about who they are, their history, and their heritage, with many lost Melungeons trying to reconnect and honor their heritage and ancestors while decolonizing their spiritual practices. For the first time in history Melungeons are finally starting to get comfortable learning, reconnecting and practicing our traditional beliefs, and being able to do so openly without losing our homes or rights.  Most people who practice Machisaba today are reconstructionists, trying to rebuild what little was left behind by ancestors, and breathe new life into a nearly dead culture.

[thatdiva]

The list included the outdated terms "mulatto," and "quadroon."

Churchill said he and Rogers refused to select one of the options provided for their race and were told that the computer system wouldn't accept their application without it.

The current requirement is a vestige of Virginia's racist history, born out of the state's 1924 "Act to Preserve Racial Integrity." The law was meant to ensure that whites and non-whites did not marry. It was championed by Walter Plecker, the state's first head of vital statistics and an advocate of eugenics. (Source)

[papergenocide]

PAPER GENOCIDE IS THE DELIBERATE AND SYSTEMATIC DESTRUCTION OF NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE, LANGUAGE, AND IDENTITY AS A UNIQUE RACIAL GROUP BY WAY OF THE ILLEGAL AND OPPRESSIVE RACE RECLASSIFICATION IMPOSED ON NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS OR "BLOOD INDIANS" TO THE NON-INDIAN RACES OF BLACK/AFRICAN AMERICAN, WHITE, OR LATINO/HISPANIC. WITH THE STROKE OF A PEN, OR THE CLICK OF A MOUSE NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN ANCESTRY CAN BE SUPPRESSED ON GOVERNMENT RECORDS. *THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT STRUCK DOWN WALTER PLECKER'S RACIAL INTEGRITY ACT IN 1967 WITHIN LOVING V. VIRGINIA ARGUED: APRIL 10, 1967, DECIDED: JUNE 12, 1967, 206 VA. 924, 147 S.E.2D 78, REVERSED, THIS MAKE RACE RECLASSIFICATION ILLEGAL, AND STATES THAT DO SO ARE BREAKING SUPREME LAW.

[7whistlepig7]

He battled the KKK

He battled the KKK

Home of Rappahannock Chief George Nelson (1920s & 1930s) who struggled against Walter Plecker and the KKK. The house is on the Rappahannock Reservation in Indian Neck, Virginia. It is being restored and will be used as a museum.

[happynaturalhair]

We Celebrate American Indian Heritage Month All Day Everyday However We Have 2 Enlightened Our People Who R Still Calling Themselves Black When Their R Brown Skin Complexion with Brown Eyes 👁 & Since 1988 When Sell Out Jessie Jackson Coined The Term African American Brain 🧠 Wash 🧼 People including myself fell for it But Thx Goodness 4 My Parents & Great Grandparents kept telling me I was African when I joined The RASTAFARI Culture They told me my ancestry tribes Mohawk Mohegan BlackFoot Cherokee & Hachotakni Yamassee Criik Tribe where I reclaimed who we are & got our Tribal Trust Charter that I sent a constructive notice to all agencies letting them know we know who we are Did you know it was illegal between 1924-1967 to say you were American Indian this is what our great ancestors had to endure while the Caucasian Pale face Mongol Asian was Given our identity heritage & culture by 3 dangerous men that is in this post Melville Herskovits created the Genocidial LIE 🤥 of American Negroes coming from African slaves only, changing their Cultural Identity Walter Plecker Eugenist Took Away The AMERICAN NEGROES INDIANS BENEFITS & Gave it 2 Caucasians & Caucasian looking Mexicans & Ales Hridlicka Eugenist Changed the PICTURE of The Original “Indians From Negro Indians 2 Mongol Asians They Don’t Teach U That in School 🏫 They Teach U That U Were Slaves Brought Over Here 👈🏾 From The Continent When We Was Already Here & Once Our Autochthon Aboriginal Indigenous Copper Colored People calling themselves Black Finally Do Their Research 🔬 Wake Up & Realize Their True Identity I Do & That’s Y I Am Soooo Happy & Celebrating 🥳 My Ancient Heritage & Culture No What The Government Celebrities & Schools 🏫 Say We R Our Ancestors Kept Telling us from our Youth that we R Indigenous 2 Turtle 🐢 Island 🏝 aka North America & this is our Land & 2 Teach Our Children 👶🏽 Children 👧🏽👦🏽 Feathers 🪶 Up My lst Grandson is being taught he is indigenous & when he was born my daughter made sure they put American Indian on his birth certificate 🪶🪶🪶🪶🪶This is my journey as A Original American Indian What’s Your Don’t Be Afraid 😱 2 Speak 🗣 Your Truth https://www.instagram.com/p/CV58ypVPrdu/?utm_medium=tumblr

