18. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 75–87.
19. Caudill, Night Comes, 390.
20. Louisville Courier-Journal, February 18, 1962.
21. Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission, Program 60: Report (Frankfort: Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission, 1962), 8.
22. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958). See also Unger, Best of Intentions, 32.
23. Michael Harrington, “Our Fifty Million Poor: Forgotten Men of the Affluent Society,” Commentary, July 1959, 26.
24. Julius Duscha, “A Long Trail of Misery Winds the Proud Hills,” Washington Post, August 7, 1960.
25. David A. Grossman and Melvin R. Levin, “The Appalachian Region: A National Problem Area,” Land Economics 38 (1961).
26. Ford, Southern Appalachian Region.
27. Harrington, Other America.
28. See Leon Keyserling, “Two-Fifths of a Nation,” Progressive, June 1962, 11–14.
29. Thomas B. Morgan, “Portrait of an Underdeveloped Country,” Look, December 4, 1962.
30. Caudill, introduction to Night Comes, xii–xiii.
31. Homer Bigart, “Kentucky Miners: A Grim Winter,” New York Times, October 20, 1963.
32. See Bernie Bookbinder, “Appalachia: The Desperate Americans,” Newsday, December 17, 1963.
33. John Ed Pearce, “The Superfluous People of Hazard, Kentucky,” Reporter, January 3, 1963, 33–35.
34. Carl M. Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson, and the War on Poverty,” Journal of American History 69, no. 1 (1982): 103; Unger, Best of Intentions, 31–34.
35. Dwight MacDonald, “Our Invisible Poor,” New Republic, January 19, 1963, 134.
36. Michael L. Gillette, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History (New York: Twayne, 1996), 1–11.
37. Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson,” 102–3.
38. Lexington Herald, March 18, 1963; Louisville Courier-Journal, March 19, 1963; Whitesburg (KY) Mountain Eagle, March 20, 1963.
39. John D. Whisman, “Origin and Development of the Program, 1955–1975,” memorandum to Appalachian Commission Members, 1976, 23–24, Whisman Papers, box 203, file 2859.
40. Advisory Policy Board to Area Redevelopment Administration and Conference of Appalachian Governors, transcript of the joint meeting, Washington, DC, April 9, 1963, 1–4, Whisman Papers, box 58, file 959.
41. Ibid., 12–21.
42. Ibid., 21–22.
43. John D. Whisman, interview by Glen Edward Taul, May 5, 1995, quoted in Glen Edward Taul, “Poverty, Development, and Government in Appalachia: Origins of the Appalachian Regional Commission, 1956–1965” (PhD diss., University of Kentucky, 2001), 256. See also Advisory Policy Board to Area Redevelopment Administration and Conference of Appalachian Governors, 75.
44. Benjamin Chinitz, “Signs of Hope in the Graveyard of the American Dream,” Pitt, January 1964, 1.
45. Bradshaw, Appalachian Regional Commission, 34.
46. Bigart, “Kentucky Miners.”
47. Fred Luigart, “Mountains Get Aid from JFK Order,” Louisville Courier-Journal, December 24, 1963.
48. Unger, Best of Intentions, 77–78.
49. Taul, “Poverty, Development,” 287–89.
50. John L. Sweeney, interview by Glen Edward Taul, June 6, 1997, quoted in Taul, “Poverty, Development,” 287.
51. For more detail, see Taul, “Poverty, Development,” 290–92.
52. See Sweeney, interview, and Taul, “Poverty, Development,” 301–2.
53. President’s Appalachian Regional Commission, Report, 16.
54. Ibid., 31.
55. Ibid., 65.
56. Louisville Courier-Journal, April 25, 1964.
57. Sweeney, interview, quoted in Taul, “Poverty, Development,” 315.
58. Louisville Courier-Journal, April 25, 1964.
59. Sweeney, interview, quoted in Taul, “Poverty, Development,” 316.
60. Governor William Scranton, letter of endorsement, President’s Appalachian Regional Commission, Report, vi–vii.
61. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Summary and Analysis of the Legislative History of the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 and Subsequent Amendments, report prepared by Douglas Reid Weimer, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985, Committee Print 14, 5.
