The eastern Kentucky commission experienced similar frustration in attempting to implement its strategies in other areas. The commission found that existing federal programs in flood relief, small-business development, housing, and urban renewal were underutilized in Appalachia because local communities were unaware of the programs or lacked the technical assistance necessary to apply for them. Even when applications were forwarded to Washington and when federal officials and members of Congress sympathized with local needs, mountain communities often failed to meet the legal criteria for federal assistance. Most Appalachian counties, for example, were ineligible for assistance from federal housing and urban renewal programs because the programs were designed for urban areas. Other mountain communities were ineligible for federal aid to build water and sewer projects because they could not raise the necessary matching funds or could not meet the cost-benefit ratio for the construction of dams, flood walls, and highways.80
Whisman described the challenges facing Appalachian development efforts as a “revolving impossibility.” The greatest need in the region, he noted, was for basic facilities for development, but the lack of development prevented access to the federal resources needed to build these facilities. The dilemma, he wrote, was like a mountain roundelay: “What east Kentucky needs is one good road to join us up with the rest of the country. . . . How do we justify the building of such a road? We know there is not enough traffic count now to justify the new road. But the roads we have are so poor the people won’t drive them. Without people coming into our region, we have little commerce. Without commerce, we have no traffic on the road. Without traffic, we can’t justify the new road. But the roads we have are poor.”81
Increasingly frustrated by inadequate funding and bureaucratic barriers, Appalachian state leaders were convinced that special federal assistance was necessary to accomplish their goals for the region. Appalachia’s problems, they argued, were severe and unique, and they were beyond the capacity of local communities and state governments alone. Even the federal policies being proposed by national Democrats to aid industrial communities distressed by unemployment promised little assistance to rural areas like Appalachia. The Area Redevelopment Act, which reappeared in Congress in 1959, targeted urban industrial communities hit hard by recession and unemployment rather than chronically depressed rural areas in need of the basic infrastructure for development. “The Douglas-Payne Bill,” reported the Louisville Courier-Journal in February 1959, “would not, for an instance, make significant headway towards mitigating those all-important economic factors affecting Eastern Kentucky: lack of modern transportation networks, vulnerability to floods, and the decline of coal-mining.”82 Frustrated, Whisman and other leaders of the eastern Kentucky commission launched a campaign to change federal policies in favor of “underdeveloped areas” and to make government and industry leaders more aware of Appalachia’s plight and potential.
As the 1950s drew to a close, efforts increased throughout Appalachia to focus the attention of state and national leaders on the burgeoning crises in the hills. Rising welfare rolls and unemployment placed heavy burdens on state resources and spurred even non-Appalachian legislators, journalists, and private citizens to join the call for action. In the elections of 1960, candidates for governor in almost every Appalachian state endorsed programs to reduce poverty in the mountain counties, and in Kentucky, mountain lawyer and gubernatorial candidate Bert Combs promised to implement the recommendations of the Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission. But it would take a national rediscovery of poverty throughout affluent America and the unexpected victory of a New England senator in the 1960 presidential primary to draw the nation’s attention to the need for federal assistance to the region. Even then there would be little agreement on the sources of Appalachia’s problems or the solutions to its distress. For the post–World War II generation, confident in its ability to sustain growth and to build a better life for everyone, Appalachia remained an American enigma.
2
THE POLITICS OF POVERTY
I’ve been preachin’ the gospel for 25 years, and I’ve never seen a time so bad.
—Levi McGeorge, pastor of the Closplint Church of God, Harlan County, Kentucky, February 1959
The winters of 1959 and 1960 were unusually harsh in Appalachia, bringing additional burdens to an already hard-pressed land. The destruction of the record flood of 1957 could still be seen in many mountain communities, and a national recession only deepened the economic crisis in the hills. Throughout central Appalachia, hundreds of displaced coal miners faced the specter of expired unemployment benefits and dwindling food supplies. Heavy snows and subfreezing temperatures resulted in several deaths from starvation and exposure. Kentucky governor Happy Chandler declared an emergency in eastern Kentucky and initiated a modest relief effort, but state resources were inadequate to meet the problem.1
Conditions were equally severe in West Virginia when Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts arrived to campaign in the 1960 Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy’s subsequent victory in the West Virginia primary would mark a turning point in his drive to the presidency. Winning in the Mountain State settled the question of whether a Catholic candidate could carry a predominantly Protestant state and smoothed the senator’s path to victory in other primaries. For Appalachia, however, the 1960 primary was a watershed of another kind. Events in West Virginia drew the attention of the federal government and national media to the economic despair that had settled over the region.
