Appalachian History

"I never spoke a word until I was nine years old. I only clucked and motioned for what I wanted. Lots of people thought I was an idiot because I could not talk. I may have looked like one, for I was a little old country boy that never cut my hair in those days only about twice a year, and I wore a big checked cotton shirt and old jeans pants made by my mother and old yarn socks, and 70-cent stogie shoes with brass toes. This was my winter suit and my summer suit was only a big yellow factory shirt and no hat or shoes.

"At the age of ten I was taken by my mother and uncle, Gid Hogg, to Whitesburg, Ky., the county seat of Letcher County, a distance of about eighteen miles. We rode an old mare named "Kate," without any saddle, and when I was taken off I could not walk I was so stiff, and that made everybody think I was an idiot sure enough.

"So when Judge H. C. Lilley opened court on Monday, February 12, they taken me before the judge. The judge ordered old Black Shade Combs, then the sheriff, to summon twelve jurors and two doctors. One doctor thought I had been born an idiot, and Dr. S. S. Swaingo, of Jackson, held out that I was all right of mind, and so the case was put off until 10 a. m. Tuesday.

"Then Dr. Swaingo got old Dr. McCray and gave me a thorough examination. The doctors found by examining my neck, where the small tits in one's neck are, that the tit in my neck had grown together. After the doctors cut the tit loose in my neck I began to talk and to have a good joke. The doctors took me to a one-horse barber shop and had my hair cut and fixed me up and presented me on Tuesday morning to Judge Lilley, and he was surprised beyond reason that I was Fess."

History of Corporal Fess Whitaker
Louisville, Ky, The Standard Printing Co., 1918.

Whitaker's claim to fame is his run for U.S. Congress in 1926, in which he was narrowly defeated. Fess Whitaker (1880-1927) began his career as a politician in 1917, when he was elected county jailer in Letcher County, KY. He likely held this office until 1921, when he decided to run for county judge. The New York Times reported that sometime around 1921 Whitaker participated in a street fight, a disturbance of the peace that led to his incarceration in the very jail he supervised and earned him the nickname "The Jailed Jailer." While imprisoned, Whitaker continued his campaign and was eventually elected. In 1922, Whitaker was again jailed, this time for possessing and transporting whisky for illegal sale. Nevertheless, he was re-elected Letcher County jailer in 1925. He died in a car crash in 1927.


source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/whitaker/whitaker.html

These riddles, collected in the North Carolina mountains, belong to a familiar pattern, the seemingly obscene question with an innocuous reply. Texts from Ralph S. Boggs, "North Carolina White Folktales and Riddles," Journal of American Folklore, XLVII (1934), pp. 320-21.


The ole man shook it an’ shook it;
The old woman pulled up her dress an’ took it.

A man shook apples out of a tree, and his wife caught them in her dress.


The ole lady pitted it an’ patted it;
The ole man down with his breeches an’ at it.

She made up the bed, and he undressed and got into bed.


When it goes in, it’s stiff an’ stout;
When it comes out, it’s flopping about.

Cooking a cabbage.


Big at the bottom, an’ little at the top,
An’ a little thing in the middle that goes pippity pop.

A churn.


Little Jessie Ruddle,
Asettin’ in a puddle,
Green garters an’ yaller toes;
Tell me that riddle or I’ll smash yer nose!

A duck in a puddle of water.


About six inches long, an’ a might pretty size;
Not a lady in the country but what will take it between her thighs.

The lefthand horn on a lady’s side saddle.



riddles Ralph+S.+Boggs appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history appalachian+humor

The Fayette Journal (WV) reported on February 24, 1933 that 130 of the 3,000 men working on the Hawks Nest Tunnel at Alloy had already died from silicosis, caused from inhalation of silica rock particles, and that 350 others were afflicted with it. The tunnel, built by the New-Kanawha Power Company between 1930-35 in conjunction with the Hawks Nest Dam, harnessed the hydroelectric potential of the Gauley River, initially to provide power for the Electro Metallurgical Company, a subsidiary of the Union Carbide Corporation.

The excavation work had been contracted to the firm of Rinehart and Dennis of Charlottesville, VA, which received much of the blame for failing to take proper precautions after it was found that workers were blasting through silica rock. The two hour period between shifts to allow dust to settle was laxly enforced, even though the contractors were aware of the danger of silicosis.

Acute silicosis kills within a few years of exposure to silica dust, after as little as 2 months exposure. At least 476 workers, most migrant African-Americans, ultimately did die from silicosis. A large number of the dead were reportedly buried in unmarked graves in a Nicholas County cornfield to cover up the immensity of the tragedy. Fifty years later, some studies placed the death toll as high as 764, making it the worst industrial disaster in West Virginia history.

