The class of 2008

The National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored this institute on Appalachian history and culture ("Regional Study and the Liberal Arts: Appalachia Up Close"). The institute ran from June 8, 2008, to July 4, 2008, with three weeks spent on the campus of Ferrum College in Franklin County, Virginia, a weekend at Breaks Interstate Park in Virginia, and a week in Caretta, West Virginia. The institute included a mix of seminars, field trips, and service learning projects. Eighteen academics, representing a wide variety of disciplines from across the country, participated in the program.

Newly retired Ferrum College English professor Peter Crow coordinated the institute. It would be hard to overstate Crow’s good sense and his uncommon insight into people and culture. He’s a man of great wisdom and humanity.

Ferrum sociology professor Susan Mead and history professor Dan Woods assisted Crow. Mead is a woman of enormous good spirit and enthusiasm. All Mead wants is to make the world a better place, and she does, one day at a time. Woods is a man of integrity and faith. He leads by good example. Under the capable leadership of Crow, Mead, and Woods, the institute was a great success.

Please forward any comments or concerns to mgormley@centralstate.edu or talkinghead2004@yahoo.com

Appalachian roads zig and zag, move up and down.

The U.S. highway system is often touted as one of the wonders of the modern world. If so, the network of roads in Appalachia would be a close second. Highways in most parts of the United States are boring. They generally run in straight lines and when they bend, you hardly know it. In Appalachia, when roads bend, they really bend. You feel it in the gut, and over time, in the head. You always feel woozy and weak on Drammamine Drive.

Many people think of dirt roads when they think of Appalachia, but dirt roads are the exception. The roads of Appalachia are paved, not with gold, but with black asphalt.

The federal government spent more than $5 billion dollars, from the mid-60s through 1990, building 2,300 miles of highway in Appalachia. (That’s $16 billion in today’s dollars. Gold asphalt might have been less expensive.) According to the “Pittsburgh Post,” it will spend another $5 billion building the last 700 miles of the system. Highways in Appalachia are expensive. The “Post” says that it costs about $3 million to build a 1.5-mile stretch of highway in flat, western Kentucky. By comparison, a recent 1.5-mile stretch of highway in Appalachia Kentucky cost $47 million.

This small bridge project cost about $750,000.

Federal taxpayers pick up most of the tab.

Can you imagine what a bridge like this one costs?

Cutting through hills is expensive.

Cutting through mountains is even more expensive. (For perspective, look at the multi-story building in the lower, left-hand corner of the photo.)

Taxpayers have spent enormous sums of money building good roads in Appalachia. In theory, these roads are economic drivers, attracting businesses to the region. That theory has proven accurate in some areas and less accurate in others.

The road construction was also meant to lessen the isolation of many mountain communities. They have made it easier for people to get in and out of the mountains. Yet, even with the roads, many Appalachian communities remain isolated.

(Over the past month, Appalachian scholars have repeatedly told my study group that the “isolation of Appalachia” has been exaggerated. There were always trains and roads into the mountains. Yet, I do believe these experts protest too much.)

We live in a connected age. We have cell phones, satellite TVs, home computers, beepers, pagers, and more. Regardless, geography still counts. Appalachians are isolated, to a greater extent than their countrymen, from the rest of the nation. So are Hawaiians and Alaskans. (I know. I’ve lived in both places.)

Isolation, of course, is not always a bad thing. It can produce interesting results. Just think of the Galapagos Islands or Australia. Arguably, Appalachia’s isolation is what has made Appalachian culture unique. It simply wouldn’t have developed as it did if the region hadn’t been isolated from the main currents of American life.

As Appalachia’s isolation has decreased, the frustration of its residents has risen. They watch “Desperate Housewives” with a mixture of envy and disgust. “Why doesn’t my neighborhood look like that?” they wonder. “I’m an American, too.”

The truest fact about roads is that they almost always run two ways. People can get in and people can get out. The government has spent a fortune building good roads in Appalachia. Most of the traffic on them has been outbound. Appalachians have seen how the rest of the country lives. Many of them are impatient and they’re not waiting any longer.

Useful links
Pittsburgh Post Gazette article on the history of the Appalachian Regional Commission

Columbus Dispatch article questioning ARC spending practices

An old school building in Caretta, West Virginia, serves as the headquarters for Big Creek People in Action.

The bottom fell out of the local economy in McDowell County, West Virginia, in the 1980s. For a time, every coal mine in the county shut down. (An environmentalist’s dream, but a coal miner’s nightmare.) Huge numbers of residents fled the county on the “hillbilly highway.” Those who stayed behind struggled to survive.

In the midst of this, a small group of residents came together and formed an organization called “Big Creek People in Action.” The group bought an old school in Caretta for one dollar and began providing services to the community. It raised most of its money from private foundations. No one got paid the first four years.

