Reformers to Radicals

by Thomas Kiffmeyer

  A second critic of the move toward nonnative volunteers echoed the Trace Fork reporter’s remarks about the resentment felt toward outsiders and restated the connection many AV workers made between poverty and the problems in local governments. Writing from Thousandsticks, Leslie County, the volunteer Judith Allcock related how local teachers resented the work of every outsider who came to the community to improve it. In fact, the present teacher “harangued . . . the Volunteers for coming in and promising to send supplies and do things and then not come back”: “She also resented that they considered Thousandsticks poor.” In her report, Allcock related how one volunteer commented to the teacher that the children were “really culturally deprived.” This “must have confirmed [the teacher’s] feeling that outsiders look down on the community.” According to Allcock, two local teachers reported that photographers came to the community with their own mules, on which they placed children for publicity pictures. Those same teachers claimed that the journalists asked one mother “to take off her kids shoes” before they took pictures and asked other people “to claim they were hungry.” These incidents, Allcock concluded, led the locals to think that all proffered aid, including AV aid, was an attempt either to exploit the mountaineers for personal gain or “to get votes for the superintendent.”7

  Allcock’s report highlights the two fundamental problems that the Volunteers faced. First, they had to determine what role, if any, outsiders should play in the AV program. Second, they had to determine how to deal with those local officials whom they—and a significant number of local people—considered to be corrupt. The solutions to these problems—which came quickly—had long-term consequences.

  Allcock provided the AVs with part of the solution. Of particular concern to most rural mountaineers, she stated, was the overtly missionary attitude held by so many who came to the region to “‘help the poor.’” The Trace Fork AV concurred. Throughout the report, she repeatedly warned against exhibiting any type of behavior that could in any way be interpreted as a demonstration of superiority. Few Volunteers heeded the warning, however—not even Allcock herself, her reports (which described “a dull routine way of life” in Thousandsticks) exuding an air of superiority and missionary purpose.8 More important, the AV organization never adequately addressed this issue, focusing instead on relations with local officials.

  Augmenting this dilemma was the AVs’ growing fear that their efforts addressed only the symptoms of poverty, not the root cause. Already by early 1965, this perception had gained credence. In Pike County, Kentucky, a school renovation project yielded disastrous results. According to the AV fieldman Flem Messer, not only did the local community fail to take part, but the project proved to be “a waste of materials, and more importantly a great waste of enthusiasm for . . . the Appalachian Volunteers program.” Certain unknown individuals “vandalized and [broke] the windows” in the newly refurbished building.9 Though the AVs never determined who was responsible for the vandalism, it convinced some of the activists that simply repairing schoolhouses and broadening the mountaineers’ cultural horizons through curriculum enhancement did nothing to change local attitudes or empower local people to deal with their problems on their own. In addition, this event echoed a warning that Tom Gish, the editor of the Whitesburg, KY, Mountain Eagle, had issued to the CSM as early as July 1964. Though he contended that education was “the only way out [of poverty] for Eastern Kentucky,” Gish also claimed: “The existing political and economic power structure in the mountains [did] not really want change and will oppose any real reform. . . . Those who wish to bring about change—those who want community development—are going to have to go beyond the political and economic leadership to the people themselves, and deal directly with them.” Following this vandalism episode, the AV organization began to seek a new direction and began to question the inclusive, nonconfrontational approach championed by the Council.10

  Appalachian Volunteer problems, however, went beyond incidents of vandalism and the questions of an influential eastern Kentucky newspaper editor. As the Volunteers continued their work in the field, they again encountered recalcitrant local county officials and failed projects. One particularly problematic area was northeastern Kentucky. Carter, Elliott, Greenup, Lewis, Morgan, and Rowan counties were part of a multicounty community action program (CAP) known as the Northeast Kentucky Area Redevelopment Council, and, as early as mid-1965, when the Redevelopment Council was not yet two months old, the Appalachian Volunteers experienced difficulties with that agency’s director, Lee Taylor. It appears that the AVs failed to inform Taylor of their activities and coordinate them with those of the Redevelopment Council. For example, on September 21, 1965, Taylor told his Board of Directors that two VISTA volunteers assigned to the CSM’s AV program currently worked in Elliott County. He had “not been able to find out their specific duties,” but he had “learned that the community was in a turmoil because of something related to [their] presence.” In an attempt to resolve the problem, Taylor tried to get the volunteers recalled and told the CSM “that it would be wise and certainly helpful . . . if their VISTAs were withdrawn from our area.”11

  Taylor’s complaints did not end there. He also reported that the Redevelopment Council had four of its own VISTA volunteers placed in neighboring Lewis County but “discovered that they were not free to perform the tasks given them”: “Representatives of the Council of the Southern Mountains consistently countermanded the direction of . . . our director in that [county].” Taylor claimed that the Redevelopment Council VISTA volunteers confronted their CSM “tormentors” and informed them that they would follow the instructions of the Redevelopment Council, not the CSM. Later that morning, after the confrontation, “a representative of the Council of the Southern Mountains childishly stole a distributor cap” off the automobile of one of the Lewis County volunteers.12

