From the War on Poverty to Grassroots Feminism in the Appalachian South

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Carolina Digital Repository WHERE MOVEMENTS MEET: FROM THE WAR ON POVERTY TO GRASSROOTS FEMINISM IN THE APPALACHIAN SOUTH Jessica Wilkerson A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree of doctor of philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2014 Approved by: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Laura Edwards James L. Leloudis Nancy MacLean Zaragosa Vargas ©2014 Jessica Wilkerson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Jessica Wilkerson: Where Movements Meet: From the War on Poverty to Grassroots Feminism in the Appalachian South (Under the direction of Jacquelyn Dowd Hall) This dissertation traces the alliances forged and the grassroots movements led by women in the Appalachian South in the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on eastern Kentucky. With a wide variety of sources, including oral history interviews, archival film footage, memorabilia, local and underground publications, and manuscript collections, it shows how women shaped the federal War on Poverty in Appalachia and then used the skills they learned in antipoverty programs to foster social justice activism that continued in the 1970s and beyond. Women in Appalachia, who have seldom been seen as actors in the movements of the 1960s, were key leaders and foot soldiers in what contemporaries called the Appalachian Movement, which intersected with civil rights organizations and had its roots in the War on Poverty. Rural, poor and working-class women helped to shape debates about welfare rights, women’s rights, and labor justice in the 1960s and 1970s, connecting white and black women, insiders and outsiders, to form a robust, interracial, intergenerational, and region-wide movement. This dissertation makes two major contributions to the study of post-1945 America. First, by exploring how rural, poor, and working-class women in Appalachia—a virtually invisible group in U.S. history—organized in behalf of welfare rights, women’s rights, and economic justice, it shows that the battle over welfare and rights in twentieth-century America was more diverse than popular narratives assume. Second, it challenges our narrow understanding of the modern women’s movement in the United States by accounting for the gender-conscious iii activism of working-class and poor women. Women in Appalachia built a movement that reflected the concerns of second-wave feminism and, at the same time, drew upon local traditions and addressed the particular experiences of women in Appalachia. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During my first month of graduate school at UNC, my grandmother Ethel Fay Spitzer passed away. For weeks I felt unmoored. It was hard to imagine my life as a scholar without her, for she believed in me as no one else could. Her dreams for me were as much about dreams deferred in her own life. It is with my grandmother’s story in mind that I acknowledge the great privilege I have had to pursue higher education. I could not have completed this dissertation without the steadfast support of mentors. Jacquelyn Hall’s enthusiasm for research, writing, and teaching is infectious. I thank her for her guidance as I wrote this dissertation and, in general, for modeling how to do this work with grace and compassion. Priscilla Murolo provided me early and important lessons on how to be a scholar, and she was the first person to encourage me to pursue a PhD. After pouring over her books for many years, I finally got to know (and interview) Helen Matthews Lewis, whose commitment to social justice and Appalachia have long inspired me. Laura Edwards, Zaragosa Vargas, Nancy MacLean, and James Leloudis, all on my dissertation committee, have provided helpful advice. I took a more winding path through higher education than some and met wonderful people along the way. As an undergraduate at Carson Newman College, John Wells, Andrew Hazucha, Jeff Daniel Marion, Beth Vanlandingham, and Susan Underwood helped me imagine what once seemed impossible. I had the great fortune to attend the master’s program in Women’s History at Sarah Lawrence College, and I am grateful for the teachers and friends I met there, including Tara James, Lyde Sizer, Mary Dillard, Abby Lester, Vanessa Carr, Maranda Hyde, and v my forever friend Sonia Arora. After receiving my master’s I taught writing and history courses at Walters State Community College and Pellissippi State Technical and Community College. I especially want to thank colleagues and students at Pellissippi, who helped me to become a better teacher. My colleagues at the University of North Carolina have made this process enjoyable. I was lucky to find myself in a cohort full of future friends. Joey Fink, Shannon Eaves, Ben Reed, and Kristin Deiss were there from the beginning, and I am grateful for the range of emotions we have shared in together. Anna Krome-Lukens, Brad