Reformers to Radicals
Page 18
Fonde was not the only community to experience hard times despite the War on Poverty. When asked by the Volunteers what could be done to improve their community, residents of Weeksbury, in Letcher County, revealed how Appalachian landownership patterns perpetuated poverty. “One thing hurts here,” one community member announced, “that the companies owns a lot of land. Like where someone would want to clear out a pasture land to raise cattle, well these [coal companies] owns most of them and they won’t agree to sell at no price, so thats holding up things that could happen.”25
Another critic of the present state of the War on Poverty in Appalachia, the AV-trained VISTA volunteer Ellen Weisman, stationed in Clay County, West Virginia, decried the OEO guidelines that required resident participation in CAPs: “Its what we call a farce. Resident participation! Who writes the . . . programs?” she asked rhetorically. Insinuating that the poor with whom she worked had no idea how to conduct themselves at a board meeting or how to formulate an antipoverty plan, she informed Dan Fox: “If the poor knew how to eliminate poverty they wouldn’t be poor.” Ignorance and apathy born of the fear of the powerful characterized West Virginia’s impoverished people, she believed, and the reformers needed to strive for real, fundamental change. “To attack poverty,” she wrote Fox, “means to attack the status quo[,] meaning an attack on the local power structure! Does the local power structure want this?”26
Even her attempts at organizing the poor, Weisman declared, were “farcical.” Highlighting the quiescence she found among the mountaineers, she noted that, when she told the people they “‘must all work together,’” “they wonder what the hell for because if [the local politicians] don’t profit by what they want they don’t get it anyway because they have no way to apply pressure besides a petition that will be filed away.” Her frustrating experiences finally caused Weisman to leave her assignment a month early. She did not feel that she had accomplished much during her time in Clay County: “Certainly 4 weeks will not make any difference . . . [and] I do feel guilty about staying. . . . I don’t feel honest to myself wasting all that time [and] energy. As for Wash[ington] or the Clay Co. Dev[lopment] Corp[.] is concerned,” she closed, “I am . . . car[e]less. They never lived up to their commitment to me.”27
Others went even further, condemning the Band-Aid approach of not only the Council but the OEO as well. Reporting from Verda, the AV field coordinator Steve Daugherty decried the “obvious paradox” of trying to end poverty “without disturbing the present situation.” Frustrated by the county superintendent, who also ran the local CAP and controlled the allocation of federal funds in Harlan County, Daugherty reasoned that, to be effective, the War on Poverty required a “basic reorganization, an abolition . . . of those institutions which initially led to the impoverishment . . . of the Appalachian people.” According to Daugherty, James Cawood, the superintendent and chairman of the Harlan CAP board, and Claude Dozier, the CAP’s director, wrote OEO proposals for Verda that ignored the community’s expressed wishes and concerns. Further, the extended system of patronage provided by the school system, Cawood’s and Dozier’s positions with the county CAP, and their ability to weave their way through the OEO’s bureaucratic obstacles limited the choices available to the people of Verda when, for example, Dozier ignored requests for better roads and instead sought to build a community center that no one wanted. “Persons with a vested interest in the status quo,” Daugherty concluded, “have a notoriously poor record in initiating change.” The federal antipoverty effort, he continued, simply “strengthen[ed] one of the most insidious forces of oppression in eastern Kentucky.” These experiences, according to one activist, “radicalized” Ogle and the AVs, who now realized that school repairs only made the situation more profitable for a corrupt system. Volunteer renovation projects did nothing but save local politicians money.28
Having come to the position that the horrid situation in the mountains could be attributed to the local political system, the Appalachian Volunteers decided to change course and organize the people around such issues as school system reform, welfare rights, and anti-strip-mining legislation. Confrontation became the new AV strategy. Through this new approach, the AVs sought to undermine the entrenched interests in eastern Kentucky—the coal companies and the political system—in order to effect substantial structural change.29
Warning against abandoning the traditional Council philosophy of cooperation, Ayer informed all members of the Council staff: “Our service projects are possible mainly because donors and authorities trust our wisdom and integrity. These, in turn, rest firmly on the basic concept and philosophy of the Council. If this is abandoned or adulterated we will have disqualified our Council for public trust.” “This can happen,” he cautioned, “by carelessness, by credit seeking, by surrender to expediency.” The desire to confront rather than to cooperate with local county officials was such a “surrender to expediency,” straining the overall CSM approach to reform, and, in Ayer’s mind, jeopardizing the overall effectiveness of the Council. While Ayer recognized that the county judges and school superintendents were “rogues,” he also understood that, with the OEO’s “three-legged stool” approach, “you’ve got to deal with them.”30
The Appalachian Volunteers wanted to “deal” with county officials, but not in the ways Ayer thought appropriate. Believing that nearly absolute political control by a few public officials rendered the majority of mountaineers voiceless, the AVs maintained that the oppressed could not effectively fight for their rights without “the necessary aid coming from outside the county.” This aid was the AVs and their VISTA allies. As new VISTA and AV recruits entered the activists’ ranks, this attitude toward mountain county governments became part of the training they received. It also became a source of conflict between the Appalachian Volunteers and its parent organization, the Council of the Southern Mountains.31
