Reformers to Radicals
Page 11
As the year progressed, grants from the ARA and the Ford Foundation ensured that school renovation would continue throughout 1964. The work, however, was still far from easy. Because of the remote location of many of the mountain communities, physical contact with mountain residents was extraordinarily difficult. Nonetheless, through the month of April the Council’s volunteers persisted in their school efforts. Their contacts with local citizens and county officials, moreover, provided them with a way to stress the cooperative approach and work with individuals. Most counties, the volunteers soon realized, had “development councils,” but they were dominated by representatives from the county seat. That they were so controlled was not, as the CSM saw it, the result of any malicious or underhanded intentions. Rather, few rural residents knew of the councils’ existence, and, as a result, both suffered. The councils did not get input from all parts of the county, and those residing in the hinterlands did not benefit from the councils’ activity. In the end, the development councils were not effective.20
With the hope of remedying this situation, the CSM sought to organize rural communities around issues, such as school repair, that were important to them. Council of the Southern Mountains leaders believed that, if local residents became active locally, they would then become increasingly active in county affairs. They also believed that a higher level of citizen participation would result in county officials inviting their rural constituents to send representatives to countywide boards. Herein lies everything that the CSM wanted from its growing antipoverty efforts in eastern Kentucky: cooperation among all segments of the population and individuals playing significant roles in the programs designed to help them. With this goal in mind, the Council continued with its renovation and enrichment projects. The school projects, it seemed to believe, would be the first step toward solving “one of the biggest problems in Eastern Kentucky,” the lack of mountaineer participation in community action. Little did the CSM realize that this decision would prove to be quite significant in the near future.21
At this juncture, the Council of the Southern Mountains was finally well on its way toward a meaningful reform effort in central Appalachia. Ayer apparently recognized that school renovation was not an end in itself but a means toward more significant reform. The Appalachian Volunteers, nevertheless, stayed grounded in such projects for the remainder of 1964 and throughout 1965. Among the reasons for this was Ayer’s view of the Council and his philosophy of cooperation. Another contributing factor was the immense popularity of school renovation with political leaders and the public as a whole. At that time, many Americans regarded educational-based programs as the solution to the problem of poverty, and this was reflected in the predominate attitudes of 1960s liberalism.
In 1964, Ayer linked the historical mission of the CSM with its ongoing focus on the educational needs of mountaineers. “The Council of the Southern Mountains,” he stated, “is unlike any other institution in this country. In a sense, the Council might be said to combine some of the attributes of a research institute, an extension service, and a learned society. In any event, about one fact there can be no dispute: The Council’s business, its only business, is education—the advancement of knowledge.” Besides linking the Council with the nation’s top universities, this statement also links it with school-based projects.22
Because so many in addition to the CSM saw a lack of education as the major cause of poverty—and not just in Appalachia but nationwide—school-oriented efforts appeared to all as the solution to the problem. At a meeting with Kentucky state officials in Frankfort concerning the proposed Economic Opportunity Act, Jack Ciaccio of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare argued that “education was the answer” to Appalachia’s cycle of poverty. Having the nation’s attention focused on eastern Kentucky would further highlight the region’s educational deficits, but, should the pending antipoverty legislation receive congressional approval, Kentucky “schoolmen” could show that they could do a fantastic job if given the appropriate financial resources. For any war on poverty to be successful, agencies such as the state Department of Education must “take the initiative . . . and work closely with the Council of the Southern Mountains and Kentucky’s colleges and universities.” Ciaccio urged Kentucky to start formulating plans immediately so that, if and when the antipoverty legislation passed, Kentucky could take advantage of it instantly. Most important, he hoped that the state would provide assistance to local school boards in their efforts to develop antipoverty projects. This would ensure that education would be given priority in local community action programs (CAPs).23
Support for the school renovation projects was not limited to federal bureaucrats, however. The program also received highly favorable publicity, especially from the Louisville Courier-Journal. In a March 15, 1964, article, the columnist John Fetterman referred to the Appalachian Volunteers as “young Samaritans in Appalachia.” So popular were the first few renovation projects, Fetterman wrote, that “pleas have come from” the superintendents of Knott, Floyd, and Leslie counties for the AVs to come to their districts. Less than a week later, a Courier-Journal editorial stated that the Volunteers “have done more good per dollar spent than any group, governmental or private, in the history of depressed areas.” This “domestic Peace Corps” should serve as the model for the national War on Poverty. Even the AV leader placed significant weight on school repair (implying, at the same time, his resignation toward the situation of the region’s adult population). According to Ogle (as quoted by Fetterman), it was “vital ‘to get at the preschool and primary ages’”: “‘They haven’t become exasperated and hopeless about the future. [The AVs] might just make a big difference between what they are now and what they could be.’”24