[blackbrownfamily]

BlackFoot Indian

[mooneyed-child]

All of this is bs. Machisaba is nothing but wicca with the word Melungeon attached to it. This is literally the Biblical term for witchcraft, just misspelled, lets not be ableist. This word is ancient, wicca is a newborn baby. https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/thou-shalt-not-suffer-a-witch-to-live-a-murderous-mistranslation-1.5443682  We had no foreign gods, no seasonal rituals about the wheel of the year or anything like that, aside from decoration day. Mekeshepha is just folkcraft, people can recognize whatever deities they want, Melungeon people had many different faiths, practiced different folk belief and different religions. 

Melungeon culture IS Appalachian culture, but we do have our own unique distinctions, but it IS NOT this. So we have our own culture or it is indistinguishable from the greater Appalachian culture? It can’t be both. (I’ll give you hint; Appalachian culture varies throughout each and every holler and family.)

This person runs multiple accounts on social media to make it seem like there’s traffic behind this. They go under multiple aliases, Kati Blair, Katie Littlefeather, Georgia Clyde, etc. and run Melungeon culture page on Facebook along with machisaba groups; they also run a Melungeon culture tiktok that just relates Appalachian lore as purely Melungeon lore. Appalachian lore? You mean just the conglomerate lore of the different cultures that make up Appalachian history? The culture that overlaps TONS of other cultures including Melungeon? Wow, big shock that Melungneon people out of Appalachia have cultural overlap with the rest of Appalchia.  Traditions and folklore can exist throughout numerous cultures.

They are also very culturally appropriative, claiming to be Lakota, Melungeon etc. in one video of hers you can tell she’s faking her southern accent so bad to the point it was almost Hollywood level embarrassing. She was born and raised in Michigan, no where near Appalachia. I’m running for the GLMN BOD so I know this person IRL, do you? These are big claims coming from a man who was raised white, just learned they were Melungeon within the last 5 years and has appropriated Melungeon, Indigenous, and African cultures to sell 2 books that you never credited anyone you rehashed your information from. I wonder who owns that house in WV she’s always at then. Accents are another thing that varies throughout different hollers and states, I have had people think I was trying to make fun of them because my accent is similar but just off. Southern and Appalachian are 2 wildly different accents, I would think an Appalachian would know that? I guess thats new to you though.

Words she claims are Melungeon, like bruxo, machisaba, etc. would HAVE NEVER survived the development of Appalachian dialect, especially our own Melungeon dialect which was a lot more relaxed and faster than the former. That shit would’ve never survived. Ask any linguist. So Melungeon people were too what? Dumb and weak to preserve our dialect and culture? We are the ONLY culture that was unable to pass down an oral history? That is some true colonizer thinking, the very type of thinking Walter Plecker would be proud of.  Dialects to this very day, differ from family to family, holler to holler, ridge to ridge.  There is for sure words from my community that you’ve never heard in yours and vice versa

She also runs an Etsy shop called MamieClydes Apothecary and another online shop called Actual Hen.

And?

