Excerpts

INTRODUCTION The early morning mountain mist is spread over the valley like a large, gray blanket. Underneath it, the tiny hamlet, snug and settled, rests easy. It is early autumn and the rich greenery of summer is beginning to give way to brown, red, orange, and gold hues that will become more pronounced as the sun comes up over the mountains in the eastern sky. A dog barks, and then another. In the air there is a faint smell of burning wood. But there are no visible signs of smoke that might taint the picturesque landscape. The view is indeed gorgeous. You'd be hard-pressed to find a visitor who would disagree. Yes, he'd say, this is quite beautiful, postcard pretty. Then tell him this place is Appalachia and watch a look of surprise sweep across his face. The idea of Appalachia as a particularly unique American place is deeply embedded in American popular culture. It began a century ago, perpetuated mostlyby Northern journalists who found that sensationalizing life in Appalachia was a good way to sell newspapers. Since then, the media have continuously put forth the notion that life is homespun, simple, and a bit "different" in Appalachia, giving rise to cultural stereotyping on the grandest scale. We've laughed, for example, at the antics of "hillbillies" in newspaper comics. Snuffy Smith quickly comes to mind, as does the always likable Lil' Abner. (Even though Abner's story was, technically, set in Arkansas, his character is certainly attributable to Appalachia.) Those of us who grew up in the 1960s might remember the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Hillbilly Bears. Speaking of television, Andy Griffith, Barney Fife, Aunt Bea, Opie, and the bootlegging Darling family warmed our hearts and made us smile with each episode of The Andy Griffith Show. Like Lil' Abner, The Beverly Hillbillies was also set in Arkansas, but, again, the connotation was equal parts Appalachian. Each week, we tuned in to the trials and tribulations of the Clampetts, those lovable country innocents who settle in the upscale suburb of Los Angeles and wreak havoc on California culture and everything having to do with modern convenience, while outsmarting Mr. Drysdale every time. Then there was The Waltons, one of the most beloved and embraceable Appalachian families ever to surface in American popular arts. We've chuckled at some of the family's antics, to be sure, and sometimes we've cried with them, too. But mostly we learned about values and integrity from characters like Grandpa Walton and Tom-about them and their family, and about ourselves and our families. Appalachia also made its mark in the movies. Deliverance, that particularly unsettling tale of survival starring Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds and featuring the hit theme song "Dueling Banjos," certainly affected our thinking about Appalachia-both good and bad. Beyond film, we've heard about the Hatfields and McCoys and their family feud, one of the longest in American history. We've laughed at the many hillbilly jokes-too numerous to repeat here. When it comes to popular culture and the media, then, Appalachia, more times than not, seems to exist merely to entertain the rest of us, to remind us how good wehave it compared with those unfortunate souls who live in the region's hills and hollers. The region might also be likened to a strange, cross-eyed, and unruly child not in the least like any other offspring. The analogy would be made even better if such a child were illegitimate, dirty-faced, and dangerous in some degenerate way. This is a book about the real Appalachia, however, not the one described above. The Appalachiansis the story of the people of this wonderfully unique region-their history and culture, their land, their hardships and triumphs. It is about Appalachia yesterday, and Appalachia today. The spine of Appalachia is the Appalachian mountain range, which begins in the Saint Lawrence Valley, in Canada, and runs right down the eastern part of the United States. Appalachia begins north in upper New England, where the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire dominate the landscape. The Appalachian Trail, one of America's great hiking challenges, actually runs from Maine to northern Georgia. Included in the Appalachian system are the Allegheny Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Great Smoky Mountains, along with the Great Valley, which takes in the Shenandoah, the James, the New, and the Tennessee valleys. About twenty-three million people live in this two-hundred-thousand-square-mile region. All of West Virginia and parts of twelve other states-Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia-can claim Appalachia as both a geographical and cultural identity. Historically, Appalachia was America's first frontier. The region's original inhabitants were Indians. The Iroquois, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and especially Cherokee tribes created thriving indigenous cultures there before the arrival in the early 1700s of English, Scottish, and Irish settlers, who, along with Germans, were attracted to the verdant valleys, the rich, green hills, and the mountains. Protestant was the dominant religion; Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, and Pentecostals were among the Christian denominations that established rural churches in Appalachia. Appalachian culture largely has its origins in the British Isles. Not just religious practices but social customs, traditions, and music came across the Atlantic to Appalachia largely intact. Thanks to the geographical isolation that the mountains provided, such things were virtually free of outside meddling in Appalachia. Isolation-it is a word that figures large in the Appalachian legacy. