African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry by
Essays by the foremost labor historian of the Black experience in the Appalachian coalfields. This collection brings together nearly three decades of research on the African American experience, class, and race relations in the Appalachian coal industry. It shows how, with deep roots in the antebellum era of chattel slavery, West Virginia's Black working class gradually picked up steam during the emancipation years following the Civil War and dramatically expanded during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From there, African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry highlights the decline of the region's Black industrial proletariat under the impact of rapid technological, social, and political changes following World War II. It underscores how all miners suffered unemployment and outmigration from the region as global transformations took their toll on the coal industry, but emphasizes the disproportionately painful impact of declining bituminous coal production on African American workers, their families, and their communities. Joe Trotter not only reiterates the contributions of proletarianization to our knowledge of US labor and working-class history but also draws attention to the gender limits of studies of Black life that focus on class formation, while calling for new transnational perspectives on the subject. Equally important, this volume illuminates the intellectual journey of a noted labor historian with deep family roots in the southern Appalachian coalfields.
The Harlan Renaissance by
A personal remembrance from the preeminent chronicler of Black life in Appalachia. The Harlan Renaissance is an intimate remembrance of kinship and community in eastern Kentucky's coal towns written by one of the luminaries of Appalachian studies, William Turner. Turner reconstructs Black life in the company towns in and around Harlan County during coal's final postwar boom years, which built toward an enduring bust as the children of Black miners, like the author, left the region in search of better opportunities. The Harlan Renaissance invites readers into what might be an unfamiliar Appalachia: one studded by large and vibrant Black communities, where families took the pulse of the nation through magazines like Jet and Ebony and through the news that traveled within Black churches, schools, and restaurants. Difficult choices for the future were made as parents considered the unpredictable nature of Appalachia's economic realities alongside the unpredictable nature of a national movement toward civil rights. Unfolding through layers of sociological insight and oral history, The Harlan Renaissance centers the sympathetic perspectives and critical eye of a master narrator of Black life.
On Dark and Bloody Ground by
An oral history of the West Virginia Mine Wars published to coincide with the centennial of the Battle of Blair Mountain. In 1972 Anne Lawrence came to West Virginia at the invitation of the Miners for Democracy movement to conduct interviews with participants in, and observers of, the Battle of Blair Mountain and other Appalachian mine wars of the 1920s and '30s. The set of oral histories she collected-the only document of its kind-circulated for many years as an informal typescript volume, acquiring an almost legendary status among those intrigued by the subject. Key selections from it appear here for the first time as a published book, supplemented with introductory material, maps, and photographs. The volume's vivid, conversational mode invites readers into miners' lived experiences and helps us understand why they took up arms to fight anti-union forces in some of the nation's largest labor uprisings. Published to coincide with the celebration of the Blair Mountain centennial in 2021, On Dark and Bloody Ground includes a preface by public historian Catherine Venable Moore and an afterword by Cecil E. Roberts of the United Mine Workers of America.
Cannel Coal Oil Days by
A newly discovered nineteenth-century novel about West Virginia breaking away from Virginia, set amid the cannel coal boom and featuring an interracial abolitionist movement. Based mostly on his own experiences, Theophile Maher's local color novel Cannel Coal Oil Days challenges many popular ideas about antebellum Appalachia, bringing it more fully into the broader story of the United States. Written in 1887, discovered in 2018, and published here for the first time, it offers a narrative of life between 1859 and 1861 in what was then western Virginia as it became West Virginia. Cannel coal (a soft form of coal whose oil, when distilled, was competitive in the lighting oil business after overfishing reduced the whale oil supply) was at the center of one of Appalachia's first extractive industries. Using the development of coal oil manufacturing in the Kanawha valley as its launching point, Maher's semiautobiographical novel tells of a series of interrelated changes, each reflecting larger transformations in the United States as a whole. It shows how coal oil manufacturing was transformed from an amateurish endeavor to a more professional industry, with implications for Appalachian environment and labor. Then, Maher foreshadows the coming Progressive Era by insisting on moral and environmental reforms based in democratic and Christian principles. Finally, he tells the story of the coming of the Civil War to the region, as the novel's protagonist, a mining engineer, works closely with a Black family to organize the local abolitionist mountain folk into a Union militia to aid in the secession of West Virginia from Virginia.
A Woman of Courage on the West Virginia Frontier by
Author Robert Thompson recounts the harrowing story of Phebe Tucker Cunningham, from her marriage at Prickett's Fort to her return to the shores of the Monongahela. Life on the West Virginia frontier was a daily struggle for survival, and for Phebe Tucker Cunningham, that meant the loss of her four children at the hands of the Wyandot tribe and being held captive for three years until legendary renegades Simon Girty and Alexander McKee arranged her freedom. Thompson describes in vivid detail early colonial life in the Alleghenies and the ways of the Wyandot, providing historical context for this unforgettable saga.
