An Ohioan in Appalachia

Appalachia is mountainous and there is a shortage of flat land suitable for home building. Consequently, many people have built their homes into the hills or, more commonly, in the “hollows” between the hills. “Hollow” is basically another word for “street.”

A hollow (pronounced “hollar” by most residents) may be situated at the base of two mountains or may rise into the mountains. Either way, there are usually hills on both sides of the street. The plots of land and the homes are usually small. Looking into the mountains from below, the homes may not be visible. It’s only when you drive up the road that you can see there are homes all around.

It’s very difficult to illustrate — in words, video, or pictures — just how challenging the landscape is and how tightly the homes are packed in some of these hollows.

A hollow is not necessarily an ideal place to build a home. For one thing, an enormous amount of water washes off the mountains and the hollows are prone to flooding. The water carries with it anything in its way. In a region where trees are routinely cut and left on the ground, this can be a very dangerous thing.

Most of the roads in Appalachia are paved — floods would wash them out if they were not — but that doesn’t mean it’s easy getting in any out of these mountain hollows. Sometimes there’s just no turning room. School buses avoid the hollows. Here’s a short video clip showing tight corners in a hollow near War, West Virginia.

Black and white residents may live in the same hollow, though traditionally, they have staked out different parts of the hollow. Those boundaries are slowly blurring. Not everyone is poor, but many people are.

Residents are often very loyal to their hollows. Loretta Lynn made her birthplace famous.

“Well, I was born a coal miner’s daughter/In a cabin on a hill in Butcher Hollow.”

You might like to hear how Appalachians view their region. (You may have to lean close to the computer to hear the men. You will be rewarded if you do.)

Walt Muncy has worked in the coal mines most of his adult life. He’s 62 years old and happy to have a job, even if he also has black lung disease.

Sharon Walden has lived in McDowell County her entire life. She is the director of several non-profit agencies working to improve the community.

Josh Muncy is a 16-year-old living in McDowell County.

Marsha Timpson grew up in McDowell County. She is currently Learning Coordinator of the Citizenship Program at Big Creek People in Action, a local social service agency.

Marvin Hill is a 22-year old African American. He grew up in Appalachia but moved South to find work. He still likes to return home.

After his death, Martin Luther King Jr. flew across the pages of history like a comet, eclipsing all the other African American leaders who came before him. That’s a shame, really, because many of them — Frederick Douglas, W.E.Dubois, Harriet Tubman — were giants.

The most famous African American leader before King was born a slave on the edge of Appalachia. His name was Booker T. Washington.

Washington was the child of a local, white farmer and an African American mother. He grew up on a 207-acre tobacco farm in Franklin County, Virginia.

As a boy, Washington worked with his master in the fields. His master’s inventory log valued Washington at $400. (An adult slave was worth $500.)

Washington went to school every morning but only to carry books for his master’s daughter. He dreamed of going to school and learning to read.

After the Thirteenth Amendment was passed abolishing slavery, Washington worked as a laborer and saved money to attend school. He made his way to a school that later became Hampton University. He studied hard and graduated with honors.

When civic leaders in Tuskegee, Alabama, began looking for a man to lead a teachers college for African Americans, the president of Hampton recommended Washington. The Tuskegee Industrial and Normal school opened on July4, 1881. Washington proved to be a skilled administrator. He bought a former plantation and quickly expanded his school with strong programs in education, agriculture, and industrial trades.

To build his school, Washington cultivated powerful, wealthy white patrons. He also made a few compromises: He ignored lynching’s, accepted segregation, and restricted his school’s program to a few select fields of study.

Other African American leaders wanted Washington to adopt a more aggressive program of political action and to broaden his school’s curriculum. They strenuously criticized Washington. W.E.B. Du Bois called him the “Great Accommodator.” (The Du Bois — Washington conflict foreshadowed the Martin —Malcolm conflict: In short, just how hard should we push?) Washington believed that African Americans would accomplish more in the long run by focusing on educational — as opposed to political — advancement. (Secretly, though, he funded a variety of civil rights activities.) He believed that blacks would gain civil rights once they had proven themselves to be responsible, self-sufficient citizens.

Washington returned to his birthplace, as a world famous leader, only once — in 1908. He walked over the grave of his former master, James Burroughs, and laid down a rose. “Preserve the old, kindly relations,” he said. “For if they are lost, they can never be replaced.” Booker T. Washington died in 1915.

It is easy, in hindsight, to criticize Washington. Then again, none of us knows what its like to be born a slave. None of us knows what it was like to open a school for black students in Alabama in 1881. It is too easy to call Washington too timid. He always knew the Klan was just down the road.

So much has been written about the Hatfields and McCoys that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction. At this point, though, it probably doesn’t make much difference. (Like the newspaper editor tells Jimmy Stewart in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance": “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.)