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Appalachia's mountainous terrain caused deeply rural settlements to sit isolated from other small communities and, certainly, the rest of America. Prior to the War for Independence, the vastness of the Appalachian mountain range hindered any large-scale westward expansion, although tales of Daniel Boone's exploits and his exploration of the Cumberland Gap are a vital part of early Appalachian history and folklore. Like first- and second-generation Appalachian settlers, Boone was fiercely independent and rugged. He led the crossing over the mountains and provided the inspiration to move the frontier farther west. (Eventually, thousands upon thousands of eager settlers, many of them fresh from Europe, followed Boone's trail, and just about all of them traveled over and through the mountains and kept on going.) After the War for Independence, many soldiers given land grants settled onto homesteads in Appalachia. There, they tended the land and lived their lives, generation after generation. The Civil War was a difficult period for Appalachians. Poor white mountain people were torn between staying loyal to the Union and fighting on the side of their Southern brothers. In sections of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, there seemed to be no dividing line at all. Some Appalachian families chose one side, while their neighbors chose the other. In some cases, it was truly brother fighting against brother. Part of the problem was the unique situation of blacks in Appalachia. Although there were slaves in virtually every county in Appalachia, there were fewer of them than elsewhere in the South, because there were no huge plantations and because fewer families could afford slaves. Most slave-owning households owned fewer than five, although there were some plantations in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee on which slaves numbered ten and twenty times that amount. In all, it is estimated that perhaps 10 percent of Appalachia's population at the outset of the Civil War was black. It could be said that the Civil War started in Appalachia, with John Brown's raid in 1859 on the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, back then located in Virginia, today, in West Virginia, which was created in 1863 as a separate state. Brown, a fanatical abolitionist, hoped to rouse slaves and to inspire an insurrection that would lead to emancipation. What Brown did was make a dangerous situation even worse, pushing the nation past the point of no return. Two years later, Americans were fighting Americans, and the key issue was slavery. Appalachia wasn't without its war heroes or famous battlefields. Confederate general Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, second only to General Robert E. Lee in terms of military genius on the Southern side, was Appalachian born and bred, and defeated Union forces at Winchester and Front Royal in the Shenandoah Valley, among other Appalachian-based battles. Confederate forces also won a key victory at Chickamauga in northern Georgia. In all, dozens of battles and countless skirmishes were fought in Appalachia during the Civil War. Both the Union and Confederate forces drew more than one hundred thousand Appalachian soldiers to the conflict, with the South holding a considerable edge in recruits. After President Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, it was Andrew Johnson from the east Tennessee section of Appalachia who led the country into its Reconstruction era. Following the Civil War, isolation became less of an issue in Appalachia. Yet, even though the region grew increasingly involved in economic, political, and cultural matters that affected the rest of the nation, most Americans outside Appalachia continued to subscribe to the belief that mountain people there were cut off from the world. The fact is there was more to Appalachia than barely surviving farms and turnip patches. During the Reconstruction years, coal mining attracted Appalachians and outsiders alike, forcing dramatic changes not just in the landscape but also in the makeup of Appalachian society. European immigrants and African Americans streamed into Appalachia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For many men, it was better to risk going into the earth and digging out the coal that heated America's homes than to struggle with the uncertainties of farming. Newly arrived southern European immigrants found the mountains of Appalachia and prospects of earning a living mining coal more attractive than settling in the ghettos of New York, Boston, and other eastern cities and working in factories there. America was