The Melungeon people are a triracial isolate group consisting of European, African American, and Indigenous ancestry. We are NOT an Indigenous Tribe or a Religious Denomination. The first Melungeon people recorded in American history were residing in the Cumberland Gap area of Appalachia and had likely been there hundreds of years.  The Melungeon communities of Appalachia were sometimes referred to as Melungia. These communities were primarily endogamous, resulting in a heavily mixed racial background for each family.  Years of isolation in those mountains gave Melungeon communities time to develop their own culture, traditions, and way of life.  However, being a mixed race group in the south meant the Melungeon people faced many hardships, discrimmination, oppression, displacement, poverty and abuse at the hands of people like Walter Plecker and laws like the Racial Integrity Act.