Since then, Big Creek has provided the community with a wide variety of programs, some of which have lasted, some of which have not, including an early childhood development program, an education and literacy program, an after school program (one of the ones that didn’t last), a young leaders program and much more.

Big Creek’s Citizenship Program is one of its flagship activities. Big Creek has transformed several classrooms in the old school into dormitories. Church and university groups come to Big Creek, usually for a week at a time, stay in the dorms and work in the community. They fix houses, paint churches, repair porch steps…you get the idea.

A dorm room at Big Creek People in Action headquarters.

My group planted a garden, initiated an Internet Blog for a young leaders group, and created a new library at the Big Creek building.

Laura Cramblet of Bethany College, West Virginia, spearhead the effort to create a new library at Big Creek People in Action.

All of this is good, of course, but does it really make a difference…over the log term? Well, it’s clear that Big Creek has helped an enormous number of residents over the last 18 years. Thousands of residents have been helped in tangible ways.

It’s less clear that Big Creek has had much of an impact over the long term. McDowell County is as poor as ever. Then again, would the situation be any better without Big Creek? Doubtful.

Over the last eight years, the residents of McDowell County have faced serious challenges. Since 2000, there are have been four floods — two one-hundred-year floods and one five-hundred-year flood. One of the floods inundated Big Creek’s headquarters building. “That really changed the dynamic of Big Creek People in Action and the people it serves,” co-founder Frankie Rutherford says. “For several years, the focus of Big Creek was on survival.”

Big Creek co-founder Frankie Rutherford.

Big Creek and the community both survived but neither prospered. The group is in serious financial trouble, is struggling to fill several staff positions, and is without an executive director. Marsha Timpson, Learning Coordinator of the Citizenship Program, has stepped into the breach and provided energetic leadership to the group. Timpson says the county will never return to its glory days, but “it can be better, and we want to help make it better.”

The irrepressible, very-likely-irreplaceable Marsha Timpson does it all.

As a reporter, I learned to be cynical about self –help groups that talk big but accomplish very little. But I’ve been very impressed with the people at Big Creek. They are battling powerful forces — globalization, a variety of social ills, the mechanization of jobs— with no guarantee or likelihood of success. Let’s hope they keep up the good fight.

Useful links:
Big Creek People In Action

Here are a few that deserve to be seen.

I saved him. Does that make me a hero? Some people would say so. As for me, let’s just say I’m a man who heeds the call of duty.

Van Gogh would approve..

Carol,Flora, Bonnie and friend.

This natural gas drill overlooks the states of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky. People are still making money extracting resources from Appalachia.

Race fans at the NASCAR track in Martinsville, Virginia.

This war memorial in Welch, West Virginia, was built to honor African Americans who served in World War I. It is currently being renovated.

This picturesque general store is situated just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Coalwood is a small mining town in McDowell County, West Virginia. It provides the setting for the book “Rocket Boys,” which tells the tale of a young boy, who, with the help of friends, wins a science contest and later works for NASA.

Appalachia by way of Morocco. (I honestly have know idea what this building is. I took the photo from my car window.)

A mansion in Bluefield: the “other” Appalachia.

The cleanest lake beach I have ever visited … in Franklin County, West Virginia.

We laughed, we cried, we barely survived…the drive up the mountain behind Muncy cabin. Walt Muncy took the wheel. He knows no fear.

I went to War this week and survived to tell the tale. Some of the things I saw —abandoned buildings, vacant storefronts — I fully expected. But some of what I saw surprised me.

The streets of War bustled. The people seemed busy and happy —more so than the people of Welch who I hand encountered the day before.

A sidewalk vendor sells hot dogs on the streets of War.

Why did the people of War seem so much happier? “It’s the first of the month,” a colleague told me. Ah, that explained it. The checks had begun to arrive.

It’s safe to say that most of the people in McDowell County, West Virginia, rely on the government in some way. They either work for the government (or an agency funded by the government) or receive some other kind of government check. The federal government mails out a lot of checks each month, including welfare, unemployment, disability, and social security checks. It provides rental assistance, food stamps, school lunches, head start programs, and more. So people are pretty happy at the start of the month. That’s when everyone’s Uncle Sam steps up to the plate. The problem is the rest of the month. Despite all the government help, people here are very poor.