 She has also tried saying that Melungeons have/had nations, like the “Great Lakes nation” (another website she runs, and likely takes fees for from people who fall for it) when that is not the case. Nobody at GLMN ever claimed Melungeon people called their communities “Nations” historically, a nation is simply put:  “ a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory” and that is all it is meant to mean. GLMN enrollment is free for anyone who completes their own applications, application processing fees only apply to people who need their genealogist to complete their application for them. The Melungeon Heritage association charges a yearly fee, and almost every other Cultural Organization charges upwards of 100′s of dollars.

We had small pocket communities in TN, VA, NC, SC, and KY before the world wars, but never “nations.” We had family tribes like the “Collins tribe” or “Gibson clan” but that was only in relation to a group of families who intermarried with each other and migrated to other places together, for safety and security, especially after the civil war and during Jim Crow. You forgot West Virginia, and we never called our communities tribes either, this is simply semantics you’re turning into a witchhunt. What are you really mad about? Not being raised Melungeon? Not being the Be All End All King of The Melungeons? Lmao. Grow up. A good LARGE number of Melungeon people migrated with the Great Appalachian Migration to states in the Midwest for work and to escape discrimmination, Wayne Winkler would be more than happy to talk to you further about the number of Harlan County Melungeons that ended up in the Detroit area.  Hazel Parks Historical Society has a section dedicated to the Melungeon migrants, and their town is jokingly refferred to as Hazeltucky because it was almost entirely populated by appalachian people.

Yes we did call ourselves ridgemanites, but we also called ourselves “malungean” in the Carolinas, “carmelites” in highland county, Ohio, etc. We’ve been called Melungeon, ramp, redbone, cro (Croatan), etc. and? you forgot redlegs, blackwaters, portygee, plus more. 

 I have receipts of her activity in the Melungeon group I help run, some of the groups she runs, messages with her, showing that none of this machisaba stuff existed to her or online before June 2020. Georgia has been upfront that she learned this term from other people and just adopted it, but she’s always talked about being Melungeon, I’ve seen her share memories from 12 years ago about her Melungeon heritage.    She has tried claiming different southern/Appalachian/ magical practices as being totally closed as they are supposedly Melungeon and that is also totally false. People are allowed to gatekeep their culture from vultures like you who steal family histories and cultures to appropriate and publish for profits. Who are you to decide what practices from someone elses culture that you are not a part of are open or closed?

She also runs a Michigan historical website about abandoned houses in Michigan, specifically Hazel Park, MI where she was born and raised. What is the point here? She has never denied being raised in MI. 

I tried to explain to her my issues about all of this, like do what you want but don’t say it’s Melungeon when it’s not, it’s a modern made religion basically, but don’t say it’s Melungeon or try to claim practices that aren’t yours to gatekeep as Melungeon to keep others from it. Who are you to tell people who were raised Melungeon, that their family traditions are not Melungeon, when you yourself were admittedly not raised Melungeon and neither was anyone in the group you run, and neither were any of your parents or grandparents?

It seems she also runs the two other “Melungeon” pages on here along with her tumblr “georgiaclyde”. Fayth Scott runs the blog you reblogged this from not Georgia. Is it more likely that multiple people who were raised Melungeon have similar upbringings or that Georgia is running hundreds of accounts on multiple platforms to push a practice she isn’t even that serious about? You seem to have an issue with anyone that doesn’t believe or practice exactly what you do. Your little group sounds like its becoming an uncultured cult. 