As the Appalachian Volunteers prepared to close out the 1964 spring semester, they attempted to organize communities around issues other than school renovation. Despite these efforts—which succeeded at Persimmon Fork, in Leslie County, where the people expressed a desire for a new road into their community—most activity still centered on local schools. Even Persimmon Fork residents placed education high on their priority list. At Big Willard, in Perry County, residents and AV members sought ways to raise money in order to send their children on a field trip to the state capital. In short, while the AVs did find that the mountaineers certainly had concerns beyond their schools, education was never far from their minds. Even road repairs, which for the AVs gained in importance as the summer approached, were part of an overall school-oriented outlook. Improved roads translated to school bus service for rural children. What was ironic was the fact that the school-based projects were supposed to create a desire for education among rural mountaineers. Clearly, those impoverished people already had this aspiration. Yet the AVs failed to see it.25
AV plans for the coming summer called for an “exclusive concentration on community action programs.” The Volunteers claimed that, because of the work completed during the spring of 1964, they had “gained acceptance” in forty eastern Kentucky mountain communities. Through school renovation projects, the Appalachian Volunteers believed that they had demonstrated to rural mountaineers that they could improve their lives if they all worked together in an “organized” manner. Because the summer allowed student volunteers to spend more time in the mountains, AV leaders advocated weeklong, in addition to weekend, projects. Also, the AVs allotted time during the summer months to conducting follow-ups in those places where they began renovations and to solidify plans for the 1964–1965 school year.26
Despite their plans, the Volunteers got off to a relatively slow start in June 1964. AV leaders spent much of that month in consultation with Kentucky college officials, hoping to ensure their support for the AV program in the upcoming school year. The Council called two additional meetings that June. Because they still operated on a tight budget, CSM officials invited the state’s business leaders to support the Appalachian Volunteers’ efforts through donations of virtually any type. Finall
y, the CSM board of directors met with the AV board. Though the AVs were part of the Council, they did have their own board, which consisted of a student representative from each member college and eight adults “whose experience and backgrounds enable them to make positive contributions” to the AV organization. The purpose of this third meeting was to establish policy guidelines that the Appalachian Volunteers would follow “when the Council’s administrative responsibility to the effort has ended.” Ever since the start of the Appalachian Volunteers, nearly all those involved operated with the understanding that, after one year, the program would become, as Flem Messer stated, “a separate and action oriented organization.” Now, with campus chapters functioning and projects in various stages of development, it appeared as if the Appalachian Volunteers, at a mere six months of age, were all but ready to fend for themselves.27
With plans for the short-term future seemingly set, the Volunteers turned their attention back to the mountains. As their reports illustrate, they made an effort to get beyond school repairs and address other issues. At Upper Thousandsticks, in Leslie County, for example, the AVs helped local residents dig a new well to improve the clean water supply and worked on repairing the road into town. Leslie County, in fact, became a focal point for the Appalachian Volunteers that summer as workers descended on the communities of Lower Thousandsticks, Hurricane, and Persimmon Fork, among others, focusing on similar road and water projects. Slone Fork, in Knott County, also noticed vast improvements. Volunteers renovated twenty-one houses and collected and disposed of trash that lay about the town. At the small hamlet of Red Bird, near the Red Bird River in Clay County, the Appalachian Volunteers reported that the people held a succession of community meetings to determine a set of priorities for Volunteer work. In what was, perhaps, the high point of the summer, AVs cooperated with the people of adjacent Saylor and Spruce Pine to build a small picnic area and park.28
The road and water projects in no way replaced the school programs. A significant amount of AV time and energy went into the Mill Creek summer school program. Moreover, the Volunteers utilized a group from the central Kentucky–based Wilderness Road Girl Scout Troop to conduct a two-week educational program in Leslie County. After a short training period in Berea, the scouts arrived in Leslie County on August 10, 1964. Dispersed to eight different communities, the girls spent the first week of their stay managing recreational activities for the rural children. Their second week was also the grade schoolers’ first week of classes. During this period, the volunteers acted as teacher aides by distributing textbooks and doing other jobs that made the instructors’ tasks easier. Other mountain locales received Volunteer enrichment or renovation projects. AVs at Urban, in Clay County, virtually rebuilt the local school, while other volunteers treated the youngsters in Bear Creek to both a recreation and an academic enrichment program. In total, of the thirteen communities identified in the AV reports of June and July 1964, nine had at least some part of the programs offered them rooted in the local school. The impression that the key to abolishing poverty in Appalachia was education was still very much alive in the summer of 1964.29
As the Girl Scouts returned to their Bluegrass region homes, the Appalachian Volunteers, as an organization, began to get ready for a return to the weekend projects that characterized their modus operandi during the academic year. Part of that preparation included promoting the Volunteer program on college campuses again. Interestingly, those returning Girl Scouts provided the Appalachian Volunteers with another strategy for gaining student support. Reflecting on their experiences, one scout stated that she thought the AV program was “one of the best ever”: “I wish everyone could have this wonderful experience.” Another “found this project one of the most rewarding, enjoyable, and educational opportunities ever offered by the girl scouts.” A third echoed these sentiments, which focused, not on what the girls had done for the poor in Appalachia, but on what they had gained from this type of volunteer work: “I wouldn’t trade these two short weeks for anything in the whole world. The experience gained by working with the people [was] greatly appreciated and every girl who didn’t get to go . . . miss[ed] a great opportunity.”30
