Turks of South Carolina

Dr Terri Ann Ognibene, a "Sumter Turk" himself, has discussed the misrepresentations of the community:

We are the Turkish people of Sumter County, in the state of South Carolina. Our story has never been told fully and accurately. We have roots that extend all the way back to the Revolutionary War. We fought in the Civil War and in the World Wars I and II. But for centuries our rich history has been overlooked and misrepresented, our cultural identity questioned, and we were denied equal access to education because of the tones of our skin. We persevered, and we prevailed. Now, though our spirit endures, the Turkish community faces new and different challenges as a fading ethnicity in the twenty-first century.[4]

Early examples of their misrepresentation date to at least the 19th century. The tax collector of Sumter sent an inquiry dated December 7, 1858 to the South Carolina Committee on the Colored Population, inquiring as to whether the "descendants of Egyptians and Indians" who resided in Sumter should be taxed under the bracket of "Free Blacks, mulattoes and mestizos, or as whites."[5] In the early 20th century some believed that they were of primarily Native American background with some admixture of Turkish.[6] They have been mistakenly connected to a family of "Free Moors" who resided in Charleston (see Free Moors of South Carolina).

In their study on the Sumter Turks, Dr Terri Ann Ognibene and Professor Glen Browder said the following regarding identity and assimilation:

Our investigation has documented that the community of mainly dark-skinned people was founded by the Ottoman Turk, and it was nurtured by a nexus of patriarchy, blood, marriage, color, isolation, discrimination, and identity. The Benenhaleys began their secluded existence at the beginning of the 1800s and others joined them over the years. These huddled families—mainly the Benenhaleys, Oxendines, Rays, Hoods, Buckners, and Lowreys—assumed a common identity as an outcast group, and they kept to themselves for many generations in rural South Carolina. The Turkish people neither blended openly and prominently into mainstream society nor dissipated in the shadows as scattered refugees. They sustained themselves as the single clear case of an ethnic community that went its own separate way toward cultural isolation for almost two centuries. The community numbered about five hundred at its peak in the mid-twentieth century; and only in the past few decades have they begun assimilating into broader society.[7]

The "Turk" community traces its history back to an early settler, Joseph Benenhaley (mostly likey originally named "Yusef ben Ali"), from the Ottoman Empire who reputedly served the colonial cause in the American Revolutionary War.[8] He made his way to South Carolina, where he served as a scout for General Thomas Sumter during the American Revolution. The general then gave Benenhaley some land on his plantation to farm and raise a family. A few outsiders married into the family, but most who identified with the ostracized community and their progeny considered themselves people of Turkish descent. By the mid-20th century, they numbered several hundred persons.[8]

In the 1850s and 1860s, several members of the "Turk" community filed affidavits of Indian descent with the Sumter County Clerk of Court claiming they were of Catawba descent.[5] In the late 1880s McDonald Furman, an avid local historian, published numerous articles claiming that their ancestry was "a large amount of Indian blood" and said that the ancestors of the group originated from the "Catawba Indians."[5] The Turks of South Carolina today include surnames such as Benenhaley, Oxendine, Scott, Hood, Buckner, Lowery, Goins, and Ray.

The community have generally been "cautious about outside society". Consequently, "few outsiders were accepted in the community, and Turkish people mainly married within their own crowd for generations". Hence, the repetition of family surnames throughout the generations. It is very likely that while there were no forced marriages "there were unwritten societal customs in each group regarding the acceptable parameters of marriage".[9]

DNA reports on living members of the Turkish community who descend from Joseph Benenhaley showed that the genetic profile indicates significant connections to the Mediterranean-Middle Eastern-North African regions, along with substantial white European admixture and some evidence of Native American linkages.[10]

Thhe community's heritage has reflected their long experience of isolation and discrimination in rural South Carolina.[11] Due to segregation policies in the past, there were "Turkish schools, Turkish school buses, and Turkish cinemas in this period."[3]

• Turkish Americans
• Ibrahim Ben Ali, early Ottoman Turkish settler in the US
• Marie Tepe, 19th-century settler to the US of Turkish origin who fought for the Union army during the American Civil War
• Melungeon
• Brass Ankles

• Ray, Celeste; Thomas, Jr., James G. (2007). The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.
• Trillin, Calvin (March 8, 1969). "U.S. Journal: Sumter County, S.C. Turks". The New Yorker: 104.
• Hill, S. Pony (2012). Strangers In Their Own Land: South Carolina's State Tribes. Columbia: BackInTyme Press.