What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia

by Elizabeth Catte

  Good news for Blair Mountain came in 2014 when a court of appeals ruled that petitioners—who by that point included the Sierra Club, Friends of Blair Mountain, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the West Virginia Labor History Association, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation—could move forward with a legal challenge to vacate the DOI’s de-listing of the site. In 2016, a federal judge ruled that the DOI had violated federal law, and a second agreed that the agency had acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner by rubber-stamping the state’s evidence using a process that contained “very little, if any, indicia of reasoned decision making.”

  Despite this procedural victory, Blair Mountain remains in limbo. It has not yet been returned to the National Register. It may never get there. It exists in the space between the question, “What good is a mountain just to have a mountain?” and Judy Bonds’s assertion that “there are no jobs on a dead planet.” In that regard, the Battle of Blair Mountain is never-ending, looped, and waiting for its next generation of soldiers.

  GETTING APPALACHIA LESS WRONG

  There once existed in the field of Appalachian Studies a model of Appalachia as an “internal colony.” Looking at this framework—what it did and didn’t do—is a good way of considering how we all, Appalachians included, might be able to get Appalachia a little less wrong.

  After the War on Poverty failed, many Appalachians came to believe that the region’s problems could not be fixed without the help of local experts, whose coherent sense of history could drive social change. The War on Poverty had attempted to address Appalachia’s problems in a top-down fashion, anchored in the belief that change could take place within the region’s existing economic, social, and political structures. When this strategy proved to be inadequate, Appalachians set out to define the region’s problems in their own language and according to their own experiences.

  The “internal colony” model came courtesy of 1978’s Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case, by Helen Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins. It defined the region’s long history of destruction in the name of capitalism as a form of colonialism. It also understood the use of stereotypes and myths as an extension of colonization. The “internal colony” model gave many Appalachians, for the first time, a tool for understanding the region’s web of exploitation, from the stories of local color writers in the early nineteenth century to the corruption that fueled the domination of the coal industry in the twentieth.

  Scholar Mary K. Anglin reflected on the work as “an activist interpretation grounded in a sense of place and a reading of social hierarchy, principally through the lens of class relations.” It is not surprising that individuals living in a region considered a “third world” by Americans might believe theories of colonialism spoke to their experiences as well. The theory, quite accurately, presented unchecked capitalism as the root of Appalachia’s problems. Following the priorities of the radical Left, it also called for an anti-colonial movement in Appalachia.

  The “internal colony” model is deeply satisfying but problematic. Students of Appalachia such as myself experienced powerful epiphanies examining this model, which allowed us to transform our shame into coherent and righteous anger. Ada Smith, a founder of the Stay Together Appalachia Youth Project, said that the model “allowed me to understand that my people, my heritage, and culture were not the problem, and gave me a way in which I could more easily understand power…This in turn connected me to issues around racism, classism, and homophobia because of their structural nature.”

  Barbara Smith and Steve Fisher wrote that the emotional power of the “internal colony” model helped students of Appalachia better situate the logic of “place-based exploitation…with cultural degradation” and work against it. “It thereby creates Appalachia as a regional collectivity, no longer pathologized but oppressed, and enables us to situate ourselves in a shared cultural geography that recognizes all residents as heirs to a special, place-based identity,” which in turn “draws an undeniably powerful line between innocent victims inside the region and profiteering elites on the outside.”

  The model appeared at a time when there was intense interest in the region to determine who exactly “owned” Appalachia. In 1977, widespread flooding in Kentucky and West Virginia, exacerbated by mining activity, left hundreds homeless. When relief agencies tried to construct temporary housing for victims, they could find no suitable combination of land that was both dry and not controlled by obstructive corporate entities. The following year, the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Appalachian Alliance launched the Appalachian Land Study, which used participatory action research to document and map patterns of land ownership in the region.

  Their findings, released in 1981, confirmed what most had long suspected: that outside corporations owned the majority of the region’s mineral rights and almost half its surface land. The study also found that the property taxes of non-corporate land owners were offsetting the taxes on land owned by corporations. In one county, for example, corporations that owned 70 percent of the land contributed just 4 percent of the county’s property tax stream. Not surprisingly, communities where such a stark imbalance existed experienced sharp declines in quality of life.

  The “internal colony” model, therefore, reflected what was true in 1978 and is still true today; that the region’s uneven distribution of wealth and resources is a significant obstacle in efforts to address Appalachian poverty. This portal, however, also reflected imbalances of its own. The use of a colony model to understand modern Appalachia elides the region’s history of indigenous colonization and the continued marginalization of Native American individuals both within Appalachia and the wider United States. As Emily Satterwhite wrote, “The idea of Appalachia as racially distinct, rural, and premodern has served to reassure white Americans of the persistence of an indigenous white national culture.”

