Answer the question at the end by quoting:

Melungeon ( m@-LUN-j@n) is a term traditionally applied to one of numerous "tri-racial isolate" groups of the Southeastern United States. Historically, Melungeons were associated with the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and eastern Kentucky. Tri-racial describes populations thought to be of mixed European, African and Native American ancestry. Although there is no consensus on how many such groups exist, estimates range as high as 200.
According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia incorporated into law in 1662, children were assigned the social status and ethnicity of their mother, regardless of their father's ethnicity or citizenship. This meant the children of African slave mothers were born into slavery. But it also meant the children of free white or mulatto women, even if fathered by enslaved African men, were born free. The free descendants of such unions formed many of the oldest free families of color. Early colonial Virginia was very much a "melting pot" of peoples, and some of these early multiracial families were ancestors of the later Melungeons. Each family line has to be traced separately. Over the generations, most individuals of the group called Melungeon were persons of mixed European and African descent, whose ancestors had been free in colonial Virginia.  Edward Price's dissertation on Mixed-Blood Populations of the Eastern United States as to Origins, Localizations, and Persistence (1950) stated that children of European and free black unions had intermarried with persons of Native American ancestry. These conclusions have been largely upheld in subsequent scholarly and genealogical studies. In 1894, the U.S. Department of the Interior, in its "Report of Indians Taxed and Not Taxed," noted that the Melungeons in Hawkins County "claim to be Cherokee of mixed blood". The term Melungeon has since sometimes been applied as a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mixed-race ancestry.  In 2012, the genealogist Roberta Estes and her fellow researchers reported that the Melungeon lines likely originated in the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s before slavery became widespread. They concluded that as laws were put in place to prevent the mixing of races, the family groups could only intermarry with each other. They migrated together from western Virginia through the Piedmont frontier of North Carolina, before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee.

why were they assigned the ethnicity of their mother instead of their father?

This meant the children of African slave mothers were born into slavery.



Answer the question at the end by quoting:

Ace of Base was a Swedish pop group, originally consisting of Ulf "Buddha" Ekberg and three siblings: Jonas "Joker" Berggren, Malin "Linn" Berggren and Jenny Berggren. The group released four studio albums between 1992 and 2002, which sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, making it the third-most successful Swedish band of all time, after ABBA and Roxette. Happy Nation (reissued as The Sign) is one of the best-selling debut albums of all time, and was certified nine times platinum in the United States.
Even though the band members were exhausted from two long years of international promotion, they could hardly believe how successful they had become. In April 1994, an obsessed German fan broke into the Berggren family home, brandishing a knife. After managing to restrain her, the band decided they needed bodyguards. However, they were unable to take time to reflect before starting work on a second album because their record companies all over the world were demanding a swift follow-up. To speed up the process, instead of Jonas and Ulf writing the bulk of the album, each member was encouraged to submit their own tracks for consideration.  In the end, 17 tracks made the cut of the second album, titled The Bridge. It marked a considerable change of direction in sound; out were the reggae and club sounds that made the group so popular in favor of a more experimental sound and several ballads. The lead single, "Lucky Love", however, was a mainstream pop record, and upon its release in October 1995, it became the band's first No. 1 single in Sweden. This came as a pleasant surprise to the members, as they had found that their fellow Swedes had been their harshest critics. It charted at a more modest No. 13 in Germany, No. 20 in the United Kingdom and No. 30 in Australia.  Arista Records instead opted for the pulsating dance beat of "Beautiful Life" for the first single in the US, where it peaked at No. 15. "Beautiful Life" was released as the second single from the album in most countries, reaching No. 15 in the UK and No. 11 in Australia, while "Lucky Love" was remixed in a new acoustic form along with a new video for the second US single from the album, peaking at No. 30. The Bridge was certified platinum in 14 countries, but the phenomenal success of the band's first album proved difficult to follow. "Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry" was released as the third single from the album and achieved moderate success in Europe, but it failed to chart on the Hot 100 in the US. In February 1996, the band performed at the Vina del Mar Festival de la Cancion in Chile, topping the bill alongside 2 Unlimited.

What other achievements did it have?
reaching No. 15 in the UK and No. 11 in Australia,