Terra Vance, distant cousin of Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, has some words for her relative. Vance, she says, is Melungeon, like her and like Barack Obama, too. He has sold out his fierce and mixed-race ancestors to become both a scab and a Pinkerton.
Our team found Terra just as we were looking into JD’s connections to Peter Thiel and the “Tech Bros of San Francisco,” seeking to turn that city into a mini-apartheid state.
Her writing on her Melungeon roots, the history of West Virginia and its real hillbillies, and her comments on JD Vance and his ancestry were compelling reads. So, we published her on our new Substack “Moment of Truth Dispatch.”
In this show, Terra Vance talks about the history of Melungeons in Appalachia, how they founded West Virginia and became a new kind of slave in the coal mines and coal camps. Terra is an actual hillbilly from the hollers of West Virginia. Based on her genealogy research and in her writings, she confronts JD on the harm inherent in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, in his current VP campaign with MAGA and Donald Trump, as well as JD’s support for the alarming screed, The Unhumans, by Jack Posobiec–originator of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy. JD, she says, continues to exploit the legacy of their shared ancestors to throw Appalachians, and other working class and poor Americans, under the bus.
Terra is also a community organizer from the coal camps of West Virginia, with a passion for practicing and preserving her Melungeon culture and heritage. She is the founder of NeuroClastic, a nonprofit that centers underrepresented voices in neurodiversity advocacy.
Also in this interview: the West Virginia Coal Wars, or Mine Wars, the Bunch Family, the Sheriff Sid Hatfield, who stood up to the coal companies to protect workers, life in the coal mines and coal camps, Rockefeller, the Trump Administration and how West Virginians continue to suffer from coal company greed, poisoned water and disease due to the mines.
Please see Terra Vance’s essay on JD Vance and his Melungeon roots here.
JD Vance and the Tech Bros of San Francisco in “The Lords of Vance” article, Metro Newspapers.
Our shows on “Sad Francisco,” the new Tech Bro Gentry There, and the Far Right Takeover of That City
Terra Vance Official Facebook Page. Please find much of her writing here.