quickly becoming an international industrial power that rivaled the greatest countries in Europe, and demand for energy grew at a furious pace. To get the coal from the mines of West Virginia and the rest of central Appalachia to urban markets necessitated the arrival of the railroad and the creation of coal company towns, further changing the way of life in Appalachia. Families lived in coal company towns, which supplied the essential needs of Appalachian families. Children went to coal company schools, and instead of money the men were paid with scrip that had to be spent buying goods in coal company stores. Almost overnight, Appalachians who had prided themselves on being independent in the traditional sense of mountain people were now caught in a culture where they had little control over their lives. Coal wasn't the only industry in booming Appalachia in the late nineteenth century. Even earlier, timber, cut from Appalachian forests, became a big business to supply America with building materials. Furniture making matured in North Carolina, providing some skilled craftsmen the opportunity to avoid the fields, forests, and mines. A growing textile industry employed Appalachian women, upsetting their traditional roles as keepers of the family and bearers of children. Appalachian towns supported small Appalachian business enterprises, but the big money being made in Appalachia was going into the pockets of outsiders intent on exploiting both the region's natural resources and its people. Absentee ownership of the forests and mines was the norm; management of the lumber mills, factories, and mines came from the outside as well. Given their resilient personal pride and rugged determination to remain self-sufficient, it's not surprising that Appalachians resisted exploitation, especially economic exploitation. Beginning in the 1890s, coal or mine wars flared in Alabama and Tennessee. In the early 1900s, the armed forces during the war. They saw how things were outside their region. They broadened their view of the world and brought back home new ideas and visions. Others, however, never returned to the coal mine or family farm. After World War II, an Appalachian exodus occurred, spurred by better economic opportunities in cities such as Detroit, Akron, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. Back home, coal mining had become more and more mechanized, meaning many old jobs in the mines weren't there anymore, anyway. And America was seeking cheaper, cleaner sources of energy, further cutting into the Appalachian coal mining industry. For more than half a million Appalachians, the future lay not in the country but in the city. Although Appalachia made significant strides in the middle of the twentieth century to modernize and make daily life there easier, some outsiders still viewed the region as stuck in time. In 1960, Senator Jack Kennedy, while campaigning for the presidency, visited West Virginia and singled out both the state and the region as unjustly impoverished. The media, never wanting to miss an Appalachian story, capitalized on Kennedy's attention to the area with follow-up reports on the dismal economic climate there. A few years later, President Lyndon Johnson had Appalachia in mind when he launched his War on Poverty programs. During the sixties the federal government created the Appalachian Regional Commission to focus on the ills of the region. Social missionaries in the form of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) workers, plus right on through the 1930s, conflicts between miners and management exploded often in West Virginia and Kentucky and stained the region with bitterness and blood. Labor-strife roots were embedded in the struggle by miners to gain better wages and working conditions and to unionize, and in management's denial of such improvements. Thousands of miners spent hard years below the ground; when disease struck, a man's ethnic background or skin color made no difference. Down in the mines, almost everyone had black faces-and black lungs. During the Depression, poor people in Appalachia got even poorer and workers' rights were even harder to come by. There were a few victories, however. The protracted coal war in Harlan County, Kentucky, eventually led to some improved conditions for miners, and with the passage of the federal government's Wagner Act in 1935, unionization finally came to Appalachia. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal forever changed Appalachia with the advent of new economic and social programs and laws designed to make less painful the economic blight brought on by the Depression. In Appalachia, Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps initiated the idea of conservation there. The establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority meant electricity for thousands of Appalachian families still using kerosene lamps for light. The changes in Appalachia brought about by the Depression continued through World War II. Thousands of young Appalachian men served in Bill Monroe (with guitar)and the Bluegrass Boys at the Grand Ole Opry, circa 1940 (Photographer unknown, Charles Wolfe Collection) teachers and doctors, swarmed to Appalachia to "save the