Modern Moonshine by
The craft of making moonshine--an unaged white whiskey, often made and consumed outside legal parameters--nearly went extinct in the late twentieth century as law enforcement cracked down on illicit producers, and cheaper, lawful alcohol became readily available. Yet the twenty-first century has witnessed a resurgence of artisanal distilling, as both connoisseurs and those reconnecting with their heritage have created a vibrant new culture of moonshine. While not limited to Appalachia, moonshine is often entwined with the region in popular understandings. The first interdisciplinary examination of the legal moonshine industry, Modern Moonshine probes the causes and impact of the so-called moonshine revival. What does the moonshine revival tell us about our national culture? How does it shape the image of Appalachia and rural America? Focusing mostly on southern Appalachia, the book's eleven essays chronicle such popular figures as Popcorn Sutton and explore how and why distillers promote their product as "traditional" and "authentic." This edited collection draws from scholars across the disciplines of anthropology, history, geography, and sociology to make sense of the legal, social, and historical shifts behind contemporary production and consumption of moonshine, and offers a fresh perspective on an enduring topic of Appalachian myth and reality.
Born of rebellion : West Virginia and the Civil War by
No description available
The Reconstruction Era by
Are you curious to learn what happened after the US Civil War? Then dive into the captivating history of the Reconstruction Era The US Civil War brought about a lot of change. The nation not only had to figure out how to become united once again, but it also had to figure out how to integrate the newly freed slaves into society. In addition, the country had to figure out how to recover from the war, which devastated the South and took many lives on both sides. President Abraham Lincoln favored a less punitive plan for reinstating the Confederate states back into the Union. Unlike other Republicans at the time, he did not think of these states as ever having left the Union. However, his plan never came to fruition. His assassination left the Reconstruction efforts in the hands of Andrew Johnson, a Democrat. Johnson wanted to make things easier for his fellow Democrats in the South. Knowing this, the Radical Republicans in Congress passed their own laws, overrode Johnson's vetoes, and eventually impeached him. Their plan for the South was punitive and harsh, as they expected total loyalty from any state wishing to rejoin the Union. It is partially due to these harsh measures that the South enacted the Black Codes, which were harsh laws that stripped away civil liberties for African Americans. The racial tension and hostile atmosphere in the South, which were directed toward both blacks and sympathetic whites, gave birth to the Ku Klux Klan and the infamous Jim Crow laws. Congress attempted to counter these moves with the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, but these were never utilized in the way they had imagined. In this book, you will learn about the significant players and laws. You will read about the carpetbaggers and scallywags who tried to make things better for blacks in the South while also seeking their own fortune. And perhaps most importantly, you will discover what happened to the freed slaves and how they found themselves living in a nation that promoted "separate but equal" legislation. Here is a tiny fraction of what you will discover in this book: The Civil WarLincoln's VisionThe Wade-Davis Bill and the Radical RepublicansThe Thirteenth AmendmentPresidential ReconstructionThe Civil Rights Act of 1866The Radical ReconstructionCarpetbaggers and Scallywags, 1867The Fourteenth Amendment, 1868The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, 1868The Fifteenth Amendment, 1870The Ku Klux Klan Act, 1871The Civil Rights Act of 1875The Compromise of 1877The Official End of the ReconstructionAfter the ReconstructionPlessy v. Ferguson: Separate but Equal, 1896 So if you want to learn more about the Reconstruction Era, scroll up and click the "add to cart" button
Appalachian Gateway by
Featuring the work of twenty-five fiction writers and poets, this anthology is a captivating introduction to the finest of contemporary Appalachian literature. Here are short stories and poems by some of the region's most dynamic and best-loved authors: Barbara Kingsolver, Ron Rash, Nikki Giovanni, Robert Morgan, Lisa Alther, and Lee Smith among others. In addition to compelling selections from each writer's work, the book includes illuminating biographical sketches and bibliographies for each author. These works encompass a variety of themes that, collectively, capture the essence of Appalachia: love of the land, family ties, and the struggle to blend progress with heritage. Readers will enjoy this book not just for the innate value of good literature but also for the insights it provides into this fascinating area. This book of fiction is an enlightening companion to non-fiction overviews of the region, including the Encyclopedia of Appalachia and A Handbook to Appalachia: An Introduction to the Region, both published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2006. In fact the five sections of this book are the same as those of the Encyclopedia. Educators and students will find this book especially appropriate for courses in creative writing, Appalachian studies and Appalachian literature. Editor George Brosi's foreword presents an historical overview of Appalachian Literature, while Kate Egerton and Morgan Cottrell's afterword offers a helpful guide for studying Appalachian literature in a classroom setting. George Brosi is the editor of Appalachian Heritage, a literary quarterly, and, along with his wife, Connie, runs a retail book business specializing in books from and about the Appalachian region. He has taught creative writing, Appalachian studies and Appalachian literature. Kate Egerton is an associate professor of English at Berea College. She has taught Appalachian literature and published scholarship in that field as well as in modern drama. Samantha Cole majored in Appalachian Studies and worked for Appalachian Heritage while a student at Berea College. Morgan Cottrell is a West Virginia native who took Kate Egerton's Appalachian literature class at Berea College.
