The Melungeons shares the story of a people ravaged, and nearly destroyed, by the senseless excesses of racism and genocide, a people who were, a century ad a half later, crushed beneath the violent onslaught of unbridled Anglo jingoism. Recognizing the truth of who the Melungeons were, and are, will redefine our view of the settlement of this nation, and, more to the point, of our own self-identity. It will also render incomplete and possibly obsolete much of what has been written and preserved about our Southern ethnic heritage.