Heritage Photos: Meet Carolyn Casey of Gallipolis, Ohio b.1951. She shares a brief part of her genealogy and experience living in Appalachia as a person of color in Southeast Ohio.“My family heritage is mixed, on my mothers side, my great-great grandfather was a slave which I traced it back to 1786. On my father’s side, my grandmother was Dutch-Irish and my grandfather was African American and Native American, so I am kind of like a mix of it all. When I was small we lived with my grandparents and the Klan would ride through where we lived. You could hear them coming because you would hear the horses. My grandfather would always put us in his bedroom, grandmother would be standing in the living room and he would go out side. If he would yell to my grandmother, we would have to go and move the rug, to the trap door, go down underground to the cellar. We would go down there and it was a path to Mr. Shelton’s below. He was a white man, but he protected us if we had to go there, we only had to go there one time. After a while when the riders would come through they would automatically avoid my grandfather because Mr. Shelton told them to leave him along and grandfather never bother anybody. “ | Aaron Turner/ @ilikevans1 for @everydayblackamerica | #blackandwhite #bw #ohio #heritage #place #portraits #blackhistory #melungeon #storyportrait #story #people #instagood #family #identity #everydayblackamerica #blackportrait by everydayblackamerica