The disagreement over how to effect reform in the mountains was not the only source of friction between the CSM and the AVs in late 1965 and early 1966. Some Volunteer members thought that the operation’s headquarters in Berea was too far from where the AVs did most of their work. In April 1966, the AV leadership proposed to the CSM Board of Directors that Volunteer headquarters move to a place more centrally located in the Appalachian region. Though associated with the mountains for over a century, Berea was on the fringe of the mountain region. A more fitting location, many volunteers felt, was the city of Bristol, Tennessee. Though a move would prove costly in both time and money—the Volunteers would need to move office equipment, recruit and train new office staff, and lease office space—the advantages, many believed, far outweighed these drawbacks.32
On the positive side of the relocation equation, the move would save considerable sums of money in terms of purchasing and distributing supplies to the workers in the field. In addition, the size of the AV operation, it was argued, “strain[ed] the facilities of Berea and the tolerance of its inhabitants.” The CSM board chairman Donald Fessler informed the other members of the Board of Directors: “[These] idealistic, highly dedicated men and women . . . have had their problems and their brushes with the more staid thinking of the Berea College faculty.” More important, especially in light of those Dorton (Bell County) AV members who defected because of what they believed was a lack of support from the CSM, the Bristol region would permit the central staff “to provide much assistance to the limited field staff.” The move would also “demonstrate our willingness to live in and be part of the area we are committed to serving.” Most significantly, for both the Volunteers and the Council, this physical separation “would force [them] to work out relationships—both administratively and policy [sic]—between the AV program and the CSM central office.”33
The proposal to move the Appalachian Volunteers far from the Council’s watchful eye should have come as no surprise to Ayer. Since its inception, the Council had entertained the possibility of a separate, independent AV program. One of the first alternatives discu
ssed by the Council of the Southern Mountains concerning the formation of an antipoverty group was the establishment of an independent organization. Under that plan, the CSM would have provided only temporary professional leadership. Ultimately, the Council, of course, placed the Appalachian Volunteers and its staff under its direction. Nevertheless, the existence of an independent AV organization, even in 1966, remained a possibility. Evidence of this dates as early as August 1964, when a Council special advisory committee stated: “At the time when the Council of the Southern Mountains ceases to perform administrative services for the AVs, they should then become full fledged members of the Kentucky Development Committee.” The question before the CSM board now was whether the Council should grant the Appalachian Volunteers administrative independence.34
For his part, Ayer believed that the Appalachian Volunteers should remain in Berea and that the organization still needed the CSM’s guidance and direction. Writing to Fessler that April, he claimed that in his “honest judgment such a move would not be in the interests of the Council or the AVs.” Ayer stated that the only reason he submitted the idea to the board was because he had promised Ogle that he would do so. Implying, however, that Ogle engaged in less than honest behavior, Ayer told Fessler that Ogle refused to recommend a course of action when the CSM director and the AV leader first discussed the proposed move. When the two met with the board, however, Ogle presented a strong recommendation for administrative independence. Believing that this subject was only in the “discussion” stage, Ayer felt himself, he indicated, to be at a disadvantage when the board proceeded to weigh the matter.35
This apparent administrative end run was not Ayer’s sole concern. As he wrote to Fessler: “[The] AV program . . . , as magnificent as it is . . . , is being implemented by a group of eager young enthusiasts whose standards and judgements are not always consistent with what the Council stands for.” Should the Volunteers relocate, Ayer contended, problems with the AV program “will get worse rather than better.” Arguing that, if the Council expected “a responsible, high degree of leadership . . . in terms of character standards and behavior,” as opposed to a “merely enthusiastic organization,” the board needed to keep the AV headquarters in Berea, where the young people “will be benefited by our leadership.”36
Despite Ayer’s protests, the CSM board voted to approve the AVs’ move to Bristol. According to Fessler, it determined that, if the Volunteers resettled, the question of complete independence, still a future possibility, could be easily settled without arousing “ill feelings or reflections on the soundness and integrity of either organization.” Moreover, there “was little evidence that relations between the A.V. leaders and the executive offices of the Council would improve under present conditions.” Therefore: “Moving the A.V. headquarters to [Bristol] at least offered the possibility that a better modus operandi could be worked out.”37
The exchange between Ayer and Fessler revealed more than the AVs’ desire to move their offices. Ayer’s concerns about character and the AVs’ disregard for the Council’s philosophy were not superficial, aired merely in an attempt to sway the vote toward his position. They were, in fact, well grounded in what he considered to be disturbing developments within the ranks of the Appalachian Volunteers. Through confrontations with the Volunteer staff, Ayer demonstrated his obsession with publicity and how that influenced Council funding. His opposition to the more freewheeling Volunteer program, therefore, centered on the AVs’ personal behavior and how it affected publicity and funding.