A social service agency described the county in a grant proposal that I obtained. Here is what the proposal said:

Our residents face many challenges. The county is the 8th poorest in America, with a median family income that is less than half the national one, and an unemployment rate that persistently doubles the state rate and more than triples the national rate. We have the 5th highest child poverty rate in American, with 100 percent of our children living in high poverty neighborhoods; 82 percent of our students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Education has not enabled residents to reach their full potential, as 37 percent are illiterate (the highest rate in West Virginia); 48 percent of the population lacks a high school education; 22 percent of teens are high school dropouts, 29 percent of youth between 16 and 19 are not in school and are not working; and only 5.6 percent of the work force are college graduates. We have the 6th worst health status in America. Absentee landowners own 85 percent of the land and natural resources.

A hospital administrator told a colleague that 70 percent of the women who give birth at her hospital test positive for drugs. More than two-thirds of the homes in McDowell County discharge sewage directly into local streams. I saw a nice home on the market for $30,000 and the owner told me that she hopes to get $20-25,000. A social worker told me that a coal company tested 163 job applicants for drugs. Five applicants passed. A WalMart opened three months late because it had trouble finding drug-free applicants. And so on.

Poverty today, of course, is different from poverty forty years ago. And poverty in Appalachia is different from poverty in the developing world. Few people go hungry in Appalachia. (Indeed, there is an epidemic of obesity here.) Residents may not live in big houses, but the houses have electricity and running water. Just about everyone has cable or satellite TV, a cell phone, a working car, and possibly a home computer. I drove my car down a poor hollow outside Welch, West Virginia, and was able to detect a wireless airport with my computer. That’s American poverty.

American poverty: The main commercial thoroughfare in Welch is mostly vacant.

This five-story parking garage is a symbol of past prosperity. It’s been closed for years.

It’s hard to know why this poverty exists, much less what can be done about it. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that Appalachia is isolated. In a world of highways, concrete and digital, Appalachia remains a place apart. The mountain geography does not invite industry.

The culture here is also somewhat insular. It is friendly but not necessarily inviting. Immigrants — who tend to be very entrepreneurial — tend to go elsewhere. They go where they feel welcome and where they find economic opportunity. By going, they create even more economic opportunity.

Many Appalachians have left the region for greener pastures. Some coal mining counties have lost 75 percent of their peak population. Economic progress is almost impossible in such a situation.

Appalachian culture, which is romanticized from the inside and belittled from the outside, is problematic in other ways. Substance abuse is common here. Educational achievement is weak. Dependence on the government has become a way of life.

The economy in Appalachia has long relied on extractive industries — timber, coal, and gas — that no longer produce enough jobs or wealth. Residents of the region must find new ways to make money. They must reinvent this place.

I wish that I could blame the government for the poverty in Appalachia. I think the government has hurt the region by failing to protect manufacturers from unfair trade. Certainly, the textile industry has been hurt by our trade policies. But the coal industry has not. The coal industry is booming. It’s just not employing many people. That happened because of technological change — mechanization — and there’s not much the government can do about that.

The federal government has spent enormous sums of money trying to lift Appalachians out of poverty. It has built highways and dams. It has funded a social safety net and an alphabet soup of welfare programs. And people are still poor.

To be fair, the poverty rate has been cut in half over the last half century. Some parts of Appalachia are making real progress, though there is still severe poverty in other parts, such as the coal mining region. Unfortunately, much of the region’s progress rests on a thin reed of government spending. If government spending drops significantly, many local economies will collapse, if they haven’t already.

After seeing first hand, the level of poverty in southern West Virginia, I am at a loss over what can be done to solve the problem.

It’s almost as bad as Youngstown.

No one in War minds if the Ten Commandments are posted on the front of City Hall (in this picture, to the right of the entrance.)

Editorial Note: I am usually pretty aggressive taking pictures of people. People pictures are better than building pictures. When traveling through the developing world, poor people are often quite happy — even thrilled — to have their pictures taken. The camera is such a novelty to them and with digital cameras, you can show them the results immediately. In Appalachia, people react differently to cameras. They know what cameras are and they know why you want to take their pictures — to illustrate a point. So I’ve reigned in my aggressive instincts with this blog.
Useful links
McDowell County, WV (official site)
McDowell County, WV (Wikipedia)

Substantial homes line this West Virginia hollow.

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.”

The only thing worse than the sound of the trains passing by is the sound of silence when they stop. The trains stopped running through this hollow, near Caretta, WV, years ago.

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.

Timber and utility companies are responsible for most of the trees that are cut down in Appalachia. They don’t always remove cut trees. That can pose a real hazard to homeowners.

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.

A home in a hollow.

“Delores” has spent her entire life in her hollow.

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.

Young 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.

A tobacco barn on the farm where Washington lived..

The farm has been recreated replete with farm animals.

The cabin where Washington was born no longer stands.

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.

As a young man, Washington lived in Malden, West Virginia, near Charleston. He worked as a laborer in the salt industry.

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.

The Turner family of Trinity, North Carolina, is read to ride the Hatfield McCoy Trails.