Hillbilly Elegy by
Vance, a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, provides an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J.D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America--Publisher's website
Appalachian Reckoning by
Part I. Considering Hillbilly Elegy. Interrogating. Hillbilly elitism / T.R.C. Hutton -- Social capital / Jeff Mann -- Once upon a time in "Trumpalachia": Hillbilly Elegy, personal choice, and the blame game / Dwight B. Billings -- Stereotypes on the syllabus: exploring Hillbilly Elegy's use as an instructional text at colleges and universities / Elizabeth Catte -- Benham, Kentucky, coal miner / Wise County, Virginia, landscape / Theresa Burriss -- Panning for gold: A reflection of life from Appalachia / Ricardo Nazario y Colón -- Will the real hillbilly please stand up? Urban Appalachian migration and culture seen through the lens of Hillbilly Elegy / Roger Guy -- What Hillbilly Elegy reveals about race in twenty-first-century America / Lisa R. Pruitt -- Prisons are not innovation / Lou Murrey -- Down and out in Middletown and Jackson: drugs, dependency, and decline in J.D. Vance's Capitalist Realism ...
Reconstruction's Ragged Edge by
Contents: Setting the stage: antebellum and Civil War western North Carolina -- Mountain masters without slaves: the aftermath of slavery, 1865-1867 -- Great time for the Tories and Negroes: loyalty, race, and power, 1865-1868 -- Agents of change: the Freedmen's Bureau, 1867-1868 -- Every thing that the devil can suggest: Klan violence and the Republicans' failure, 1868-1872 -- The beginning of a "new" mountain South: agriculture, railroads, and social change, 1872-1880.
Where There Are Mountains by
Contents: Apalatchi: Naming the mountains -- Mississippi: Native Appalachia -- Apalachee: Spanish Appalachia -- Kituah: Cherokee Appalachia -- Southwestern Mountains: Frontier Appalachia -- Alleghenia: Antebellum Appalachia -- Appalachia: Making the modern landscape -- Conclusion: Nature, culture, history.
Beyond the Mountains by
"Beyond the Mountains explore the ways in which Appalachia so often served as a laboratory for the exploration and practice of American conceptions of nature. The region served alternately as frontier, wilderness, rural hinterland, a region of backward agriculture, a bastion of yeoman farmers, and a place to experiment with modernization. In these various takes on the southern mountains, scattered across time and space, both mountain residents and outsiders consistently believed that the region's environment made Appalachia distinctive, for better or worse"-- Provided by publisher.
A Handbook to Appalachia by
A Handbook to Appalachia provides a clear, concise first step toward understanding the expanding field of Appalachian studies, from the history of the area to its sometimes conflicted image, from its music and folklore to its outstanding literature. Also includes information on African Americans, Asheville, (North Carolina), ballads, baskets, bluegrass music, blues music, Cherokee Indians, Cincinnati (Ohio), Churches, Civil War, coal, cultural diversity, death, folk culture, food, Georgia, health, immigration, industry, Irish, Kentucky, Midwest, migration, Melungeons, Native Americans, North Carolina, out-migration, politics, population, poverty, Radford University, schools, Scotch-Irish, Scotland, South Carolina, storytelling, strip mining, Tennessee, Ulster Scots, Virginia, West Virginia, Women, etc.
Backcountry by
This is as closely-knit an anthology as you are ever likely to see. It is as though a large, extended family were drawing on the same store of family stories, jokes, symbols, landscapes, animals, trees, language, and vernacular. How many snakes are in this book? How many foxes, possums? Fossils? And how very many coal mines? But it is not merely local references that unites these writers. There is a larger vision that ties these works together. "The connection is not so much in mutual influence, though there is some of that, but in each writer's total immersion in place. Even those writers who no longer live in the state remember the feel, the physical texture, the overwhelming and enfolding vegetal surround of the place." Editor, Irene McKinney
Appalachia: the voices of sleeping birds by 
Coal and Culture: Opera Houses in Appalachia by 
Encyclopedia of Appalachia by 
High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in time and place by 
A History of Appalachia by 
Plundering Appalachia; the tragedy of mountaintop-removal coal mining by 
Salvation on Sand Mountain: snake handling and redemption in southern Appalachia by You'll find more books (print or ebooks) by searching our online catalog WorldCat.
Appalachia - - 19th Century
Appalachia in the making: the mountain south in the nineteenth century
Appalachians and race: the mountain South from slavery to segregation
Pioneer children of Appalachia
Appalachia - - 20th Century
Modernizing the mountaineer: people, power, and planning in Appalachia
Miners, millhands, and mountaineers: industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880 - 1930
Culture, class, and politics in modern Appalachia: essays in honor of Ronald L. Lewis
Appalachia - - Today
Uneven ground: Appalachia since 1945