Tension between the two organizations had, in fact, surfaced soon after the founding of the AVs. In a memorandum dated March 19, 1964, only five days after the AVs adopted their new bylaws, Ayer reprimanded Milton Ogle, the AV director, after reading a Berea Citizen article that announced the first federal grant to the new reform effort. Ayer noted that the article ignored the Council’s responsibility for the Appalachian Volunteers program. Referring to it as an “intolerable, senseless, and unjust situation,” he pointed out that the Area Redevelopment Administration awarded that first grant to the CSM, not the AVs, as the article suggested. In defending what he believed to be the Council’s role in the reform program, Ayer told Ogle that he resented being “purposely and deliberately disregarded as one, if not the basic, factor in the success of what has happened to date.”38
Unfortunately for Ayer, his tirade had little effect. In yet another memo that same month, he reproached the AV staff member Phil Conn, a Berea College graduate, for not being a team player. Conn, the memo disclosed, neglected Council staff meetings and failed to inform Council leadership of his activities. Ayer had a similar problem with another CSM-AV staff member, Jim Blair. Blair, who worked out of an AV field office, had a “notice in his window saying ‘Appalachian Volunteers’ only.” Again referring to this as “intolerable,” Ayer demanded: “If the Council is going to have an office . . . anywhere . . . , it needs to be a Council office.” Ayer was adamant, he wrote in a communiqué to Ogle, that anyone who worked for the Council “clearly publicizes the fact that they represent the Council, with specific assignment in AVs.” Ayer experienced a similar problem when he tried to call the CSM staff member Bill Wells. Wells’s assignment at that time was in the AV program. The telephone company in Cincinnati, where Wells was located, had no listing for the Council of the Southern Mountains and, in fact, had never heard of the Council. When Ayer requested the operator look it up under Well’s personal name, the response was: “‘Oh, yes, the AVs; we know them.’”39
Ayer failed in his attempts to force the AVs into line, and he soon became frustrated over yet another article about the Volunteers in the Berea Citizen. This piece said that Ayer “spoke about the Council of the Southern Mountains and its relationship to Appalachian Volunteers as if [he] had spoken about the University of Kentucky or the Leslie County School Board or the National Council of Churches and the relationship between any one of these and the [AVs].” Having checked with the Citizen and determined that the printed statement was not an “editorial misunderstanding,” Ayer blamed Ogle for the misrepresentation and took him to task: “I cannot tolerate repeated references to the Appalachian Volunteers as an agency which has only a tolerant and friendly relationship to . . . the Council.” Expressing his special concern, he continued: “I have been subject to a ‘ground swell’ of comment from within your own [organization], . . . indicating an attitude of impatience with the Council as if it were a cumbersome and unnecessary partner, tolerated by necessity. It would seem that for the overall philosophy of the Council itself the field staff could not care less.”40
Ayer probably did not realize just how accurate his statement was. On two fronts, personal morality and reform philosophy, the Appalachian Volunteers differed dramatically from Ayer’s vision of the Council. Most disturbing to the CSM was that many AV workers openly expressed these attitudes. As young men and women from all over the country poured into Berea for AV training for the 1966 summer project, they challenged the moral sensibilities of the CSM. With the hopes of preparing the new recruits for their stay among the mountaineers, the Council issued a document entitled “You Are Responsible: Some Thoughts on the Appalachian Volunteer Summer Project.” Council leaders tried to impress on their new soldiers that it was the people in the local communities in which they would spend the summer that would “be left with the results—and consequences” of the summer project. While in the mountains, the CSM leaders informed the potential AV workers, they would be “neither a member of the community . . . nor an unwanted intruder.” Nevertheless, the directive went out: “Act like you were a guest of some pretty particular and somewhat conservative people you wanted to impress.” “If a Volunteer is to have maximum rapport with the community,” it was further stipulated, “he should try to live up to the expectations of the most particular residents, but not hold himself above associating with the least particular.”41
In order to give each volunteer the greatest opportunity for living up to mo
untaineers’ expectations, “You Are Responsible” provided a sort of “code of conduct.” “You shouldn’t dress ostentatiously,” it warned, “but try to be neat.” In addition, rural people “tend not to respond too quickly to fads in dress, hair, beads, makeup, etc.” Girls, moreover, should “do a little asking around before appearing in shorts.” The “training manual” also addressed drinking and dating. “In some cases,” it explained, “a drink or two with the boys may be a necessary step to establishing rapport . . . but nobody respects a drunk Volunteer.” Finally, because “new standards of dating behavior are not adopted so quickly in many rural communities,” and because the Volunteers themselves “should realize that they will be glamorous people to their contemporaries in the community,” relationships between volunteers or between volunteers and local people should be “conducted in a manner respectful of community standards.”42
As helpful and appropriate as these suggestions were, it is intriguing that the leaders of the program believed it necessary to put them in print and distribute them to all potential volunteers. Ayer and the Council must have received complaints, in addition to those concerning the summer training, concerning the personal behavior of some of their volunteers from the people with whom they were working or suspected that certain undesirable situations had occurred. An examination of a series of memos between Ayer and the two top AV officials, Ogle and Fox, suggests that the latter explanation is accurate. In the spring of 1966, Ayer felt it necessary to question Ogle’s and Fox’s stance on the social conduct of the AVs. He told the two: “I have before me two written statements and I have, in addition, oral confirmation that we did badly on this score.” He then quoted what information he felt most fully illustrated his point: