I love old stuff. But if you’ve read my columns before you already know that. I’m particularly drawn to old paper. I love going to flea markets, antique shows, shops, and malls and the occasional garage sale. I’m in heaven when I run across a shoebox full of 1800s receipts and letters, old matchbooks, or travel brochures. Recently, I stumbled upon an old 1960s–70s colorful travel brochure titled: “Walk toward the sunset – The Melungeon Story.” It was made for an outdoor stage drama in Sneedville, Tennessee, a town of roughly 1,250 people and 525 households located in Hancock County on the North East border of the state not far from the Ohio State line. I’ve never been there, and until I found this brochure, I didn’t know anything about the place.
Turns out, the area was settled around 1795 by a group known as “The Melungeons.” What is a Melungeon you ask? A Melungeon is a person of mixed ancestry, primarily Anglo–European and Sub–Saharan African or Native American Indian. No one really knows for sure. Although the Sneedville area was settled around 1795, French traders encountered Melungeons there as early as the 1600s in that area now known as Eastern Tennessee. Turns out this flashy little travel brochure was created for a stage play written by Kermit Hunter (no relation) that ran from 1969 to 1975 honoring the disenfranchised group centered in the area.
The idea for the play was created in the mid-1960s as a perfect vehicle to boost tourism and foster economic opportunity to Hancock County by telling the history of the much-maligned “Melungeon” people. The Hancock County Drama Association was born. Playwright Kermit Hunter, who had written more than 40 scripts for outdoor dramas, was contacted to author the outdoor stage production. Ironically, the once–hated Melungeons were now a hot topic among anthropologists, historians, trendy college students and the hipster–enlightened populace. The very same people who had once persecuted the Melungeons, Sneedville’s “elite” (merchants, bankers, businessmen, educators, and prosperous farmers) now hoped to exploit the group’s newfound popularity to put the county on the map.
But old prejudices die hard and there were still some Hancock Countians who remained skeptical about the drama, its topic, and its ability to generate interest among tourists. However, most locals remained hopeful and enthusiasm grew. Soon, citizens of Sneedville who never before expressed an interest in, let alone admitted to, their Melungeon heritage were now openly discussing their newfound roots amongst each other. During the play’s formative stages, the most common interjection was, “You know, I’m a Melungeon.”
The production and planning of the play truly was a product of its times. A parcel of property was purchased from a reluctant area farmer who, years later, claimed that he was not pleased with the play’s content. The Hancock County Drama Association cajoled 18 workers from the local “Operation Mainstream” organization (an LBJ administration “War on Poverty” agency) into cutting trees from a road right-of-way at little or no cost. These logs were used to construct the amphitheater, the bleachers, the concession stand, and the ticket booth. The stage was constructed at the foot of Newman’s Ridge, the historical stomping grounds of the original Melungeon people.
The stage play Walk Toward the Sunset opened on July 3, 1969. The ugliness of a mixed raced past reappeared in the form of a bomb threat phoned in on opening night. Regardless, the show went on and the production was an early success. The first season closed with a total attendance of over 10,000. The second season of production opened on July 2, 1970, with improved lighting and seating. A few minor changes were made in the play itself, and word-of-mouth advertising attracted visitors from as far away as Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, and elsewhere. By all accounts, the play was a smash hit.
In the spring of 1971, as the third season drew near, it became clear that the play’s success was both a blessing and a curse. One of Sneedville’s greatest assets, it’s remoteness, became one of its biggest liabilities. Although people were flocking to see the play, Sneedville had a distinct lack of motels and restaurants to keep them there. The surrounding community was not experiencing the financial boom originally promised by the play’s pundits. No worries, play promoters proclaimed, 1971 was going to be the breakout season for Walk Toward the Sunset.
Through ticket sales and donations, the Drama Association hoped to raise $30,000, which would wipe out the previous year’s deficit of $2,600 and move the production out of the red and into the black. Hopefully, the production would become profitable enough to pay the local actors and workers; only the production staff and principal actors were paid a meager stipend during the two previous seasons, the extras and stagehands being composed of young Hancock County volunteers. Some of these young volunteers walked miles in their bare feet to participate in the production. The Drama Association saw the play as a potential means of helping young people in the county, as well as a reason to develop motels, restaurants, and other tourist-oriented businesses in the area.
Just before production began the director left to pursue his doctoral degree; during the 1971 season, the play was left to be directed by students from the drama department at the University of Tennessee. The change was sudden and the mix was not a good one and it showed. Soon actors, stagehands and volunteers bickered amongst one another and the crowds dwindled to a trickle. Sadly, production of Walk Toward the Sunset was cancelled for the summer of 1972 due to financial problems.
The drama was resurrected in the summer of 1973, but the energy crisis caused the production to be cancelled again for the summer of 1974. Gas shortages were causing panic across the country, and Sneedville was a poor place to be stuck without fuel, considering that there were no motels and only one restaurant in the county. Walk Toward The Sunset closed permanently after the 1976 season, due to lack of attendance. While ultimately unsuccessful, the play brought a sense of pride to the Melungeons and remains a fitting memorial to a vanishing race.
The show closed, the cast went back to their normal lives and the play Walk Toward the Sunset was forgotten. The script was never formally published and believed to be lost forever until a copy was found on a shelf in the Carson-Newman College drama department. The play takes place in two acts, the first act after the American Revolution and the second act after the Civil War. Frontiersman Daniel Boone makes an appearance in the play arguing for the rights of the Melungeons. The play does not avoid controversy and the race-mixing theme seems quite progressive for a time when racial segregation was legally outlawed but still overtly practiced in America.
In February of 2011, tiny Walters State Community College, located a mere 30 miles down the road from Sneedville, staged a brief weekend run of the play. However, Sneedville’s connection to this modern day production was strictly tenuous. Surely, some of those lines echoed up the hills and dales of east Tennessee to settle into the vacant amphitheater grounds where they were first uttered a generation before. The play Walk Toward the Sunset ultimately proved to be as elusive as its subject matter.
Still confused? Well join the club. Although I’d successfully answered the questions posed by my puzzling pamphlet find, I now had deeper questions on my mind. I’m still not clear what a Melungeon is. Were they confined to this little area of Tennessee? Are they still around? Do I know a Melungeon? Am I a Melungeon? Well I’ll hope to answer all of these questions and more in part two of this article next week.