Legend tell us that the McCoys lived mostly on the Kentucky side of the Tug Fork River and that the Hatfields lived mostly on the West Virginia side. In 1865 a Hatfield woman decided to marry a member of the McCoy clan. He ended up dead. In 1881, a McCoy woman married a Hatfield man and the feud took off again. (The Montagues and the Capulets were tame by comparison.) The families made up, or at least quit fighting, in 1891. By that time at least 13 people had died, not naturally of course, but with the aide of gunpowder and bullets.

In 1979, the families reunited on the game show “Family Feud.”

Over the years, countless books, TV shows, and movies have been made about The Feud. It seems to be a source of endless fascination for millions of people around the world. West Virginia tourism officials have tapped into this interest in an unusual way: by creating the Hatfield McCoy Trails for off road vehicles.

The H-M Trails opened in October 2000 and now encompass several hundred miles of trails running through five West Virginia counties (with plans to expand to four more counties). People come from all over the country to ride their “four wheelers” on the trails. Hikers, bikers, and horse riders are welcome, too. I suspect that many of the visitors have no interest in learning about The Feud, even if many are drawn by the Hatfield and McCoy name, which suggests a wild, untamed kind of place.

While many tourism initiatives fall flat, the H-M Trails is not one of them. The trails have already been expanded twice and counties are upgrading their infrastructure to service visitors. In McDowell County, West Virginia, the Ashland Company Store re-opened near the trail in October 2006, after lying dormant for many years. It now has a small restaurant, gift shop, and meeting rooms.

The Turner family drove to Ashland from Trinity, North Carolina (near High Point), to spend a day on the trail.

KOA campgrounds has opened a multi-million dollar all-terrain vehicle resort facility on the trail. Dave and Julie Teasdale moved from Grand Canyon, Arizona, to manage the place. The camp is doing well, though high gas prices are scaring off some customers. (Gas is need to operate the ATVs, as well as the large trucks that riders use to transport their ATVs).

Useful links:
Hatfield and McCoy Trails official site

Poet Frank X. Walker grew up in Danville, Kentucky. As a young boy, he read in a dictionary that Appalachians were the “white residents of the mountains of Appalachia.” What about the black residents? he wondered.

As an adult, Walker began writing poems about the African American experience. He coined the term “Affrilachia,” which is not a place, he says, but rather an “idea” representing the experiences and contributions of “people left out.”

Walker’s poetry covers a lot of territory. Some of it is very personal and reflects his family and life experiences. Some of it concerns society at large.

Walker is greatly interested in African American history and has pioneered a genre he calls “historical poetry.” In these poems, Walker assumes the voice or voices of real people. His book “Buffalo Dance” is written in the voice of York, a slave owned by Meriwether Lewis, who joined Lewis on his famous expedition across the continental United States. Walker hopes to broaden the audience for both history and poetry by combining these two disciplines.

In the brief video excerpt below, Walker reads from “Buffalo Dance.” York, the slave, describes his feelings after encountering nature out West.

Walker is currently working on a collection of poems about the death of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. In these poems, Walker assumes the voices of Edgar’s wife, Myrlie, his assassin Byron De La Beckwith, and Beckwith’s wife Thelma. The working title of the new book is “After Edgar: No More Fear.”

Putting words in the mouths of real people, words they did not actually say, invites some criticism. However, Walker says that poetry, unlike history, “leaves a lot of room for imagination.” (I guess that’s why they call it “poetic license.”) Nonetheless, Walker strives for accuracy and authenticity. “I take what I know is historically correct and put skin and bones on it,” he says.

Walker is not a spoken word artist. He teaches a course “from Harlem to Hip Hop,” but he does not rap. Spoken word artists and rappers are performers first and foremost. Poets are writers. They may give readings of their works — as Walker does — but they live for the written word. “Performance artists need a stage,” Walker says. “Poets need a lectern to hide behind.” There is one other difference: Poetry does not have the commercial appeal of Hip Hop. “Poetry doesn’t sell, but it’s what I do,” Walker says.

Walker founded the Affrilachian Poets, a group of writers committed to “making the invisible visible.” Membership in the group is by invitation only and poets of all races have been invited to join. Walker feels as though African-American poets from Appalachia had been “left out” by other poets, and he does not want to do same thing to other poets who share his values but not his ancestry.

Walker has published a number of well-received books, including “Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York,” “Affrilachia,” and “When Winter Comes: the Ascension of York.” Walker is the founder and editor of “Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture.” He has been awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship worth $75,000. He currently teaches at the University of Cincinnati.

Useful links:
Frank X. Walker
Pluck
Coal Black Voices
Affrilachian poets