When Senator Kennedy came to West Virginia, mountain villages were still digging out from heavy snows and bitter cold, the coldest March on record and the most snowfall since 1914.2 By April the campaign began to warm along with the weather, and the candidates carried their search for votes out of the urban areas and into the rural districts and coal camps of the southern part of the state. Political strategists expected that the issue of religion would dominate the campaign, as it had in other states, and Kennedy was prepared to confront religious bigotry head-on. But the crowds of unemployed coal miners who greeted the senator in places like Welch and Williamson and in dozens of other coal communities along Paint Creek, Cabin Creek, and the New River were less interested in the candidate’s religion than in his plans to relieve their economic distress.
Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the only candidate to challenge Kennedy in the Mountain State, had raised concerns about economic conditions in the coalfields as early as January 1960. In a speech before the West Virginia Legislature, Humphrey attacked poverty in affluent America as “a national scandal,” but he failed to reach the people with his message, and he could not compete with the Kennedy money and political organization. Kennedy, who seemed genuinely stunned by the conditions he witnessed in the coal camps, turned the economic issue to his advantage, suggesting that he was the only candidate who could provide relief for the state, if West Virginians would send him to the White House. Tying himself to the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of Democrats who had brought the union and relief programs to the mountains during the Great Depression, Kennedy campaigned alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who assured hungry coal miners that the Massachusetts senator would follow through on aid to depressed areas. On the eve of the May 10 primary, Kennedy went before television cameras and promised the people of West Virginia, “If I’m nominated and elected president, within sixty days of the start of my administration, I will introduce a program to the Congress for aid to West Virginia.” The next day Senator Kennedy received over 60 percent of the votes of West Virginia Democrats for their party’s presidential nomination, and Senator Humphrey withdrew from the race.3
While Democrats campaigned in West Virginia, state and local leaders in other Appalachian states pressed for federal assistance to the region. In January 1960 newly elected governor Bert T. Combs of Kentucky endorsed Program 60’s recommendations as priority objectives for his administration, including the call for a meeting of Appalach
ian governors. Later that spring, concerned with the special problems of Maryland’s Appalachian counties, Governor Millard Tawes invited the governors and representatives of seven Appalachian states to convene in Annapolis to coordinate state development efforts across the region. The first Conference of Appalachian Governors met on May 20, 1960, only ten days after the West Virginia primary and a week after President Eisenhower vetoed another depressed areas bill sent to him by Congress. The governors reviewed a report on economic conditions and population trends in eleven Appalachian states prepared by the Maryland Department of Economic Development.4 They resolved to push for further cooperation among the states, but they were unable to agree on support for federal action.
Democratic governors at the Annapolis meeting favored special legislation to assist the self-help programs being developed within the Appalachian states, but Republican governor Cecil Underwood of West Virginia defended the president’s veto of the depressed areas bill. “The President was 1,000 percent right to veto this bill,” he argued, “on the grounds that it sets up another federal agency. We already have enough departments in the federal government.” Adding that the “magic” of depressed areas legislation was “not the answer,” he complained that politicians and journalists who had publicized the plight of West Virginia during the recent primary had not given a balanced picture: “It is true that 20 per cent of our workforce has been displaced. But we still have a strong, vigorous economy. We are not as bad off as Michigan. We have not had to borrow for unemployment compensation as Pennsylvania has. We are still teetering on the brink of solvency.”5
Despite his opposition to the depressed areas bill, Underwood supported the idea of interstate cooperation, and the group agreed to hold a second Conference of Appalachian Governors to be hosted by Governor Combs the following fall. Meeting in Lexington, Kentucky, on October 17–18, 1960, the governors of five states and the representatives of six others discussed mutual problems facing their Appalachian areas, especially the challenges of highway construction and water control. Present were Governors Luther Hodges of North Carolina, Buford Ellington of Tennessee, and Lindsey Almond of Virginia, as well as Combs of Kentucky and Tawes of Maryland. Also attending were representatives of several federal agencies; Willis Weatherford of Berea College, who outlined the goals of the Appalachian regional survey then underway; and Perley Ayer, director of the CSM, who pledged the support of his organization.