  Taylor also believed that CSM-AV training of VISTA volunteers biased them against the area councils. Along with a few fellow Redevelopment Council employees, Taylor attended an AV training session in Berea in the hope of “getting some of these people assigned to our Area Council.” “We had the distinct impression,” he reported, “that these people [the VISTA trainees] had been trained to believe that the members of an Area Council and its staff were their worst enemies.” The CSM, moreover, “knowing that all young people do not subscribe to this philosophy,” would not allow anyone to personally interview the potential volunteers and would allow CAPs to have VISTA volunteers “only as the [CSM] assigned them.”13

  Though the CSM staff member Alan Zuckerman tried to pacify Taylor, the Council of the Southern Mountains faced an uphill battle. “You should realize . . . that your organization has made a very unfavorable impression on me,” Taylor wrote Zuckerman. For any agreement to be reached, he continued, the CSM would need to understand that, though it had “certain facilities and services available,” they must be “offered to and not forced upon” other agencies if they are to be “of any value.” Additionally, Taylor noted, the CSM could expect the full cooperation of his (or any other) agency only if he was “fully informed, consulted with and ha[d] prior understanding of the program” in terms of how it would fit into the Redevelopment Council’s own activities. Before he and Zuckerman could even meet, Taylor indicated, the CSM would have to remove its workers from his region “so that the turmoil and resentment [could] subside.”14

  Both the letter and the spirit of Taylor’s statements explicitly placed the functions of his and all other CAPs ahead of those of the Appalachian Volunteers. The Volunteers, Taylor argued, were to support and aid the CAPs, which, in his view, had the primary responsibility for solving Appalachian poverty. Equally important, his reaction to Volunteer activity confirmed Gish’s warning about dealing directly with the people. Nevertheless, if the AVs bypassed or ignored the many CAP directors, school superintendents, and other local elected officials, they would violate the CSM’s philosophy that all segments of eastern Kentucky’s popula
tion be included in reform efforts.

  Oddly enough, it was representatives of the OEO who came to observe and evaluate the Volunteer program that provided the mountain reformers with additional incentive for moving further from the CSM’s traditional position of cooperation. Following his visit to eastern Kentucky, the OEO evaluation team member Frank Prial wrote: “The poverty program in Eastern Kentucky is in trouble and unless some drastic changes are made rather rapidly, there is a good chance it may never get off the ground.” Describing the region as a place where “none of the standard rules of democracy apply,” Prial articulated the growing concerns of many of the Appalachian Volunteers. “There is a hostility to outside assistance,” he wrote to the OEO’s mid-Atlantic regional director Jack Ciaccio, “unless the power structure can use it to turn a profit.” The powers that be, moreover, were “resisting strenuously the threat that the poverty program will alter the status quo in their areas.”15

  Supporting the local political leaders, Prial reported, were the coal operators. In fact, he declared: “The coal operators are closely allied—often literally related to—the political powers in these counties. Together, they have no intention of permitting Federal poverty program money to upset the delicate economic balance they have maintained for many years.” After detailing the nepotism inherent to this corrupt political system, Prial hit on what he perceived as yet another key factor underpinning the widespread political corruption—the absence of an articulate opposition to the ruling oligarchy. “The absence of any middle class is one of the factors contributing to the perpetuation of poverty in Eastern Kentucky.” Doctors, lawyers, all the “better teachers,” and even the United Mine Workers have “vanished from the scene.” Only those too old, too young, or too sick to fight back, and “those who prey upon them,” Prial argued, were left in the mountains.16

  As a result, according to Prial, those who administered the OEO programs, in particular the county-run CAPs, in Appalachian Kentucky “evidenced in some cases little or no sympathy for the poor.” At best, the local program directors had “not the faintest notion of what is expected of them, of the meaning of social action, or of the import and content of the Economic Opportunities Act.” Prial went so far as to include in his attack the Council of the Southern Mountains because its personnel were “overly conditioned to working through the established power structure.” The Council’s executive director “would rather not jeopardize the outfit’s prestige by tilting at windmills.”17

  Prial asserted that most county CAP officials “expressed considerable disappointment” in the training sessions administered by the CSM. Reflecting the “delivery of services” attitude of most county politicians, one local program director informed Prial: “We need hard-nosed information about preparing programs and submitting them, not a lot of vague stuff about how to deal with people.” For his part, Prial believed “that the Council people had not really prepared an agenda or thought about what they wanted to say.” Though he admitted that the CSM’s lines of communication were “invaluable” in establishing contacts in the mountains, he found virtually all leadership in the mountains, whether that of the Council or local elected officials, wanting. “I believe that someone is going to have to strongarm the power structures in the poor coal counties,” he summarized, “if anything is to be accomplished in the war on poverty.” Finally, because the political situation in the mountains precluded the replacement of the ineffective, uncaring local CAP directors, “they should be superceded as soon as possible by trained regional directors.” This regional director, responsible for three or four counties, would provide the OEO with “extremely close surveillance” of federally funded antipoverty projects in Appalachian Kentucky.18