To beat it all, everything she puts out, she’s taking from my books, Backwoods Witchcraft, and Doctoring the Devil, which she has claimed are horrible in some groups. Your books are just rehashed info from all the other Appalchian/Hoodoo/Conjure/Southern Cunning books there are out there, only you never credit the people you so blatantly steal your information from and profit off of.  Funny how your witch hunt started after you got gatekept out of Melungeon cultural groups because people were trying to avoid that.  But when she tried adding “machisaba” to the Melungeon Wikipedia page, she sites my book as a source? Whats actually funny looking at the Melungeon wiki history is that it seems you were actually trying to use it to promote yourself and sell your book and continued to try and do so after your book as a source was removed numerous times. Come on lmao 🤣 This has just been going on for too long with all her alias accounts. I will say it once and hope it sticks with y’all: FAKELORE is just as bad as cultural appropriation. I was the first one that said anything about finding unique differences between Melungeon life and that of greater Appalachia and then out of nowhere she has this entire religion she failed to mention to any of us cousins (she ain’t our cousin was we thought she was at the time) for so long?And THERE IT IS!! “I was the first to try and rebuild Melungeon culture, how dare her not give me all the info to take credit for it! How DARE her not tell me, a culturally appropriative stranger who demonizes melungeon culture, all her family traditions right off bat!! How dare someone culturally raised Melungeon know more about her own culture than me, a white man!!!!” Come on now. She also took people gedmatch kits from our kit group and made her own, and multiple people had to go and leave it because they didn’t not consent to their genetic information being added to something like that without their knowledge. This is all I’m saying on the subject. Thats just a straight up lie, the GEDMATCH ancestor project was started before all this drama and everyone added to it, joined on their own accord. You continue to make shit up because you have some unhealthy obsession with being the God of all things Melungeon but you need to sit the fuck down because you aren’t even Melungeon, didn’t even know you could possibly be until less than a decade ago.  Nobody that is culturally connected is going to stop following their culture just because you’ve never heard of it lmao. You need to stop trying to colonize us, Walter. 

Contrary to popular belief Machisaba =\= Witchcraft. You can be a witch and practice Machisaba, you can be not a witch and practice Machisaba. It is not a religion, there’s no contracts or covenants. In my experience it’s just learning to work with the energy of things and the environment around you. Calm down. Quit demonizing your kin just because you don’t understand. A lot of us are Christians no less, and are against the witch terminology.   This belief was born in the same sense that the word Melungeon is a slur was born. As Melungeon people we did not call ourselves Melungeon, we called ourselves Ridgemanites and other names denoting where we resided. We did not call out practices Mekheshepha (Machisaba), this is the OT word for a witch or a female sorceress. We were demonized as mixed race and demonized as witches and had our own dialect stripped from us, so we adopted what was given to us.  Machashabah similarly is the biblical word for cunning work, or knowing how to use intentions, thought, and prayer to heal. 

[thechanelmuse]

Chile, the utter disrespect...

Juneteenth commemorates the 19th day of June in 1865 , in which, enslaved Black Americans in Galveston, Texas, who were still laboring the land and generating the wealth of the United States for European colonists, were brought the news of freedom by Union soldiers. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation two and a half years prior, abolishing chattel enslavement on this soil. 

Black Americans are an ethnic group whose roots are centuries deep within and tied to this land. It does not mean “a Black person who resides in America.” This day has been observed in Texas and various states since 1865. It is not a Pan-African holiday nor should it be treated as such. No one's holidays get hijacked and altered to be "more fitting" for people who are classified as racially Black in this country and push Black Americans in the background of our day of honoring our ancestors.

The antics and the amount of Juneteenth trademarks that have been filed since 2021 to as of recently to make money off of the ancestors....We don't disrespect anyone's holidays nor do we go to their countries and do shit like this, so don't do it to ours. Respect.

The colors of the Juneteenth flag are the same colors of the American flag created by Ben Haith. The star represents Texas and the arch represents a new horizon of opportunities for Black Americans.

Green/yellow/red are the colors of Ethiopia's flag, some Pan-African organizations and the Rastafari movement. That’s specific.

👆🏽 is not a Juneteenth flag. 

The one above is also a Pan-African flag, but made by Marcus Garvey, who immigrated to this country with the hopes that he could convince Black Americans to leave our country for his Back-to-Africa Movement. No. The ancestors were not going for that. Not to mention Garvey chilled with the KKK and was good friends with white supremacists/eugenicists Earnest Cox and Walter Plecker, who reclassified all American Indians and Mulattoes as Negro before kicking off the Dawes Rolls for $5 Indians. Paper genocide. Many of his letters and surname stipulations are online. When you understand the centuries of our reclassification federally in this country, the shit will make sense.