62. Ibid., 8.
63. Taul, “Poverty, Development,” 375–76; Sweeney, interview.
64. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks of the President at Signing Ceremony on the Appalachia Bill in the Rose Garden, March 9, 1965,” Appalachian Regional Commission Archives, box 8, folder 6, Special Collections Library, University of Kentucky, Lexington (hereafter cited as ARC Archives).
65. Lyndon B. Johnson, commencement address (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, May 22, 1964), quoted in Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 82.
66. Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks of the President and Mrs. Johnson upon Departure from Tri-State Airport, Huntington, WV, April 24, 1964,” Statements of Lyndon B. Johnson, container 102, 2, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, Texas.
67. See correspondence and memoranda, Office Files of Bill Moyers, boxes 16, 130, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, Texas.
68. “Poverty and Urban Policy” (transcript of group discussion of the Kennedy administration urban poverty programs and policies), 162–63, John F. Kennedy Library, quoted in James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle against Poverty, 1900–1980 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 134.
69. See, for example, M. Murphy, “The Valley of Poverty,” Life, January 31, 1964; James Reston Jr., “Appalachia: No Place for the Young,” Chicago Daily News, February 1, 1965; Ben B. Seligman, “Appalachia as Symbol,” Nation, February 22, 1965; Reese Cleghorn, “Appalachia: Poverty, Beauty and Poverty,” New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1965; and Jack E. Weller, “Is There a Future for Yesterday’s People?” Saturday Review of Literature, October 16, 1965.
3. DEVELOPING THE POOR
1. David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
2. Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 100.
3. O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 102–23.
4. Harrington, “Our Fifty Million Poor,” 25; Harrington, Other America, 167.
5. Quoted in Unger, Best of Intentions, 78.
6. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 76–79; Unger, Best of Intentions, 80–83; Gillette, Launching the War, 26–31.
7. Anderson, “Poverty, Unemployment,” 82–84; Sar A. Levitan, The Design of Federal Antipoverty Strategy (Ann Arbor: Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, University of Michigan, 1967), 8–10.
8. Dallek, Flawed Giant, 60; Unger, Best of Intentions, 78–79; Gillette, Launching the War, 72–73.
9. Unger, Best of Intentions, 78.
10. Gillette, Launching the War, 74; Dallek, Flawed Giant, 80.
11. Nicolas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Vintage, 1992), 97–103.
12. Oscar Lewis, The Children of Sanchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family (New York: Random House, 1961); Oscar Lewis, La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty (New York: Random House, 1966). See also O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 117–21, and Unger, Best of Intentions, 29–30.
13. Rupert Vance, “The Region: A New Survey,” in Ford, Southern Appalachian Region, 7–8.
14. Harrington, Other America, 146.
15. Frank Mankieitz quoted in Gillette, Launching the War, 90.
16. Ibid., 87.
17. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 2:312.
18. Jack E. Weller, Yesterday’s People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 196
5), 7.
19. Rupert Vance, introduction to ibid., ix.
20. Branscome, Federal Government in Appalachia, 32.
21. See Richard L. Hoffman, “Community Action: Innovative and Coordinative Strategies in the War on Poverty” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1969).
22. Carrie Celia Mullins, “Poverty and Politics: One Kentucky County’s Version of the War on Poverty” (unpublished graduate student essay, 1994), in the author’s possession, 6–10.
23. Willis A. Sutton Jr., “Differential Perceptions of the Impact of a Rural Anti-Poverty Campaign,” Social Science Quarterly 50 (1969); Bill Peterson, “Poor-People Power,” Louisville Courier-Journal, June 11, 1972. See also Paul Street et al., Community Action in Appalachia: An Appraisal of the War on Poverty in a Rural Setting in Southeastern Kentucky, 3 vols. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Center for Developmental Change, 1965–1968).
24. See Huey Perry, “They’ll Cut Off Your Project”: A Mingo County Chronicle (New York: Praeger, 1972).
25. Douglass Arnett, “Eastern Kentucky and the Politics of Dependency and Development” (PhD diss., Duke University, 1978), 172.
26. O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 168.
27. Unger, Best of Intentions, 152.
28. O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge, 13.
29. New York Times, April 26, 1960; J. Allan Smith, “Action Program for Mountain Counties,” Mountain Life and Work, Summer 1961, 12–18; Louisville Courier-Journal, June 16, 1963.