  Jack Ciaccio, the head of the OEO’s mid-Atlantic office, which was responsible for the Kentucky programs, refused to take Prial’s evaluation at face value. Ciaccio claimed that the report echoed the voices of two of the mountains’ most persistent critics, Harry Caudill and Tom Gish, and did “not tell us anything we did not already know.” Moreover, while Prial made sweeping generalizations about the people and politics of the region, Ciaccio warned against such a practice: “There are differences among E. Ky. counties, among the people who make up the power structures, and among the people who live in the hollows. We have to get the facts on a county-by-county basis.” Though Caudill and Gish sounded the “clarion call . . . for sweeping and massive changes,” they had, Ciaccio felt, “little interest in the day-by-day changes that will add up to solid progress over the long run.” To caution against the ready acceptance of Caudill’s (and Prial’s) views, Ciaccio argued that Caudill represented the “opposition” that Prial maintained was missing in eastern Kentucky. In fact, this opposition was vice chairman of the Letcher County CAP. Indicating that Caudill had a disagreement with other members of the Letcher County agency, Ciaccio revealed that he had “threatened . . . to resign his position.” “Must the articulate opposition have a voice,” Ciaccio asked, “or complete control?”19

  Ciaccio did not, however, reject Prial’s report in its entirety. On the contrary, he readily admitted that the representatives of eastern Kentucky’s public and private agencies—two of the three legs of the OEO’s “stool”—on the local CAP boards were either “identical with the power structure in E. Ky. communities, or . . . controlled by [it].” He further recognized: “If existing services are not improved, the war on poverty will be just a series of political plums for the local power structure. And existing services will be improved only if the poor are organized, and protest—long and loud—about the lousy job that is being done.”20

  With the goal of circumventing the local power structures in the region, Ciaccio cited OEO policies that would, he hoped, lead to a “diffusion of power” in the Appalachian poverty program. Included in this plan was the funding of the Council of the Southern Mountains, the formation of multi-county CAPs (which the OEO believed would actually dilute local control), and the insistence that poor people be included on those programs’ boards as a requirement for federal funding “even though we realize that in many cases the [poor] people selected are probably controlled.” These moves, Ciaccio maintained, would prevent a monopoly of antipoverty programs in the mountains and would help establish the “missing ingredient” or the third of the three legs of the stool—“organized opposition.” If need be, Ciaccio stated, the OEO “should be prepared to recognize a neighborhood organization as a CAA [community action agency], where the local power structure refuses to go along on resident participation.”21

  In fact, Ciaccio did just that. According to an AV report, the Volunteers’ organizing work in the community of Verda, in Harlan County, was so successful—even across racial lines—that the OEO funded the fledgling community organization independently of the already existing county CAP run by the county school superintendent. Though the Volunteers reveled in their accomplishment, the superintendent, they claimed, was determined to gain control of the Verda program. Ciaccio, nonetheless, supported this sort of action. “It is essential,” he argued, “to get meaningful resident participation in the development and conduct of CAP’s in Eastern Kentucky. We want to go all out on this not only because it is what the law says and the agency preaches, but because it is the only way the cycle of poverty in Eastern Kentucky can be broken.”22

  As the AVs continued their projects in the mountains, however, evidence supporting Prial’s and Gish’s perceptions trickled in. For example, near the middle of August 1966, a volunteer working in Fonde, Kentucky, wrote radiantly of the AV effort. “The AV program,” she stated, “is simply people—people getting to know people so that each is better off.” It was not so important that the children of the community attain academic excellence or that adults learn better sanitary practices: “What matters is that in the exchange people come to have more confidence in themselves and in their own abilities to bring about beneficial change.” After returning to college for the fall semester, however, the Fonde volunteer�
�s attitude changed dramatically. Responding to a questionnaire given to those who worked in the Kentucky mountains that summer, she expressed regret that she learned about the community’s problems too late to help. She recalled “the anger and frustration that builds up inside of you when someone shares a problem with you—a problem that everyone says has no solution—but a problem that still eats into the joy of living: a lousy school teacher, a coal leasing company that in no way recognizes that human beings are living on its land[,] in its houses[,] in its town.”23

  As AV members attempted follow-ups in counties where they had performed work, they came across schools that had in a very brief period of time become run-down again and communities no better off than before. After the Fonde volunteer revisited that community, she issued a statement that evidently reflected the thoughts of many AVs in 1966:

  Fonde can be a pretty rough place; in three hours I learned: One boy flew off in the mines and hit his father with a board . . . ; one of the girls is pregnant and unmarried; Richard still beats Christeen; Dave . . . received the results of the Health Department’s test—all three wells were unsafe . . . ; kids still don’t have shoes; the people aren’t holding community meetings any more; Mr. . . . still drinks up the welfare money. Another 6th grade girl has “quit coming” to school. . . . There’s not a lot of surface joy in Fonde. . . . Sometimes I wonder about the real value of AV’s in places like Fonde. There are so many problems we’re not the solution to. I see Dick’s point when he says we by-passed the big problems . . . and threw a lot of time, money and effort into little things that don’t amount to no more than memories of good times spent together. . . . I get discouraged when I think of places like [this] because you know what we’re doing? We’re supplying candles when the house needs to be wired for electricity.24