The Carmelites... A Legacy of Affrilachian Resilience

A story of My Ancestors' Survival...

If you peel back the layers of American history, past the sterilized textbooks and the Hollywood stereotypes, you find the real, beating heart of Appalachia. It is a history that is profoundly mixed, deeply resilient, and fiercely guarded. For girlbenelohim.faith, it is time we talk about Affrilachian culture, the Melungeon people, and specifically, the Carmelites... because those are my peoples.

We need to have a nuanced, gritty, and honest conversation about the systemic hatred directed at poor, rural Appalachians. The reality that the system tries to bury is this: the vitriol and othering aimed at "white trash" or "hillbillies" is often rooted in anti Blackness and racism. Historically, the broader white society knew that these isolated mountain communities were actually multiracial. When people of European, African, and Indigenous descent lived, loved, and survived together in the hollers, the capitalist and white supremacist systems of the time punished them with extreme economic segregation. The poverty experienced by rural Appalachia boils down to racism, plain and simple.

The Shared DNA of Mountain Speak and AAVE

If you want proof of how deeply intertwined these cultures were, just listen to how the people speak. There is a profound linguistic overlap between AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and Mountain Speak (Appalachian English).

Both dialects were birthed in the same Southern and Appalachian regions where poor Europeans, free and enslaved Black folks, and Indigenous people lived side by side. Before the Civil Rights era, when racial lines were drawn even more harshly to keep poor folks divided, these speech patterns were practically identical in the mountains.

Look at the similarities:

• The "Be" Verb: Both dialects use an unconjugated "be" to indicate a continuous state (e.g., "They be working").
• Phonological Drops: Dropping the final "g" in "ing" words (huntin', fishin') and reducing consonant clusters (told becomes tol').
• Double Negatives: Used for emphasis rather than mathematical cancellation ("I ain't got no money").
• Double Modals: Words stacked for politeness or nuance ("I might could help you").
• A Prefixing: Adding "a " before a progressive verb ("He's a runnin'").

Today, both dialects are heavily stigmatized by the dominant culture, dismissed as "uneducated" or "lazy." But in reality, they are rich, preserved linguistic time capsules of a shared, intertwined Affrilachian history.

The Carmelites: Origins of a Free People

To understand the Carmelites (also known as the Carmel Indians or the Carmel Melungeons), we have to trace their roots back to the 17th and 18th centuries in colonial Virginia.

Before America was even an official country, the lines of race were much blurrier. The ancestors of the Carmelites were Free People of Color. They were the children of early unions between free or indentured white women and African men (who were either indentured, free, or enslaved). Because of a 17th century Virginia law called partus sequitur ventrem... which dictated that a child inherited the social status of their mother... these mixed race children were born free.

Here is one of the most beautiful and powerful parts of this story: These Free Black ancestors were fiercely loyal. Many of them worked the land, saved every penny they could under a brutal capitalist system, and bought the freedom of their enslaved family members. They didn't just survive; they pulled their kin out of bondage. It is a testament to their absolute resilience, loyalty, and refusal to let the system destroy their bloodlines.

Survival in the Margins

As laws grew stricter and racism more codified, these mixed race families were pushed to the margins. They migrated away from the tightening grip of the coastal elites, moving into the Appalachian borderlands of North Carolina and Virginia, and eventually settling in Magoffin County, Kentucky, by 1810.

Around the time of the Civil War (roughly 1864), a group of these families... carrying surnames like Gibson, Nichols, Taylor, French, and Perkins... migrated north to Highland County, Ohio. They established the settlement of Carmel, a small crossroads community.

Because they were racially ambiguous, they were held in low regard by their white neighbors, who labeled them "half breeds" or "Carmel Indians." Kept out of the mainstream economy and relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy, they had to adapt to survive.

They became masters of the land. The Carmelites maintained the cultural traits of their rural Kentucky ancestors:

• They foraged the woods to dig up yellowroot and ginseng, selling them to local herb houses for income.
• They boiled their laundry in massive outdoor kettles and hung "shuck beans" to dry.
• They hunted squirrels and groundhogs, raised chickens, and cultivated small garden patches on steep, unwanted hill land where mechanized farming couldn't reach.
• When times got too hard, they adapted through sheer grit... traveling north to work the Scioto onion marshes or lay railroad tracks, sometimes wintering back in Kentucky in the shacks of neighbors.

The Reality of the "White Trash" Label

The Carmelites reached a peak population of about 150 people in the 1940s. By the late 20th century, due to economic outmigration and intermarriage, they gradually assimilated into the broader population of Ohio cities like Dayton, Columbus, and Springfield.

But their story forces us to look at the "white trash" stereotype with clear eyes. The people who were pushed into the deepest poverty in the Appalachian mountains were often those who the system recognized as "other." They were Melungeon. They were mixed. They were indigenous and African and European. The surrounding society refused to intermarry with them and refused to hire them for skilled labor.

When you see poor, rural Appalachian folks being mocked by mainstream society today, recognize that this classism was built on a foundation of racism. The system despised these communities because they defied the neat, segregated boxes of white supremacy.

Appalachia holds some of the richest, most original, and diverse history in the entire country. The story of the Carmelites is not just a story of marginalization; it is a story of Free Black folks who bought their families' freedom, who outsmarted a system designed to crush them, and who carved out a life in the beautiful, unforgiving hills. That is truly a legacy worth claiming.

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