On May 20, 1931, the Fayette Tribune published the first reports of unsafe working conditions in the tunnel, but confirmation was impossible due to a "gag rule." After he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934, Rush Holt brought the plight of the Hawks Nest workers into the national limelight. "Congress has just started to investigate the building of Hawks Nest Tunnel, known as the village of death," he said. "I personally believe that two thousand men are doomed to die as a result of ruthless destruction of life by American industry."

Lawsuits originally seeking $4 million in worker compensation were ultimately settled for $130,000, half of which went to the attorneys, who agreed not to further prosecute the companies involved. The terms included all plaintiffs’ records being turned over to the defense. The workers themselves received a pittance: unmarried black men: $400; married black men: $600; unmarried white men: $800; married white men: $1,000. In March 1935 the West Virginia House of Delegates signed into law a new Workmen's Compensation law that addressed silicosis, and by the end of 1937, 46 states had enacted similar laws covering workers afflicted with the disease.

In 1936, West Virginia Congressman Jennings Randolph sat on a Senate subcommittee investigating the catastrophe. The subcommittee's report lambasted conditions at Hawks Nest but failed to take further action. Despite the controversy surrounding the project, the tunnel was completed in 1935 and has performed its intended purpose ever since. But a marvelous engineering feat was accomplished at the expense of hundreds of human lives, and the picturesque river town of Gauley Bridge became known as "The Town of the Living Dead."


sources: www.wvculture.org/history/timetrl/ttmay.html#0520
www.authorsden.com/categories/story_top.asp?catid=17&id=26022
www.geo.wvu.edu/~lang/Geol484/HN-shorter.pdf


Hawks+Nest+Tunnel Gauley+River Fayette+County+WV industrial+disasters silicosis workmens+compensation appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"Sugar making time was looked forward to with pleasant anticipation by the young people," writes George Benson Kuykendall in a family geneaology published in 1919. His uncle, Isaac Kuykendall, purchased a 670 acre farm near Huttons, Garrett County, MD in 1881.

"It came along in the early spring when there were clear days and frosty nights and pretty hard freezing, but the days were warmer, with sunshine that started the sap flowing. In the groves of 'sugar trees' was the sugar camp, where the sugar makers camped and boiled down the sap. When 'sugar weather' came around, the trees were tapped by boring auger holes in them.

"Tubes or spiles were then inserted to conduct the sap to the sap trough. The sap trough was made by cutting a small green maple log or stick of wood into lengths two feet long and splitting them through the middle, then digging out the wood on the split side with an axe and adze. These troughs were set under the drip of the spiles to catch the 'sugar water.'

"When our forefathers first began maple sugar making, they boiled the sap in any kettles or pots they might have, brass or copper being preferable. Later, they made long, shallow box-vats of sheet iron which were placed on a long, low furnace partly made of masonry, on which the vats were placed. The sugar troughs when full of sap were emptied into the vat or the kettles and a fire kept up to evaporate the water, while, from time to time, the scum was skimmed from the surface.

Photo caption reads: Foster Yost, owner of the sugar maple grove, is pouring sugar water from a metal collection keeler into a large metal tank. (This sugar grove and farm, located on the Brethren Church Road, is now owned by John Schlosnogle.)Pat is the grey horse and Fred is the black.

"There was great fun in sugar making time, every stage of the process being enjoyed from the very beginning until the finished product was in cakes of sugar or vessels of maple syrup. Our good old great-grandmothers broke holes in the small ends of eggs, emptied their contents and then filled the shells with thick, granulated syrup to make Easter sugar-eggs for the children; and small cakes of sugar were moulded in receptacles of various shapes and sizes.

"When a kettle of syrup was boiled down to a suitable consistency, the 'sugaring off' process was gone through with to make the delicious old fashioned maple sugar. Those were sweet times, indeed, for everybody concerned in making maple sugar. Every step of the process was watched by them with frequent libations of the fresh sap--that which had been boiled to a more syrupy consistence, and with scraping of the kettles for the sweet, sticky maple wax."

History of the Kuykendall Family Since Its Settlement in Dutch New York in 1646
George Benson Kuykendall
Kilham Stationery & Printing CO. Portland, OR, 1919.

source: www.kjvuser.com/kuykenda3.htm

related post: When the wind's in the west, the sap runs best


maple+sugar Garrett+County+MD George+Benson+Kuykendall appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

"[My father] started one trend that horrified all the old friends. He put the kitchen on the front of the house. This was a thing unknown, inconceivable to the local populous. You didn't put the kitchen on the front of the house. People built houses on Montford Avenue where there was a superb view in the back of the house, with porches that had the whole Pisgah range...the whole Cold Mountain, Pisgah, Spivey, Eagle's View panorama...in those days it was just clear as crystal all the time, that view. In those days you could see it, but now all that stuff is just a crick in a particulate fog.