region from itself." Many Appalachian families, though happy for the help, saw things differently. To them, the world was on a reckless course; it moved too fast, paid little or no mind to tradition, and sacrificed neighbor, family, community, the church, and the common good for a chance at personal enrichment. Many Appalachians were poor when it came to material objects and money. They suffered when it came to education, medicine, and modern convenience. Some were downright destitute and became poster children for social activists who demanded that the difference between the haves and have-nots in America be dramatically reduced. But underneath their poverty, Appalachians often maintained an intense personal pride in their rural identity and affinity for the land, and a determination to overcome hardship, which is what most people there always did and continued to do. In 1966, in northeastern Georgia, a teacher and his students gave birth to a little magazine that was published quarterly. They called it Foxfire. The prevailing ideas that spawned Foxfirewere the need to preserve on paper the old ways of Appalachia, the desire to teach rural self-sufficiency, and to show Appalachian youth the value of their own heritage. Techniques for plowing a rocky field, pickling and canning vegetables, and salting a freshly butchered pig were described in Foxfire; local recipes and remedies for common ailments were also provided. A curious thing happened to Foxfire. It became an unintended, how-to guide for the burgeoning, youth-driven counterculture, intent on returning to the land, or at least celebrating the idea of such a noble ambition. Eventually published as a book in several volumes, Foxfirebecame incredibly popular, making the bestseller lists by selling hundreds of thousands of copies and bearing proof that Appalachia's cultural heritage and folklore were desired both inside and out of the region. Foxfire's commercial success inspired the publication of other books with similar visions. Suddenly, in the midst of a deluge of machines, massive transportation systems, fast food, and culture in a can, many Americans became interested in investigating how to do things the oldfashioned, Appalachian way. Interest in Appalachia came in other forms, too, especially music. The early sixties folk revival not only celebrated the nation's rich treasury of folk music, but also instigated a widespread attempt to seek out talented but obscure traditional musicians and present them outside their regions on folk festival stages like the one at Newport, Rhode Island, each summer. Middle-class college kids gorged themselves on authentic American folk music, marveling at the salt-of-the-earth sounds of fiddle and banjo players, guitar pickers, and singers, whose "high lonesome" wails sounded as haunting as centuries-old troubadours' laments. Appalachia had always been a musical hotbed. Anglo-Scots-Irish ballads brought over from the British Isles by the earliest settlers of Appalachia formed the region's musical foundations. Songs passed from one generation to the next, as did instruments and the idea that music was a means of not only celebrating Appalachian culture but preserving it, too. With the advent of radio in the 1920s and the popularity of WSM's Grand Ole Opry show out of Nashville, mountain music, along with other forms of early country music, was spread throughout the South each Saturday evening. The most important musical event in Appalachia occurred in 1927. It was in that year that the Carter Family of southern Virginia, quite possibly the most famous musical family in American history, and a former railroad worker from Meridian, Mississippi, named Jimmie Rodgers made their debut recordings in Bristol, Tennessee. These legendary sessions set in motion the birth of country music, the establishment of modern folk music, and the eventual arrival of bluegrass music. The husband-and-wife team of A.P. and Sara Carter and Sara's cousin Maybelle were a living repository of mountain ballads, Appalachian church hymns, and songs from the hearth and front porch of materially poor but musically rich Appalachia. Appalachia contributed mightily to the American music canon throughout the twentieth century. In addition to the Carter Family, the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, hailed from Appalachia, creating a new American music form dug out of the region's hills and mountains. Bluegrass greats Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs followed in the path blazed by Monroe. Add to the list Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Jean Ritchie, the Delmore Brothers, the Judds, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakam, Patty Loveless, and so many other folk, blues, bluegrass, gospel, country, rockabilly, and old-timey musicians. Together, they have made certain that Appalachia's exceedingly rich musical legacy is a big part of the American music tradition. Appalachia's contribution to American literature is nearly as impressive as its musical gifts. Storytelling has always been an essential part of Appalachian culture; colorful characters and rich motifs and themes fill out Appalachian tales passed on orally from generation to