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.

There are dirt trails and gravel trails — more than 300 miles of them.

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.

Ferrum College professor Susan Mead browses for gifts.

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).

Dave and Julie Teasdale moved from Grand Canyon, Arizona, to operate the new camping park.

Useful links:
Hatfield and McCoy Trails official site

Poet Frank X. Walker

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.

A Frank X. Walker sampler.

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

Hispanic men, legal and illegal immigrants, have been showing up in greater numbers in Appalachia.

Appalachia is more diverse than many people believe but still less diverse than the country at large.

In the United States as a whole, 14.8 percent of the population is Hispanic, 12.4 percent is African American, and 4 percent is Asian. In Appalachia, the population is 8 percent African American, two percent Hispanic, and less than two percent for all other racial groups. (In reality, of course, no one really knows how many Hispanics are in the region. Many of them are transient and illegal.)

Most of the region’s minority populations are concentrated in the Deep South states of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and the Carolinas and in urban areas such as Pittsburgh and greater Atlanta. Appalachia Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Virginia have relatively small minority populations. As elsewhere, minorities in Appalachia tend to be poorer than the majority white population.

Although the minority population in Appalachia is small, compared to the country as a whole, it is growing. According to the Census Bureau, nearly half of Appalachia’s additional 321,000 residents since 2000 have been minority. Latinos alone made up one-fourth of the additional population. The increase is attributable to migration and higher fertility rates. (Minorities tend to have more children at a younger age than white residents.)

It is not difficult to determine why the minority population here is small. African Americans first came to this country as slaves and most of them were brought to work in cotton and sugar plantations. Those plantations did not exist in Appalachia. Once African Americans became free, they moved to areas of economic opportunity.

Many African Americans moved from the South to the North in the early part of the 20th century. A sizeable number moved to Appalachia to work in the coalfields. However, when the coalfields were mechanized, many of the coal operators decided that African Americans could not work mechanized equipment. The number of people employed in the coalfields soon dropped dramatically anyway, and most African Americans moved on to greener pastures. African Americans constitute a smaller share of the population today than they did in the past.

A more insular local culture has also likely contributed to the region’s homogenous population (which in turns has shaped the region’s culture).

The fact that Appalachia is less diverse than the country as a whole is…well, troubling to some progressives. It’s easy to understand why. In the United States today, diversity is considered the supreme virtue. We used to brag about the First Amendment (you know, freedom of religion, a free press, the right to assemble, etc.). We used to brag about our democratic system of government. We even bragged about our capitalist economic system. But no more. Today we brag about diversity.

Since diversity is the supreme virtue, to be “less diverse” is to be “less virtuous.” So Appalachia is no longer just poorer than the rest of the country, it is less virtuous.

Needless to say, that argument is silly.

At the same time, what is not silly is the attempt of minorities living in Appalachia to draw some attention to their history and contribution to the region. African Americans, in particular, have deep roots in Appalachia. But they have been rendered invisible by a stereotype that does not include people of color.

(In truth, many African Americans are happy to be excluded from the hillbilly stereotype and many do not consider themselves “Appalachian.” That label comes with too much negative baggage.)

Darlene Swain, an African American hairdresser in Rocky Mount, Virginia, has worked hard for many years to raise the profile of African Americans in her community. Swain published a book, “Extraordinary People of Franklin County: Black Residents 80 and Older.” She also started an African American street fair, in 1999, an event that has proven popular with people of all backgrounds. The Warren Street Festival is held in August just outside Swain’s salon (the “Glamour House of Beauty"). Warren Street once served as the commercial center for the African American community in Rocky Mount.

Darlene Swain is an African American business owner in Rocky Mount, Virginia. Here she is with a customer in her hair salon.

Swain’s dream is to establish an African American museum. She has already purchased a plot of land behind her salon and begun gathering artifacts for display. She has made a collage highlighting some of the famous African Americans who came from Rocky Mount. (Jesse Martin, the former star of “Law and Order,” is from Rocky Mount.)

Swain says it will cost several hundred thousand dollars to build a museum and she knows that it will be difficult to raise the money. But she’s determined to try.

Swain collects photos and memorabilia highlighting the accomplishments of Rock Mount’s African American residents.

Interesting note: Though Appalachia is less diverse than many parts of the country, it is home to one rather distinct racial group. Melungeons are mixed race Appalachians. The term is usually applied to isolated tri-racial groups who are thought to have European, African, and native American ancestry

Primary Source: A New Diversity: Race and Ethnicity in the Appalachian Region by Kevin. M. Pollard.

Useful links
Demographic reports from the Appalachian Regional Commission
Kevin Pollard’s “New Diversity” report
Wikipedia article about melungeons