Uneven Ground (47 page)

The stories that we tell about ourselves can give us a vision for the kind of community we want to become, and building a vision of alternative possibilities is critical if we desire broad-based systemic change. When we recognize our own history and exchange false stories for real stories, we nurture pride and identity. It is a first step, but that is not enough. Understanding our history must lead to a conversation about what we want to become as a people. As the prophets have said, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Regaining control of our cultural stories can generate hope that an alternative future is possible, even in Appalachia. Developing such a vision will require us to move beyond a philosophy that says, “It's all about me,” and to replace it with one that says, “We're in it together.” It will require us to think collectively, to create networks of existing organizations committed to fundamental value change, and to nurture new democratic leadership that encourages creativity and confidence for the future. Moving to a culture of mutual responsibility will help us open up our civic processes to expand diversity, transparency, and participation. Only then can we confront the complex structural challenges of an extractive economy that has drained the region of its physical and human wealth and of an extractive political system that has benefited few at the expense of many.

There is little prospect for another national War on Poverty or a new federal initiative designed to address the regional problems of Appalachia. So what do we do? Those who care about the mountains and about mountain people must have the courage to challenge the cultural assumptions both within and without the region that have brought us to this point. We must have the fortitude to offer a new vision of the possibilities for a truly new Appalachia, one that provides an adequate and meaningful life for all Appalachians in a balanced and sustainable relationship to the land itself. We must change federal and state policies, transform local and regional economies, improve civic life, reform public institutions, and change our own behavior. Above all, using old and new communication tools, we should facilitate a regional conversation about values and how we collectively define the good life.

Along with the rest of America, Appalachia must undergo a deep transformation in values and behavior if we are to bridge the troubled waters of the region's environmental, social, and economic crises. Building a broad social movement for such a transformation in the twenty-first century is possible if we learn the lessons of our own history.

1
. Michael Harrington,
The Other America: Poverty in the United States
(New York: Macmillan, 1962).

Epigraph: Harriette Arnow,
The Dollmaker
(New York: Macmillan, 1954), 24–25.

1
. See Ronald D Eller,
Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982).

2
. Alva W. Taylor, “Up a Kentucky Mountain Cove,”
Mountain Life and Work
, Winter 1942, 19.

3
. Wayne T. Gray, “Mountain Dilemmas: Study in Mountain Attitudes,”
Mountain Life and Work
, April 1936, 1. See also J. Wesley Hatcher, “Glimpses of Appalachian America's Basic Conditions of Living,” pts. 1 and 2,
Mountain Life and Work
, October 1938, 1–5; January 1939, 1–9.

4
. Rexford G. Tugwell, “The Resettlement Administration and Its Relation to the Appalachian Mountains,”
Mountain Life and Work
, October 1935, 3.

5
. Quoted in Eller,
Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers
, 242.

6
. “National Defense and Mountain Communities,”
Mountain Life and Work
, Winter 1942, 1–15.

7
. Ibid., 12.

8
. Olaf F. Larson, “Wartime Migration and the Manpower Reserve on Farms in Eastern Kentucky,”
Rural Sociology
8, no. 2 (1943).

9
. Taylor, “Kentucky Mountain Cove,” 20.

10
. Harry M. Caudill,
Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), 223.

11
. Jerry Wayne Napier, “Mines, Miners, and Machines: Coal Mine Mechanization and the Eastern Kentucky Coal Fields, 1890–1990” (PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 1997), 42, 48.

12
. Ibid., 41.

13
. Quoted in Caudill,
Night Comes
, 228.

14
. Curtis Seltzer,
Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 61; Napier, “Mines, Miners, and Machines,” 62–63.

15
. Seltzer,
Fire in the Hole
, 59–63; Napier, “Mines, Miners, and Machines,” 62–66; Joseph E. Finley,
The Corrupt Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of the United Mine Workers
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 168–70. See also Thomas N. Bethell, “Conspiracy in Coal,” in
Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening
, ed. David S. Walls and John B. Stephenson (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1972).

