Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening

University of Kentucky UKnowledge Appalachian Studies Arts and Humanities 1972 Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening David S. Walls Sonoma State University John B. Stephenson Berea College Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Walls, David S. and Stephenson, John B., "Appalachia in the Sixties: Decade of Reawakening" (1972). Appalachian Studies. 6. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_appalachian_studies/6 APPALACHIA IN THE SIXTIES This page intentionally left blank APPALACHIA IN THE SIXTIES Decade of Reawakening Edited by David S. Walls & John B. Stephenson The University Press of Kentucky Copyright © 1972 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-0135-4 (pbk: acid-free paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses DAN GIBSON To RUPERT B. VANCE the memory of JUANITA BAIN This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface xi Part One The Early Sixties Recognition Again The Lost Appalachians 3 HARRY w. ERNST & CHARLES H. DRAKE In Hazard 10 DAN WAKEFIELD The Latest Rediscovery of Appalachia RoBERT F. MuNN Declarations of War & Forecasts of Victory No More Pork Barrel: The Appalachia Approach 31 }ERALD TER HoRsT How Much Better Will the Better World Be? RuPERT B. VANCE Part Two Between a Rock & a Hard Place The Quality of Life: Hard Times in God's Country Life in Appalachia-The Case of Hugh McCaslin 47 RoBERT CoLES Kennedy Hears of Need 62 T. N. BETHELL, PAT GisH, & ToM GISH The Politics of Coal East Kentucky Coal Makes Profits for Owners, Not Region 6g }AMES C. MILLSTONE Conspiracy in Coal T. N. BETHELL The Scandal of Death & Injury in the Mines 92 BEN A. FRANKLIN Environmental Pillage The Logical Thing, Costwise CALVIN TRILLIN Hot Time Ahead :1.1.6 T. N. BETHELL Strip Mining in East Kentucky DAVID B. BROOKS Migration: Take It or Leave It A Look at the 1.970 Census 130 }AMES 5. BROWN The Uptown Story 144 BILL MONTGOMERY The Family behind the Migrant 153 }AMES 5. BROWN Part Three Lessons in Fighting Poverty Organizing at the Grassroots A Rope to Jump, a Well to Dig THOMAS pARRISH Fair Elections in West Virginia K. w. LEE On the Outside Lookin' In JEANNE M. RAsMussEN Local Reactions: Outside Agitators, Subversives, & Other Helping Hands Kentucky's Coal Beds of Sedition PAuLGooo A Stranger with a Camera CALVIN TRILLIN Catalyst of the Black Lung Movement 201 K. w. LEE Romantic Appalachia 210 DoN WEsT Part Four Can We Get There from Here? Education & Youth The School & Politics 2.19 PETER ScHRAG The Crisis of Appalachian Youth 2.2.4 JAMES BRANSCOME Into the 1.9705 A Bold Idea for a New Appalachia JoHN FETTERMAN Nationalizing Our Resources PHILIP YouNG Jaded Old Land of Bright New Promise HARRY M. CAUDILL Toward a People's ARC Rouu BuRLAGE Biographical Notes 2.59 This page intentionally left blank Preface More than ten years have passed since John F. Kennedy's visit to West Virginia during the campaign for the 1960 presidential primary, the visit which precipitated a declaration of war against the social, eco nomic, and human problems of the Appalachian Region. Ten years have passed since the research was carried out which led to the pub lication of The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey. In that volume, and in a later article reprinted in this book, Rupert Vance suggested a decennial follow-up on the problems and progress of the region. How far have we come in ten years? There is no study comparable to the survey on which to rely for an assessment. Despite the absence of quantitative data, despite the lack of scholarly research on the matter, information is available which could lead us to a tentative answer. This information is found in the observations, impressions, and evaluations of journalists, field workers, local residents, politicians, and social scientists who have lived with, worked with, watched, and written about the problems they have seen and the programs estab lished to cope with them. These mostly frontline reports come in a variety of published forms, from national literary magazines to action group house organs, from articles in famous dailies to ·letters to the editors of county weeklies. What follows is a selection of such reports about what happened in Southern Appalachia in the 196os. The Appalachian Region is itself an elusive entity, as can be seen from the number of conflicting definitions given it by scholars, report ers, natives, and politicians over the years. How many counties in which states are included? For the most part, we are concerned here only with the southern portion of the region, and within that portion we have concentrated mainly on the coalfields of West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and north-central Tennessee. These are the areas that first attracted the attention of the nation in the early xii Preface sixties; they seem to have been the places where there was the greatest depression, the greatest concentration of antipoverty efforts, the most heightened response to local, state, and federal programs, and the great est degree of organization around common interests by the end of the decade. What has been written about central southern Appalachia applies in varying degrees to mountainous areas which are further north or south, lower in altitude or more "piedmont" in nature, based more on agricultural economies, or which have not had the compli cating factor of coal added to their otherwise broadly comparable his tories. It should certainly not be thought that places like western North Carolina and much of eastern Tennessee are not truly Appalachian in their culture, character, and problems; it is only that less is known about them, and that what is known suggests that settlement patterns, economic history, and current prospects are different enough for other Appalachian subregions to require a separate accounting. Something registers when you tell many Americans about places called Hazard and Bluefield, but who knows of Spruce Pine or Erwin? The presence of coal seems to be an important common denominator of central southern Appalachia, and perhaps it is coal that has made this area unique, both in its history and in its uncertain future. Mass unemployment caused by mechanization in the coal industry forced Appalachia to the attention of the nation at the beginning of the sixties. Theorists of the automation revolution prophesied that Appalachia foreshadowed a national employment crisis. Hazard be came a symbol for the New Left of the sixties as Harlan had been for the old Left of the thirties. The violence associated with the roving picket movement in eastern Kentucky dramatized the need for inter vention by the federal government. By the end of the decade it became clear that coal had been one of the most labor-intensive, technologically backward sectors of the economy, and the Appalachian crisis had not been as representative of the national economy as some had imagined. The roving picket movement thus turned out to be the last gasp of the old era of labor struggles in the mountains. The movements of the later sixties, in contrast, were premised on the existence of a mech anized mining industry and a permanent welfare state designed to care for the industry's casualties. The Area Redevelopment Administration, established in 1961 with a program for stimulating private industrial development, quickly Preface xiii proved inadequate to the problems of depressed areas in America. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 packaged a patchwork of liberal proposals, including a public employment program disguised as "work experience and training," and the dramatic Community Action Pro gram with its call for "maximum feasible participation" of the poor. The much criticized work experience program, concentrated dispro portionately in eastern Kentucky, managed-together with the food stamp program-to defuse the violence that had haunted the coalfields in the early sixties. A few far-sighted individuals called for an Appalachian version of the Tennessee Valley Authority as a solution to the chronic problems of the southern mountain region. This idea had little widespread sup port at the beginning of the sixties, however, and proposals for public ownership and development of the region's resources were quickly scuttled by the coal industry and private utilities. Instead of a new TVA,

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