Proctor, and Liz Lundeen made up a skillful writing group. They helped me meet deadlines and sharpen my writing, and they offered a space to both celebrate and commiserate. I am glad to be in a department with so many women’s historians-in-training, including Sarah McNamara, Jennifer Donnally, and Nora Doyle. I am also grateful to my neighbors, especially Melody Ivins and Xaris Martínez. I have been fortunate to receive feedback at every stage of writing my dissertation. Early on in my graduate career I gave a paper at the UNC-Duke Working Group in Feminism and History and later as I was writing my dissertation. I am also grateful to the scholars who read and commented on my papers at conferences, including Annelise Orleck, Laurie Green, Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Ken Fones-Wolf, Robert Weise, Melissa Estes-Blair, Lisa Levenstein, Priscilla Murolo, and Ileen Devault. For their guidance in the archives, I want to thank Shannon Wilson and Harry Rice at Berea College, Larry LaFollete and Robert Gipe at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, staff at the Louie B. Nunn Oral History Center, and archivists at the LBJ Presidential Library, Appalachian State University, and East Tennessee State University. vi I could not have completed this dissertation without generous financial support. I thank the Center for the Study of the American South, the Southern Oral History Program, the History Department at UNC, the UNC Graduate School and Weiss Fellowship Program, the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Berea College and the Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship, and the Archie Green Occupational Folklife Graduate Fellowship. I am especially grateful to the American Association of University Women for providing me a dissertation completion fellowship. I thank the Southern Oral History Program for hiring me for various jobs these past five years. That work helped to pay the bills, and it was also always rewarding. The oral history project “The Long Women’s Movement in the American South” made me think about my own dissertation in new and exciting ways. Special thanks go to the many people who shared their stories with me and whose names are listed in the bibliography. Their commitment to social justice inspires me daily. I also want to thank the interviewers who have recorded and archived people’s memories of the War on Poverty. They understand, often personally, the importance of that history, and because of their commitment my work is stronger than it would be otherwise. I am grateful for the support of my family. Martha and Dennis Wilkerson have always given me the space to explore the life of the mind, even if it did not always make much practical sense. My siblings Jud and Tess have a special knack for offering perspective: Jud as he and Heather have become parents to Addison and Ella, and Tess and Jeremy who have had their fair share of calamities. I thank the Sherry clan for adopting me and Margie Sherry in particular for being such an amazing cheerleader. I owe Brian Sherry. He has a magical way of simultaneously championing me and grounding me. He has encouraged me to take care of my body and soul, he has worked hard so that I could go to school, and he has shown infinite amounts of patience. I vii have learned much from his commitment to his work and community at the Carolina Living and Learning Center. I look forward to our next adventure. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One: Paths to the Movement: Women’s Memories of Life in Appalachian Kentucky………………………………………………………….22 Chapter Two: Women, Youth, and Coalition Work………………………………………58 Chapter Three: Movements for Poor People’s Rights……………………………………116 Chapter Four: Community Organizing in Eastern Kentucky……………………………..171 Chapter Five: Women, Labor, and Protest in Harlan County…………………………….220 Chapter Six: “The Whole Thing Comes Down on the Women”: Voices for Gender Justice in Appalachia…………………………………………………264 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………......306 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………312 ix INTRODUCTION As a college student in East Tennessee, I heard stories about women who in the 1960s and 1970s battled coal industries, marched on Washington, and fought against bitter poverty. I saw the documentary films You Got To Move and Harlan County, USA, in which women played crucial roles in local struggles for environmental and labor justice. I learned about the Highlander Research and Education Center, located just a few miles from my college, and about the women from Appalachia who had passed through its doors. Some had joined the civil rights movement; others stood on picket lines with the United Mine Workers of America; still others were the first women to break down gender barriers in industrial coal mines. I heard Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are you On?” and other songs women activists wrote and sang.

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