16
. Napier, “Mines, Miners, and Machines,” 56.

17
. Ibid., 75.

18
. Appalachian Regional Commission,
Appalachian Data Book
(Washington, DC: ARC, 1967); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Technology, Productivity, and Labor in the Bituminous Coal Industry 1950–79
, Bulletin 2072 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1981).

19
. Clyde B. McCoy and James S. Brown, “Appalachian Migration to Midwestern Cities,” in
The Invisible Minority: Urban Appalachians
, ed. William W. Philliber and Clyde B. McCoy (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981), 36, table 3.1. See also Chad Berry,
Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

20
. James S. Brown and Harry K. Schwarzweller, “The Appalachian Family,” in
Appalachia: Its People, Heritage, and Problems
, ed. Frank S. Riddel (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1974), 71.

21
. Clyde B. McCoy and Virginia McCoy Watkins, “Stereotypes of Appalachian Migrants,” in Philliber and McCoy,
Invisible Minority
, 29.

22
. Quoted in Jack T. Kirby, “The Southern Exodus, 1910–1960: A Primer for Historians,”
Journal of Southern History
49, no. 4 (1983): 598.

23
. Bob Downing, “Akron, West Virginia,”
Mountain Review
, May 1976, 2–4; David Giffels and Steve Love, “Appalachia to Akron,”
Akron Beacon Journal
, February 9, 1997;
Akron Beacon Journal
, August 2, 1937.

24
. Albert N. Votaw, “The Hillbillies Invade Chicago,”
Harper's
, February 1958, 64.

25
. Harry W. Ernst, “Appalachians in a Hostile World,”
Charleston (WV) Gazette-Mail
, October 9, 1966.

26
. For the origins of Appalachian stereotypes and the associated “idea of Appalachia,” see Henry David Shapiro,
Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).

27
. Votaw, “Hillbillies Invade Chicago,” 67.

28
. McCoy and Watkins, “Stereotypes of Appalachian Migrants,” 22.

29
. Ibid., 24.

30
. W. L. Hamilton, F. C. Collignon, and C. E. Carlson, “The Causes of Rural to Urban Migration among the Poor,” in Riddel,
Appalachia
, 187; Hal Bruno, “Chicago's Hillbilly Ghetto,”
Reporter
, June 4, 1964, 28.

31
. Roscoe Giffin, “From Cinder Hollow to Cincinnati,”
Mountain Life and Work
, Winter 1956, 16.

32
. See John R. Hundley, “The Mountain Man in Northern Industry,”
Mountain Life and Work
, Summer 1955, 33–38; B. H. Luebke and John Fraser Hart, “Migration from a Southern Appalachian Community,”
Land Economics
34, no. 1 (1958); and Bruno, “Chicago's Hillbilly Ghetto,” 28–31.

33
. Ernst, “Appalachians in a Hostile World.”

34
. Michael Maloney, “The Prospects for Urban Appalachians,” in Philliber and McCoy,
Invisible Minority
, 168. See also Giffin, “From Cinder Hollow,” 11–20, and Ronald D Eller, “Lost and Found in the Promised Land: The Education of a Hillbilly,” in
One Hundred Years of Appalachian Visions
, ed. Bill Best (Berea, KY: Appalachian Imprints, 1997), 125–30.

35
. John D. Photiadis, “Occupational Adjustment of Appalachians in Cleveland,” in Philliber and McCoy,
Invisible Minority
. See also James N. Gregory,
The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

36
. “The Southern Mountaineer in Cincinnati,”
Mountain Life and Work
, Fall 1954, 23.

37
. Ora Spaid, “Southerners Shuttle North, Back,”
Louisville Courier-Journal
, October 21, 1959; Bruno, “Chicago's Hillbilly Ghetto,” 31.