30. Thomas Parrish, “Speakers Rouse Council in Annual Conference,” Mountain Life and Work, Summer 1964, 12.
31. William H. Miller, Annual Report of the Resource Development Specialist in Community Services, 1964 (Eastern Kentucky Resource Development Project, University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service), in the author’s possession, 1.
32. Malcolm H. Holliday (executive director of the Kentucky River Area Development District) to Dr. Lewis Cochran (vice president of the University of Kentucky), October 29, 1970, in the author’s possession.
33. I taught on the faculty at Mars Hill College from 1975 to 1985, shortly after the college received national recognition for a new core curriculum that emphasized the “behavioral outcomes” of a liberal arts education.
34. ALCOR Decade, 1969–1979: Appalachian Leadership and Community Outreach, Inc. (Pippa Passes, KY, 1980), in the author’s possession, 3.
35. Ibid., 13.
36. “Teamwork Does the Job,” Mountain Life and Work, Spring 1964, 17; Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 187–88; Thomas J. Kiffmeyer, “From Self-Help to Sedition: The Appalachian Volunteers in Eastern Kentucky, 1964–1970,” Journal of Southern History 64, no. 1 (1998): 70–71.
37. “Teamwork Does the Job,” 18.
38. Quoted in Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 188.
39. Kiffmeyer, “From Self-Help to Sedition,” Journal of Southern History, 71.
40. John Fetterman, “Young Samaritans in Appalachia,” Louisville Courier-Journal, March 19, 1964.
41. Clark Miller, “Era of Change: Volunteers Helped Appalachia,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 15, 1988.
42. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 190.
43. Quoted in Kiffmeyer, “From Self-Help to Sedition,” Journal of Southern History, 77.
44. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 192–95.
45. Max E. Glenn, “The Commission on Religion in Appalachia: Its Origin, Purpose, and Current Status,” in Proceedings—CORA 1966: A United Approach to Fulfilling the Church’s Mission in Appalachia (Knoxville, TN: Commission on Religion in Appalachia, 1966); Jack E. Weller, “Look at What You’ve Done,” in Unite: A CORA War on Poverty Commemoration (Knoxville, TN: Commission on Religion in Appalachia, 1986), 3–7.
46. Glenn, “Commission on Religion,” 27.
47. “CAP Organizational History,” attachment to Faith and Actions: Annual Report of the Christian Appalachian Project, 1987 (Lancaster, KY: CAP, 1987).
48. Faith and Actions, 18.
49. Gil Rosenberg, “The Selling of Bobbie Sue” (unpublished graduate student essay, 1989), in the author’s possession. Rosenberg was a former CAP employee.
50. Reverend Ralph Beiting, CAP fund-raising letter, n.d., in the author’s possession. See also Rosenberg, “Selling of Bobbie Sue.”
51. Helen M. Lewis and Monica Appleby, introduction to Mountain Sisters: From Convent to Community in Appalachia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), xiv–xv.
52. Lewis and Appleby, Mountain Sisters, 148–197.
53. For details of these and other activities of the former Glenmary Sisters in Appalachia, see ibid.
54. Catholic Committee of Appalachia, This Land Is Home to Me: A Pastoral Letter on Powerlessness in Appalachia by the Catholic Bishops of the Region (Whitesburg, KY: Catholic Committee of Appalachia, 1975), 30.
4. CONFRONTING DEVELOPMENT
1. James Ridgeway, “Why the Poverty War Seems a Muddle,” New Republic, October 9, 1965, 7. See also C. E. Silberman, “Mixed-up War on Poverty,” Fortune, August 1965, 156–61, and C. E. Silberman, “More Boon Than Doggle: Predictable Patterns of Controversy, Red Tape and Scandal,” Time, October 15, 1965, 33.
2. Unger, Best of Intentions, 167, 196.
3. Richard W. Boone, “Working with the Poor,” New Republic, November 9, 1965, 39.
4. “The War within the War,” Time, May 13, 1966, 25; U.S. News and World Report, December 13, 1965, 29.
5. “War within the War,” 25.
6. Joe Malloy, interview by Thomas Kiffmeyer, quoted in John M. Glen, “The War on Poverty in Appalachia: Oral History from the Top Down and the Bottom Up,” Oral History Review 22, no. 1 (1995): 84.