  In rare moments when intellectuals praise Appalachia, and more often in moments when we praise ourselves, even those of us who are white are endowed with indigenous cultural traits. We are keepers and stewards of the land, for example, fighting the encroachment of destructive forces. For some, this cultural identity fosters solidarity between indigenous and non-indigenous people in Appalachia. There is and was, for example, enormous support among Appalachian activist groups for indigenous water-protectors at Standing Rock. At the same time, native land rights continue to be an afterthought in more contemporary discussions of corporate land ownership, one of many tensions that must be interrogated and reconciled in post-coal strategic visioning.

  The “internal colony” model also situates the problems of Appalachia as imported woes inflicted on the region by a revolving cast of outsiders. It risks excusing us from the responsibility of imagining how we in the region might be complicit in structural inequality and oppression. A chief example of this is the support for the coal industry found among Appalachia’s political elite, but equally important are the homophobia, racism, and xenophobia within the region. Appalachian author Silas House writes, “Homophobia lurks in the hollers and slithers along the ridges in Appalachia. The reason why is because Appalachia is in America. What is happening here is happening throughout the rest of the country.”

  In Appalachia, there’s a tendency to believe that tensions only occur when outsiders meddle in our business. This is a benevolent stereotype that stretches back more than 150 years. Anthropologist Allen Batteau called it the myth of “Holy Appalachia”—a fiction designed to help repair a society contaminated by the evils of slavery. During and after the Civil War, it became therapeutic, in a sense, to allow a category of white persons to be immune from racial hysteria. In other words, white Appalachians became the first beneficiaries of #notallwhitepeople.

  Citing the existence of Appalachian anti-slavery societies and our geographic and cultural distance from plantation slavery, intellectuals from Abraham Lincoln to Carter G. Woodson have made the case for our racial innocence. If the instit
ution of slavery fundamentally altered the moral compass of white individuals, it followed that those who lacked exposure to it could be spared. White people in Appalachia used this myth of racial innocence frequently for many years, most visibly of late in Vance’s popular claims that white Trump voters in Appalachia are a different breed, uncontaminated by racism.

  The myth of “Holy Appalachia” returned to use when white supremacists converged on Pikeville, Kentucky, at the end of April 2017. Organized by the Traditionalist Worker Party, members of the League of the South, the Oath Keepers, and the Nationalist Social Party rallied in Pikeville in “defense of white families.” White supremacists have often tried to gain a foothold in Appalachia and center the region in projected fantasies that combine white racial solidarity with economic uplift. In response to the rally, militant leftists, anti-racists, and anti-fascists planned a counter-protest. The city of Pikeville passed special ordinances explicitly intended to discourage counter-protest, many businesses in the area closed for the duration of the rally, and locals with the ability to leave for the weekend were encouraged to do so.

  Local commentary about the rally from both regional media and residents emphasized that Pikeville had done nothing to encourage the rally. The commentary took pains to suggest that both the white supremacist demonstrators and counter-protestors were all outsiders. News reports made it a point of sharing, as an editor from TriState Update did, that “many of the cars TWP members left in had out-of-state license plates. Some were from California, Alabama, and Georgia just to name a few.”

  Writing for the Huffington Post, Kentucky native Jason Belcher wrote that “local citizens did not turn out to support any of the groups…Conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats here don’t agree on much, but we agree extremism has no place in Pikeville.” Dave Mistich, of the 100 Days in Appalachia project, framed the event as the “white supremacist rally and counter protest that no one wanted here.” Mistich wrote, “Participants from both sides were mostly from out of state, leaving locals few and far between Saturday afternoon in downtown Pikeville.” According to these local voices, Pikeville is a place of folksy neutrality where the good and the bad cancel each other out as long as no one steps out of line and becomes “an extremist.”

  Pikeville, you may remember, is the same place where the wealthy and powerful tormented community activists and charged organizers with sedition. Eastern Kentucky, you also may remember, is immortalized in one of the most recognizable anthems of the labor and civil rights movements as a place where there is no neutrality. There are many things that have come to Appalachia that no one wanted, but how we respond to them once they’re here is important.

  Many local residents did indeed counter-protest; their willingness to do so was a product of life in communities shaped by racism. They marched, some wearing red bandanas, and captured video of the event that they later set to bluegrass music and shared in forums populated by other Appalachians. One protester explained, “Well, Nazis put out a call to white families to come here, and I’m here as the mother of a white family to say that Nazis aren’t welcome in Appalachia. We have real problems here with pipelines, oil and gas and coal companies are poisoning water and air. A few people are getting rich while our children get sick and Nazis come in and tell us to blame that on other poor people because they have a different color skin? Please.”

  Local counter-protestors took explicit steps to connect their identities as both Appalachians and anti-racists and put this identity to work in the service of social change. It’s a form of activism that, much like the racism that compelled them to act, is wholly consistent with the region’s history.

  You’ll often hear, in the region, variations on the belief that “hillbillies are the only group it’s still socially acceptable to belittle.” This is not the case, not by a long shot. What is true, however, is that people are often blindly classist while remaining self-congratulatory about their other progressive credentials.

