NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some ...

Switching gears now to a story from the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, home to a population of mixed race people called the Melungeons. That's a term that, decades ago, used to be a derogatory ...

Sunrise over Appalachian Mountains in autumn (Getty Images). As a tenth generation Appalachian, Ivy Brashear sees J.D. Vance’s 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” as a “really one-sided and simple view of ...