While it would not be accurate to argue that each Girl Scout who participated in the Leslie County program did so for purely self-centered reasons, Council leadership recognized that many potential volunteers would need something more than just an altruistic desire to help the poor to sustain their interest in the Appalachian Volunteers. Students should be involved “in the planning and administration of the program,” the Council declared, and they must develop a “system of rewards so that they can be made to feel that they are part of a ‘movement.’” Further, according to one AV, part of the success of the school renovations was the sense of immediate satisfaction and accomplishment that went with seeing a previously dilapidated schoolhouse transformed into one fit for habitation.31
While a certain degree of personal satisfaction, especially in a program as demanding as the Appalachian Volunteers, may have been necessary, the AVs needed to be careful so that personal satisfaction did not become the primary goal of the program. Unfortunately, it appeared as if this happened. While those charged with administering the program wanted to believe that these “young, flexible, energetic” students were “motivated solely by a personal concern for the conditions they are combating,” this perception was not quite accurate. Even the AVs themselves, in a statement that contradicted their own ideas about the students’ activism, declared that “for them the work is not a job, but a duty.”32
In other ways, mountain reform leaders reasserted the importance of the individual volunteers, but not because they gave freely of themselves. Rather, the students were important for what they represented. By exemplifying success, college students, the Appalachian Volunteers board declared in August 1964, raised the mountaineers’ expectations for their children: “When the [mountaineers] see girls like the Volunteers and look at their girls that are the same age, . . . they will see a new example which they want their girls to follow.” So impoverished were the rural Appalachians, this attitude implied, that they had no idea that a better life was possible. Simply by going into the mountains, the Volunteers provided them with previously unknown aspirations.33
When the Appalachian Volunteers went back to the mountains in the fall of 1964, they abandoned development projects in favor of a renewed concentration on renovation and enrichment. Still, they initiated the Books for Appalachia project when they realized how inadequate libraries in the local community schools were. Some, they reported, had no books at all. One AV, Roslea Johnson, remembered trying to write a note for a mountain teacher whose school the Volunteers had earlier repaired. While searching for a piece of paper and a pencil, she noticed that this particular school had virtually nothing with which to work—no paper, no writing utensils, no books. As she visited other mountain schools, she noticed that they were in like circumstances. This, she later recalled, was “an eye opener.” Arguably, other student workers felt the same way, and these experiences gave rise to the school library project. The AVs collected books donated by publishing companies, schools from outside the region, and the national Parent-Teacher Association and shipped them by the boxcar to places such as Berea and Barbourville for distribution to rural mountain schools.34
Ultimately, the book project resulted in a great deal of publicity and prompted the expansion of the overall AV program. In order to help distribute the books and to provide shelves in those mountain schools that had none, the Volunteers convinced the industrial arts classes at the region’s colleges to construct interlocking “book boxes.” These boxes allowed the AV workers to pack the donated materials in containers that, after delivery, could be converted to stable bookcases. One effect of this aspect of the book project was to allow those college students involved in the construction of the book boxes to become “Volunteers” without ever leaving campus. Another was that the nationwide appeal for books—one volunt
eer claimed that the organization collected nearly 1.5 million—made people from every corner of the country aware of the Appalachian Volunteer effort. Jack Rivel, one of the first college volunteers and later an AV field man, claimed: “National PTA people from all over came down [to Barbourville] and spent a day or two days helping us sort books.” By November 21, 1964, Knox County alone gained thirty-one “libraries” in its mountain schools. The next week, schools in Leslie and Jackson counties also acquired AV book boxes. Financial support for the program came from the National Home Library Association, which donated $15,000 in early 1966 to purchase encyclopedias for the schools. With the library project, the Appalachian Volunteers took a significant step toward becoming a national program.35
The success of the Books for Appalachia project was not the only boost the AVs received in the fall of 1964. That August, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act. Though this act benefited the Council of the Southern Mountains and its Appalachian Volunteer program in terms of economic resources, in other ways it served to limit and delineate the CSM’s thoughts and actions. Speaking before an AV Special Advisory Committee meeting in Berea, Ralph Caprio, representing the newly created Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), stated that, in order for the AVs to secure federal funding, their plans must be “crystal clear.” In addition, college administrators needed to declare their commitment to the Volunteer project, and county school superintendents must proclaim their desire for and need of Appalachian Volunteers. Just as important, echoing the requirement for cooperation expressed in the act, the Volunteer organization and the local officials had to announce that they would work together in the fight against poverty. This was of primary importance because the county superintendents’ offices were the agencies through which the AVs operated.36