Again Governor Combs called for the passage of federal area redevelopment legislation that would help address the “acute problem of unemployment in the region,” and he appointed a committee chaired by Governor Tawes to draft a “statement of principles” that might serve as a framework for cooperation and “might be able to get the interest—and possibly some commitments—from both the presidential candidates [Richard Nixon and Kennedy] and from candidates for Congress.”6 Notwithstanding the reluctance of representatives from Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, and Virginia “to yield even a portion of state sovereignty” to any new federal program,7 the governors approved the “Declaration for Action Regarding the Appalachian Region.” The resolution pledged to form and continue a “voluntary association of the states” to advance “a special regional program of development,” and it called for candidates for national office to support “appropriate federal participation” in the solutions to the region’s problems.8
The conference and the declaration for action bore the distinct mark of John Whisman. Serving as aide to Governor Combs, Whisman had helped to organize the Annapolis meeting and had coordinated planning for the Lexington conference. The Lexington resolution drew extensively on Program 60 for both its language and its strategies for action. The resolution, for example, avoided the phrase “depressed area” that was popularly associated with urban redevelopment efforts and instead pointed to the “chronic condition of underdevelopment and severe unemployment” that existed in the region. “As a result [of underdevelopment],” the declaration read, “many people [of Appalachia] are denied reasonable economic and cultural opportunities through no fault of their own. In addition, the productive force in both physical and human resources is severely limited in its contribution to the nation, while the costs of essential welfare services are steadily increasing.”9
By characterizing Appalachia as an underdeveloped region rather than a depressed area, the governors hoped to draw attention to Appalachia’s special problems and to distinguish the needs of the mountains from those of urban areas that had achieved development but were now suffering from temporary economic decline. “By underdevelopment, we mean that basic handicaps to development of adequate facilities involving transportation and water resources have in turn hindered the local ability to support necessary public services and private enterprise activity. Because of such basic deficiencies, the success of local development activity in all areas of life is severely handicapped.” What Appalachia needed, the document suggested, was temporary public work and job training programs similar to those being proposed for the rest of the country and the creation of modern economic infrastructure such as key roads and major water control facilities. Planning for this basic infrastructure should be connected to a “comprehensive state and regional development program . . . in appropriate fields of activity, including forestry, agriculture, mineral resources and tourist travel, industrial and community development, education, health and welfare.”10 The declaration attempted to move policy discussions beyond relief programs and toward the use of federal resources for the comprehensive development of the region. Effectively, the Lexington resolution outlined the issues that would shape efforts to create a special Appalachian development program over the next five years. The conference also adopted a resolution endorsing an Appalachian development highway system and elected Governor Combs as chair. Whisman was designated to head a permanent staff committee to plan future meetings and actions.
The recommendations of the governors’ conference in Lexington took on additional significance three weeks later, when John F. Kennedy was elected to the presidency of the United States. To prepare his domestic agenda, the president-elect immediately asked his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to put together a series of twenty-nine teams that would meet to draft a legislative program for the new administration.11 Fulfilling Kennedy’s pledge to the people of West Virginia, one of the first teams created was the Task Force on Area Redevelopment, appointed to formulate specific recommendations to assist people in economically depressed areas. Generally the Kennedy task forces comprised academics, business leaders, congressional staff, and members of the Kennedy team, but the ten members appointed to the Task Force on Area Redevelopment included seven labor and industrial leaders from West Virginia, the secretary of labor and industry from Pennsylvania, and the assistant to the president of the UMWA in Washington. Kennedy asked Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, who had led congressional efforts to enact depressed areas legislation throughout the 1950s, to serve as chair of the committee and, after a last-minute request from Governor Combs, added Whisman to the team.12
The West Virginia task force, as the Kennedy people called it, met initially in Charleston, West Virginia, on December 9, 1960, and within two weeks it issued a report recommending both a short-term package of immediate relief for those unemployed as a result of the recession and a broader strategy of area development to provide long-term job opportunities. The report called for the passage of area redevelopment legislation similar to that which had failed during the Eisenhower years, including the creation of an area redevelopment administration and programs in human resource development, natural resource development, and public works. Most of these proposals were designed to address unemployment problems in declining urban areas such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, but the final recommendation of the report—reflecting Whisman’s influence—urged the establishment of a system of regional development commissions across the nation that would attack the special problems of distressed regions and carry out compreh
ensive development programs. As an immediate step, the committee recommended that the president appoint an Appalachian regional commission, based on the initiative of the Appalachian governors, that might serve as a pilot for similar efforts in other regions.13
The core recommendations of the task force became Senate bill 1 when the new Congress convened in January 1961, but the proposals for a national system of development commissions and a pilot Appalachian regional commission failed to make the final draft of the legislation. A parade of Appalachian members of Congress testified in favor of the bill during House and Senate hearings. Jennings Randolph and Robert Byrd of West Virginia, John Sherman Cooper and Carl Perkins of Kentucky, Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania described the critical economic conditions in their mountain counties that had led to official unemployment rates of 12 to 25 percent. Governors Tawes of Maryland, Ellington of Tennessee, and Combs of Kentucky all praised the bill but added that other measures were also needed, including a highway program, funds for natural resource development, and increased aid to education. Opponents of the Area Redevelopment Act complained that the legislation was not needed and objected to the federal government’s interfering in the economic affairs of local areas, but Congress passed the legislation in late March 1961.14
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