Appalachia

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  2/24/2023
  

  The Real Story Behind "Cocaine Bear"

  The real story of "Pablo Escobear" involves far less action by the bear and much more by a ring of smugglers during the cocaine boom of the 1980s. 

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• SOURCE: BBC
  10/24/2022
  

  The Hidden History of Black Coal Towns

  The New River Gorge is one of the newest National Parks. Beyond natural beauty, the region allows visitors to learn the history of African American coal miners and their communities in West Virginia. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/4/2022
  

  How Decades of Coal Mining Left West Virginia Vulnerable to Flooding

  For a century, coal mining companies have taken billions of dollars of wealth out of eastern Kentucky, stripped the land of vegetation that can contain flood waters, and contributed to the climate change making severe storms more frequent, while leaving little for the people who live there. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  12/10/2021
  

  (Re)locating Sites of Memory in Appalachia Through Black Spaces and Stories

  by Kristan McCullum

  "I grew up in Jenkins not knowing its full history. I never knew the church I was raised in was once the movie theater that required Black patrons to sit in the balcony."

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• SOURCE: Bitter Southerner
  9/7/2021
  

  Life After the Mines

  A long read examines the social disruption that ensues when coal companies close shop and abandon the communities that have grown around mining work for decades and generations. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/6/2021
  

  Too Few Today Remember the Bloody Uprising of Miners at Blair Mountain

  In a region still marked by rampant inequality, the public forgetting of the Battle of Blair Mountain seems like a concerted effort to suppress working people's history. 

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• SOURCE: Economic Policy Institute
  8/25/2021
  

  A Century After Blair Mountain, the Right to Organize is as Vital as Ever

  by Dave Kamper

  "In many mining regions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mine companies for all practical purposes were the government."

• 
• SOURCE: WVNews
  4/28/2021
  

  West Virginia Univ. Researcher Wins Carnegie Award for Study of Appalachian Feminism

  Jessica Wilkerson's research examines how the women's movement unfolded in places outside the nation's urban centers and how women decided what constituted "women's issues" in their own communities in Appalachia. 

• 
• SOURCE: Hedgehog Review
  4/10/2020
  

  Left Behind: The Trouble with Euphemism

  by Nancy Isenberg

  A historian of white rural poverty says that the cultural phenomenon of JD Vance's book "Hillbilly Elegy" is just the latest deployment of the "left behind" euphemism to obscure the nature of poverty in the United States. The rural poor are and have been part and parcel of the American economic order.

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• SOURCE: Folklife
  3/1/2021
  

  “Making a Living by the Sweat of Her Brow”: Hazel Dickens and a Life of Work

  by Emily Hilliard

  "Hazel’s song catalog is often divided into separate categories of personal songs, women’s songs, and labor songs. But in her view and experience, these issues all bled together; her songs address struggle against any form of domination and oppression, whether of women, workers, or herself."

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/8/2021
  

  West Virginia Has Everyone’s Attention. What Does It Really Need?

  by Emily Badger

  The influence of Senator Joe Manchin in Washington has fueled speculation about federal aid to depressed communities in the Mountaineer State. But historians like William Hal Gorby and in-state activists say that there will be no quick fixes. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/30/2021
  

  The Real Meaning of Hillbilly

  The work of historian Chuck Keeney is critical to recovering the radicalism of Appalachian miners and a "redneck" identity that is based in struggles for equality and shared dignity instead of reactionary individualism, says writer Abby Lee Hood. 

• 
• SOURCE: Vox
  11/10/2020
  

  Everything About Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy Movie Is Awful (Review)

  "It strips out Vance’s sociopolitical commentary entirely, which, however you feel about the commentary, leaves the story without an all-important ingredient: a political and sociological point."

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  8/12/2020
  

  Unearthing New Histories of Black Appalachia (Review)

  by Jillean McCommons

  Tension between Black and white memory of the founding of Liberia, South Carolina drives John M. Coggeshall’s study, which adds significant insight to the history of Black Appalachia.

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  6/16/2020
  

  Appalachian Hillsides as Black Ecologies: Housing, Memory, and The Sanctified Hill Disaster of 1972

  by Jillean McCommons

  The Sanctified Hill disaster exposed the vulnerability of Black people to climate events due to a combination of placement and neglect.

• 
• SOURCE: The Guardian
  5/18/2020
  

  You Don't Have to Choose Between Jobs and Safety. Just Ask West Virginia

  We can guarantee economic security and keep every working family safe, paid for by an end to grotesque wealth inequality. Here’s how.

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• SOURCE: Associated Press
  5/18/2020
  

  ‘Matewan Massacre’ A Century Ago Embodied Miners’ Struggles

  Historian Lou Martin, a board member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, recounts the oppressive atmosphere in mining towns that led to a violently repressed unionization drive.

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• 5/10/2020
  

  60 Years Ago, West Virginia Helped Make JFK President

  by Robert Rupp

  JFK's diligent campaigning in West Virginian in 1960 overcame the state's suspicion of his Catholic faith and later put Appalachia on the nation's policy agenda.

• 
• SOURCE: Pacific Standard
  1/16/19
  

  Jessica Wilkerson: If We Forget Appalachia's Radical History, We Will Misunderstand Its Future

  In her new book, Jessica Wilkerson tells the stories of the radical mountain women who fought against bosses and laid the groundwork for ensuing generations of Appalachian resistance.

• 
• SOURCE: The Activist History Review
  4-25-18
  

  This is what happened when a historian with a rural background wrote favorably about gun control in the Washington Post

  by Nathan Wuertenberg

  He was subjected to anti-Semitic diatribes from people who denied he represented rural America.