7. Ibid., 84–85.
8. For a fuller assessment and critique of Caudill’s perspective on Appalachia, see Ronald D Eller, “Harry Caudill and the Burden of Mountain Liberalism,” in Critical Essays in Appalachian Life and Culture: Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, ed. Rick Simon (Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1982).
9. Harry M. Caudill, “Misdeal in Appalachia,” Atlantic, June 1965, 44.
10. Ibid.
11. Harry Caudill to Milton Ogle, May 4, 1966, Appalachian Volunteers Records, box 21, Southern Appalachian Archives, Special Collections and Archives, Hutchins Library, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky.
12. Naomi Weintraub Cohen, interview by Gibbs Kinderman, “Voices from the Sixties,” August 16, 1987, quoted in Glen, “War on Poverty,” 85.
13. “979 Community Action Council” (typescript of fund-raising history, ca. 1970), in the author’s possession.
14. Hawkeye, September 1968.
15. “Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization” (ca. 1970), in the author’s possession.
16. Maxine Kenny, “Mountain Health Care: Politics, Power and Profits,” Mountain Life and Work, April 1971, 14–17.
17. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 191–95.
18. Kyle Vance, “Poor Mobilize in Appalachia: Talk of March,” Louisville Courier-Journal, February 19, 1967.
19. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty, Examination of the War on Poverty, 90th Cong., 1st sess., 1967, 52–57, 279–90.
20. Vance, “Poor Mobilize in Appalachia.”
21. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 193–94.
22. K. W. Lee, “Fair Elections in West Virginia,” in Walls and Stephenson, Appalachia in the Sixties.
23. Clark Miller, “Era of Change: Volunteers Helped Appalachia and Vice Versa,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 15, 1988; Lee, “Fair Elections,” 170.
24. Lee, “Fair Elections,” 168–70.
25. Chad Montrie, To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 72–74.
26. Ibid., 63–65.
27. Ibid., 75–78.
28. The following account of Combs’s story is drawn
from a number of sources, including “Strip Mining, January 10, 1965–December 23, 1965,” Anne and Harry Caudill Papers, box 19, folder 4, Special Collections Library, University of Kentucky, Lexington; Guy Carawan and Candie Carawan, Voices from the Mountains (New York: Knopf, 1975), 44–48; Montrie, To Save the Land, 79; and “Mrs. Ollie Combs Family Scrapbook.” I wish to thank the Combs family for use of a CD copy of the latter collection of photographs and newspaper clippings.
29. Harry M. Caudill, The Watches of the Night: A New Plea for Appalachia (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 42.
30. Montrie, To Save the Land, 87–88.
31. Joe Mulloy, “The Appalachian Story,” Bill of Rights Journal, December 1969, 31.
32. Anne Braden, “The McSurely Case and Repression in the 1960s,” Southern Exposure, September–October 1983, 24; Caudill, Watches of the Night, 47.
33. “Sedition Is Laid to Three in Kentucky,” New York Times, August 13, 1967; Braden, “McSurely Case,” 24.
34. Braden, “McSurely Case,” 26.
35. Charles Young, “The Trial of Alan and Margaret McSurely,” Southern Exposure, September–October 1983, 19.
36. James Tunnell, “Un-American Activities Unit Voted,” Louisville Courier-Journal, March 9, 1968.
37. Bill Peterson, “Witness Scolds AV Probers for Attacks,” Louisville Courier-Journal, December 4, 1968; Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 207; Bill Peterson, “Fighting Splits Pikeville as KUAC Probe Nears,” Louisville Courier-Journal, October 10, 1968.
38. Peterson, “Fighting Splits Pikeville.”
39. Peter Schrag, “Appalachia: Again the Forgotten Land,” Saturday Review, January 27, 1968, 14.
40. “Kennedy Hears of Need for Jobs during Two-Day Mountain Tour,” Whitesburg (KY) Mountain Eagle, February 15, 1968.
41. Schrag, “Appalachia,” 16, 18.
42. The complete text of Caudill’s testimony is reprinted in the Whitesburg (KY) Mountain Eagle, February 15, 1968.
43. Whitesburg (KY) Mountain Eagle, February 15, 1968.
44. To Save the Land and People, dir. Anne Lewis (Whitesburg, KY: Appalshop Inc., 1999).
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