Callie Guy House was a formerly enslaved mother of 5, washerwoman, and a reparationist—one of the first on this land. In 1894, she founded The National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Association with Black American pastor Isaiah Dickerson. Chapters grew in other states outside of Tennessee, and galvanized Black Americans in hopes of securing compensation for centuries of unpaid forced labor that built this country and its wealth, as well as food, medical, and burial expenses. She was found guilty of "mail fraud" by an all-white male jury and imprisoned for a year. How calculated.

In the meantime, Garvey decided to pick it up and attach our reparations to his organization—very Congressional Black Caucus, NCOBRA and NAARC of him—which got him deported. You would think he would relocate to an African country. Nope. He settled in London... 🙃

If you’re down with the latter flag, rep your set, love. But it’ll make more sense to do so on your own holidays and on the continent of Africa itself, as well, in whatever country you choose and they allow you to do so. Do what Garvey couldn’t do... After all it’s called Pan-Africanism not Pan-Americanism while waving a Pan-African flag. 

[spanky606]

@Regranned from @autochthonsofamerica - Prior to 1720, slavery was 9/10's times higher among Natives (Indigenous) people than Africans imported from Africa from the slave trade. Indige Americans were reclassified as Colored (Racial Integrity Act 1924). Jim Crow Laws were a set of oppressive laws not only used for segregation but also reclassified Native American Indians into the category of Colored. Jim Crow reached its greatest influence during the decades of 1910, 1920, and 1930. Among the Jim Crow Laws were Hypo Descent laws. The laws were a responsible for the “One-Drop” Rule. Tennessee adopted the statute in 1910, and Louisiana soon followed. Then Texas and Arkansas in 1911, Mississippi in 1917, North Carolina in 1923 followed suit. (Fact: the State of North Carolina vital records began using the law in labeling Native Americans as Colored BEFORE Walter Plecker initiated it in Virginia. Birth records were also "delayed" in states enforcing the one drop rule, they were filed late to make the racial changes. As registrar, Dr. Walter Plecker directed the reclassification of nearly all Virginia Indians as Colored on their birth and marriage certificates because he was convinced that most Indians had African heritage and were trying to "pass" as Indians to evade segregation. Consequently, two or three generations of Virginia Natives had their ethnic identity altered on public documents. Plecker's tampering with vital records of the Virginia Indian tribes made it impossible for descendants of six of the eight tribes recognized by the state to gain federal recognition because they could no longer prove their American Indian ancestry by documented historical continuity (Paper Genocide: http://www.papergenocide.org). White census takers during the 1800's were instructed to ignore Native American heritage and paint mostly southern states in America with either Black or White populations. Approved by the Subconscious Community. #AutochthonsStandUp™ #AfricanAmerican❌ #PanAfricanismDebunked #PanglobalistParadigm #WorldWide #AboriginalTitle #AboriginalAmerican #Intercontinental #IndigenousStatus #OriginalUnitedKingdom #OriginalAustralian #BoundToTheLandByBlood #Un

[musecove]

     so here’s a crash course on Melungeons : we are a tri-racial group in the United States with a baffling and mysterious history. We used to be commonly described as olive to tan skinned, but sometimes much darker and lighter, with straight black or brown hair and light eyes (blue, grey) though today most of us can pass as white (like me; red hair, pale skin, freckles, blue eyes. My sister is a bit more traditionally melungeon; olive skin, grey eyes, and straight brown hair). 

     Always considered “too native” or “too black” to be equal to white settlers, but “too white” for other aspects of life and legal purposes. Mostly in censuses we were labelled “mulatto” or “indian”, we would claim to be Portuguese when questioned so we could pass under racist laws, and laws like the Indian Removal Act only served to hurt us too. We don’t really have a unique culture, I mean we preserved chocolate gravy but that’s about it for notable achievements. We’ve been here longer than white settlers but nobody can tell how we got here. We have also been affected by things like eugenics movements (looking right at you, Walter Plecker of Virginia)