generation. The occasional publication of journals and diaries provided a personal and intimate glimpse into Appalachian life. Then, beginning in the 1930s, recognized works of literature with Appalachian Two recent events elaborate Appalachia's cultural and economic dilemma. In 2003 Congress passed a resolution proclaiming it to be the "Year of Appalachia." That summer, at the Smithsonian Institution's annual Festival of American Folklife, Appalachia was celebrated over the two-week event, in late June and early July, in the form of concerts, crafts demonstrations, historical displays, and homespun activities such as recipe and song swaps. Thousands of people congregated on the Mall in Washington, D.C., to sample slices of Appalachian culture and to celebrate the region as a wonderfully original part of America. At the same time, the CBS television network, eager in its desire to capitalize on the craze for reality TV, turned its attention to Appalachia. The network's idea was to create a sort of "real Beverly Hillbillies," not a fictional family like the one that first aired on American television in 1962 and became one of the most successful sitcoms in television history. This one, hoped CBS executives, would enable the nation to gape at a true-to-life, genuinely poor Appalachian family as it scratched its collective head at such widespread staples of contemporary life as computers, microwave ovens, and perhaps, if they got the right family, indoor plumbing. CBS was offering the "lucky" family television stardom, a half-million dollars, plus plenty of perks in return for cameras running day and night in their shotgun shack. An unexpected uproar, not just from native Appalachians but also from many other people around the country who believed reality TV about poor people wasn't even close to being entertaining or funny, forced CBS to backtrack. The idea for the show was shelved. The four-part PBS series The Appalachians serves the nation's new interest in Appalachia. Mari-Lynn Evans, who conceived and produced the film and is one of this book's editors, was born and raised in West Virginia. Having spent nearly four years researching and filming The Appalachians, Evans sees the film project-and this book-as the culmination of a lifelong ambition: to tell the story of her people in such a way that brings honor and dignity to them. "The place in West Virginia where I grew up rarely changed," says Evans. "Our neighbors had known each other for generations. There is a special definition of 'home' in Appalachia that I wanted to run through the film. Appalachia isn't a godforsaken place like many outsiders would have you believe. It is home-and has been home for generations-for many families who love it, despite the hard times surviving there. In order to understand Appalachians, you have to understand that first. We love the mountains. They are a part of our soul." Evans' documentary film seeks to reveal her Appalachia by examining its past, observing its present, and hinting at its future. She and her team, which includes numerous Appalachian authorities, some of whom contributed essays to this book, present the story of Appalachia as a distinct American place, yet one that has contributed significantly to the story of America. The time is right for a fresh view of the region. Thanks to the gargantuan success of the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? and its soundtrack, both of which, at least in part, pay mind to Appalachia, plus renewed interest in Appalachian art, folklore, and music, Appalachia is finally being welcomed into mainstream American culture. "Appalachia doesn't seem so detached anymore," adds Evans. "The film and the book are solid evidence that interest in Appalachia, not just the myth of Appalachia but the truth, has grown deeper than it's ever been. The stereotypes still linger, it's true. But people outside Appalachia have come to appreciate its culture rather than mock it." In the essays that follow, you'll hear firsthand from Appalachian scholars, journalists, historians, musicians, novelists, poets, songwriters, and common folk with stories to tell. There are essays on religion, coal mining, the Civil War, music, the Pentecostal practice of serpent handling, moonshining, and much more. In no way is The Appalachiansmeant to be definitive. Rather, the book complements the film and seeks to broaden, even inspire, the possibilities of a further exploration of Appalachia. Pay special note to the photographs and artwork that fill out The Appalachians. Rather than merely embellish the essays, they provide insight all their own. As you'll see, Appalachia is a most photogenic region; the many memorable photographs that grace this book document the undeniable dignity of the people and the poignancy of the Appalachian landscape, as well as the hard times they and the land have endured. In the end, Appalachia is the story of struggle and triumph. If this book captures just a small part of the natural beauty of the place and its people, it will have been worth the effort. -Robert Santelli Seattle, Washington July 2003 Excerpted from The Appalachians: America's First and Last Frontier All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.