38
. James S. Brown and George A. Hillery Jr., “The Great Migration, 1940–1960,” in
The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey
, ed. Thomas R. Ford (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1962), 59.

39
. Ibid., 39, 59–60.

40
. Appalachian Regional Commission,
Appalachian Data Book
.

41
. Roy E. Proctor and T. Kelley White, “Agriculture: A Reassessment,” in Ford,
Southern Appalachian Region
.

42
. U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Census of Population, 1950
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1952); U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Census of Population, 1960
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1962).

43
. Appalachian Regional Commission,
Appalachian Data Book
.

44
. Kentucky Agricultural Development Board,
Economic Data on Eastern Kentucky Coal Field
(Frankfort: Commonwealth of Kentucky, 1956), 9.

45
. U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Census of Population, 1950
; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Census of Population, 1960
.

46
. President's Appalachian Regional Commission,
Appalachia: A Report
by the President's Appalachian Regional Commission
(Washington, DC: PARC, 1964), 1–3; William E. Cole, “Social Problems and Welfare Services,” in Ford,
Southern Appalachian Region
, 245; Appalachian Regional Commission,
Appalachia: Twenty Years of Progress
(Washington, DC: ARC, 1985), 13.

47
. Appalachian Regional Commission,
Twenty Years of Progress
, 13.

48
. Orin Graff, “The Needs of Education,” in Ford,
Southern Appalachian Region
, 190.

49
. President's Appalachian Regional Commission,
Report
, 10.

50
. Ibid., 13; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Census of Population, 1960
.

51
. Harry W. Ernst, “For 300,000 West Virginians: A Starvation Diet?”
Mountain Life and Work
, Spring 1959.

52
. Caudill,
Night Comes
, 275.

53
. Paul F. Cressey, “The Changing Highlands,”
Mountain Life and Work
, Fall 1951, 45.

54
. For mountain politics, see Frank Duff, “Government in an Eastern Kentucky Coal County” (master's thesis, University of Kentucky, 1950); Richard A. Ball, “Social Change and Power Structure: An Appalachian Case,” in
Change in Rural Appalachia: Implications for Action Programs
, ed. John D. Photiadis and Harry K. Schwarzweller (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), 156–58; H. Dudley Plunckett and Mary Jean Bowman,
Elites and Change in the Kentucky Mountains
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1973); Caudill,
Night Comes
, 280–83; Harry M. Caudill, “The Permanent Poor: The Lesson of Eastern Kentucky,”
Atlantic
, June 1964, 49–53; Harry M. Caudill,
Theirs Be the Power: The Moguls of Eastern Kentucky
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983); Harry M. Caudill,
The Senator from Slaughter County
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973); and Lester Perry,
Forty Years of Mountain Politics
(Parsons, WV: McClain, 1971).

55
. Ken Hechler, “TVA Ravages the Land,”
Environmental Journal
, July 1971, 16.

56
. Eller,
Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers
, 55; Caudill,
Night Comes
, 73, 306. See also Robert Wiese,
Grasping at Independence: Debt, Male Authority, and Mineral Rights in Appalachian Kentucky, 1850–1915
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001).

57
. Harry M. Caudill, “The Mountaineers in the Affluent Society,”
Environmental Journal
, July 1971, 19.

58
. Harry M. Caudill, “The Rape of the Appalachians,”
Atlantic
, April 1962, 41–42; Caudill,
Night Comes
, 318–21; Hechler, “TVA Ravages the Land,” 15–16; James Branscome,
The Federal Government in Appalachia
(New York: Field Foundation, 1977), 15–16.

59
. U.S. Forest Service, Eastern Region,
Tri-State Floods, January 29–30, 1957: Disaster through Land Misuse
, n.d., Special Collections and Archives,
Hutchins Library, Berea College, Berea, KY; Caudill,
Night Comes
, 322–23; “Floods Must Be Controlled,”
Mountain Life and Work
, Spring 1957, 35–36.