  One of the most insidious manifestations of this attitude is the belief that people could escape the problems of the region if they would just move. This attitude rarely acknowledges the personal factors that may impact someone’s desire to move. Rather, it flatly equates migration with opportunity in ways that are disappointing. The National Review is fond of preaching, for example, variations on Kevin Williamson’s painful but popular advice that poor people “need real opportunity, which means they need real change, which means they need U-Hauls.” Let me tell you how that worked out for me.

  JUST MOVE

  Appalachians are a group of people burdened with the task of perpetually re-earning our place in narratives of American progress. In this we are not alone. For us, however, this burden manifests in calls for migration and the de-population of our home, an exodus of sacrifice that must be performed in order to prove that we are not the people you think we are. To leave is to demonstrate our ambition, to be something other than dependent and stubborn. To leave is to be productive rather than complacent, and to refuse is to be complicit. Theories of “brain drain” suggest that the only individuals willing to be left behind are those who are pathological, choosing to forgo a chance at prosperity to live among the lost.

  I left. I earned a PhD and promptly moved where the job market sent me, which happened to be southeast Texas. The move was wholly in line with notions of appropriate mobility, particularly for those with an elite education who take their place in a system of privilege that narrows as it elevates. In other words, I am a product of two worlds that demand a particular path of ambition: the mountains and the academy. The logic of the academy reinforced that I should accept any position, no matter how remote the location or how awful the pay, to be successful.

  The corner of Tennessee I come from is not known for its coal extraction, but it is known for transforming that coal into energy through the all-encompassing hand of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Its power-generating facilities produce coal-ash, a particularly toxic substance that defies convenient disposal. Using the TVA’s own data, the Southern Environmental Law Center estimates that over the last sixty years, twenty-seven billion gallons of coal-ash have leaked from the utility company’s Gallatin facility, one of six such plants in Tennessee.

  Steve Hale and Steve Cavendish, writing for the Nashville Scene, described a 2008 industrial spill not far from me, “Around 1 a.m., the retaining wall of an 80 acre ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant 40 miles from Knoxville collapsed, sending 50 years of waste spilling out into the night. In all, 1.1 billion gallons of wet ash rushed forth from the plant—a tidal wave of toxic sludge that covered some 300 acres, spilled into a nearby river and destroyed three homes, sweeping at least one off its foundation.” The TVA responded by purchasing 180 contaminated properties and 960 toxic acres of land. Five years after the spill, only Tommy Charles and his wife were left in his neighborhood. He cried when reporters came to ask him why he didn’t leave. At the age of seventy-four, he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  If the logic of exodus was correct, then my relocation would forever entitle me to be spared the sight of people weeping for their homes. It would exempt me from conversations with bank tellers about the worsening symptoms of their children’s asthma. My daily commute would be forever free from the monotonous rush to roll up windows at certain mile markers. My water would be drinkable and my air clean. I would be paid my worth, allowed to live in productive comfort among others allowed the same.

  This is not the reality I experienced. Instead, I followed the market to the polluted air and contaminated water of Texas’s “cancer belt,” this time brought to you by the oil industry. Here, the poor people most likely to suffer the worst effects of refinery pollution are African American, not white, but the same brutal disregard is present. But this time it was me weeping for my home—both the one I left and the one I came to.

  When I traveled to give academic talks or to interview for other positions, I became convinced that the smell of refineries f
ollowed me, on my clothes, and would reveal my true identity: someone not important enough to not be poisoned. The logic of exodus just shrugs its shoulders at these realities and tells us to move smarter. I decided to ignore this logic and come back home to fight smarter.

  The relief at returning is overwhelming, to come creeping again toward home. Silas House writes, “There is a language in the kudzu and it is all ours and belongs to no one else. This is my tongue for you, whispering our history: words words words.”

  CONCLUSION

  In 2012, community organizer Si Kahn shared a story at a conference in Pennsylvania about union activist Florence Reece. Reece wrote one of the labor movement’s most powerful anthems—“Which Side Are You On?”—about the harassment of her family by anti-union thugs in eastern Kentucky in the 1930s. Kahn retold a conversation he had with Reece much later in her life about the day she wrote her song.

  According to legend, Reece became so angry that she tore a calendar off the wall, letting the words flow onto its pages. “I could never understand,” Kahn said, “how Florence Reece could write down five whole verses on one of those calendars” crammed with information like “phases of the moon the moon didn’t even know it had. There’s just no room to do that.”

  “Si,” the voice of the now-departed Reece patiently answered in the story, “before I started writing I turned it over.”

  “We need to make a deceptively simple decision,” Kahn concluded, “No one has ever laid it out more clearly than Florence Reece…Part of our work now and for the next fifty years is to turn everything over.”

  And then the people sang, in voices bright and loud, the song that Reece gave us.