"Anyway, they put a streetcar track on Montford Avenue, and there was a certain amount of traffic, and a certain amount of streetlights. People had porches on the front of their houses, where they could see nothing but whatever went on on Montford Avenue. This is entertaining, I think, because it illustrates the standards and mores of the period, and I guess of the people. The interest in activity far outweighed the interest in natural scenery or the fantastic set of views.

"The sun sets off this back porch, and its clouds troop across the garage...crocodiles followed by giraffes, incredible Chinese dragons would cross the sunset. Well, you don't see them anymore. It's a shame, because they were great pleasures. And big thunderheads we would get over the Duck Mountains out there. Tremendous cumulous clouds, and as it got darker they'd turn gray and keep lightning within the cloud...a flash of lightning would illuminate the whole into pink...it would warm up the whole into pink flesh, these gray clouds. Incredibly beautiful. …

"Well, [Asheville] was an exciting place, in the boom days. The pleasures were very simple, though. It was a very open, kindly, low pressure sort of place. In the late 20's the...at least that was the way it was to me...it was, for example, there were band concerts on the square. It was not this mad rush always. At least I didn't feel it. And it felt that way until the beginning of the second war.

"At first it was a stock company that gave the lease to the Plaza Theatre. And they would do a show every week, I guess or every two weeks, and they would rehearse with a chorus line with about 5...one of whom was Lenny's wife who was pregnant at the time, and could still kick as high as anyone else. And of course this was all during prohibition days. You went up there with a couple of friends, and you came out and had a cola or something...after probably Goode's Drug Store, a place where you were likely to encounter everybody you ever met.

"It was on Patton Avenue. Ran through...it was where the Wachovia Bank is now. Ran through from Patton to College. I remember Tom Wolfe holding forth on some trip he had made to France, his pleasure and amusement in the provincial French one night stands...and Charlie Parker, who was an architect here. They could all be found standing out front at Goode's, from about 1:00 in the afternoon to about 6:00 in the afternoon. He didn't stay in his office because people came in and bothered him. Then he'd go back after supper, at night, and turn it out, and go to work early the next morning. So this is the way we operated. But he was good. He's the man who did the Arcade building."

Anthony (Tony) Lord, 1900-1993
August 2, 1979 interview

Architect Tony Lord left his mark on many public and private buildings in Asheville, including the Pack Memorial Library and the D. Hiden Ramsey Library on the campus of UNC Asheville. He was also influential in the greening of downtown Asheville, planting and protecting trees. He was one of the founding members of the architectural group Six Associates. For many years he was a member of the Board of Directors of the public library.

source: http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/SHRC/lord.html


Asheville+NC architects Thomas+Wolfe appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

The largest Waldensian colony in the world outside of Italy--Valdese, NC--was officially incorporated as a town on February 17, 1920.

The Waldenses, or Waldensians, are a Christian sect founded in the 12th century by Peter Valdo (hence Valdese = Waldensian), a merchant of Lyons, France who lived only a short time before St. Francis. For many years the group was confined to a rugged area in the Cottian Alps along the boundary between Italy and France. King Louis XIV was determined not to let Protestant beliefs seep into Catholic-driven France and persecuted the Waldensians mercilessly.

Not until the Edict of 1848 did the sect finally receive freedom to worship as they wished. Toward the later part of the 19th century many Waldenses emigrated to North and South America to form missionary colonies—no longer because of religious persecution but because their small strip of land in the Alps had become overcrowded.

They migrated to New York City, Chicago, Missouri, Texas and Utah, as well as Valdese, NC, in Burke County between the towns of Morganton and Hickory. The Valdese colony became the largest Waldensian colony in the world located outside of Italy. After crossing the Atlantic on the Dutch ship Zaandam, the original Valdese settlers arrived via train on the Salisbury-Asheville line of the Southern Railway on May 29, 1893. Eleven families formed the first group, led by Reverend Charles Albert Tron, a pastor and philanthropist. Rev. Tron did not come to settle, however, but to lead the immigrants and help launch their enterprise.

Initially the settlers tried to make their living off the land as they had in Italy, but the poor soil would not produce. They turned instead to manufacturing. In June, organizers led by Rev. Tron formed the Valdese Corporation, including Waldenses and American investors, and purchased 10,000 acres of land. Due to the undesirable layout of the land and the independent nature of the Waldenses, the corporation was an unpopular arrangement. It was dissolved the following year when the Rev. Barthelemy Soulier arrived in Valdese to replace the leadership lost when Tron returned to Italy to recruit more colonists.

In 1895 the Waldensian Church in Valdese united with the Presbyterian Church, which shared similar structure and theology. The Waldensian Hosiery Mill was established in 1901 and the yarn factory, Valdese Manufacturing Company, in 1913. Valdese became a hub of the American textile industry. The town’s first mayor, John Long, was also the groom in the first Waldensian wedding in Valdese.

Since 1967 an outdoor drama, From this Day Forward, has been performed each summer by Valdese’s Old Colony Players. The saga features authentic costumes and folk dances that highlight the heritage of North Carolina’s Waldensian settlers.

sources: www.valdese.com/why_waldensian.htm
www.visitvaldese.com/new/heritage.html
www.ci.valdese.nc.us/history.htm
Edward W. Phifer Jr., Burke: The History of a North Carolina County (1977)


Waldensians Valdese+NC appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

You can send me pretty flowers you can send me valentines
Send me letters every day but it won’t pay
Leap to my desire, nothing else will do
It’s goodbye and so long to you

You can hang around and love me you can hang your head and cry
Hang my picture on the wall but I won’t fall
Kiss me when you’re dreaming, no good that will do
It’s goodbye and so long to you

You can give me your affection you can give all your love
Give me all the things I’ll crave but I’ll be brave
All the things you offer, make me sad and blue
It’s goodbye and so long to you

You can call me your own darling you can call me what you may
Call me on the telephone I won’t be home
Keep your old love letters, I’m all through with you
It’s goodbye and so long to you

"Its Goodbye and So Long to You"
recorded by the Osborne Brothers with Mac Wiseman
The Essential Bluegrass Album, 1979


Famed for his clear and mellow tenor voice, Mac Wiseman (b. 1925) has recorded with many great bluegrass bands, including those of Molly O'Day, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and the Osborne Brothers; his command of traditional material made him much in demand by bluegrass and folk fans alike. Wiseman, nicknamed "The Voice with a Heart,” grew up influenced by traditional and religious music and such radio stars as Montana Slim Carter.

After studying at the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music in Dayton, VA Wiseman started out working as a radio announcer in Harrisonburg in 1944. His professional music career began when he joined Molly O'Dell in 1946 as a bass player. He signed on with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in an early edition of their group in 1948, and appeared on their first recording session. After a performance at the Louisiana Hayride he left them to become popular as solo artist.

He's best known for his 1959 hit, "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy." He also had a hit version of "The Ballad of Davey Crockett" in 1955. During the Folk revival in the 1960s he had successful gigs at the Hollywood Bowl and the Carnegie Hall. In 1993 Wiseman was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor.


sources: www.cmt.com/artists/az/wiseman_mac/bio.jhtml
http://doodah.net/bgb/MacWiseman.html


Mac+Wiseman bluegrass appalachia appalachian+history bluegrass+lyrics

By 1937, when "Drug Czar" Harry Anslinger, then Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, introduced the Marihuana [sic] Tax Act to Congress, lurid testimonies were being introduced that cannabis caused "murder, insanity and death." And just the year before, the film now known as cult classic Reefer Madness was financed by a church group and made under the title Tell Your Children. This highly exaggerated exploitation film revolved around the tragic events that follow when high school students are lured by pushers to try "marihuana:" wild parties with jazz music lead to a hit and run accident, manslaughter, suicide, rape, and descent into madness.

But despite the national media hype, most states passed anti-drug laws without much scientific study or debate and without attracting public attention.

In Virginia, for example, the Uniform Narcotic Drug Act passed the House 88-0 on February 16, 1934, and was approved 34-0 by the Senate on February 22. Although the Act as passed in Virginia contained no marijuana provisions, the same legislature the next month passed a bill (H.B. 236), prohibiting "use of opium, marijuana [and] loco weed ... in the manufacture of cigarettes, cigars" and other tobacco products. This law, which amended a 1910 Virginia statute prohibiting the use of opium in the manufacture of cigarettes, was the first mention of marijuana, or any of its derivatives, in the Virginia Code.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the newspaper of the state capital and perhaps the most influential newspaper in the state at that time, for the period surrounding the enactment of these two provisions (February 1 to March 15, 1934) shows clearly that little, if any, public attention attended their passage.

There is no mention at any time of H.B. 236. As for H.B. 94 (the Uniform Act), the Times Dispatch reported on February 7 that the bill had been introduced. This announcement was buried among the list of all bills introduced and referred on February 6. In a February 12 article dealing with "controversial" bills before the House and Senate that week no mention was made of H.B. 94. On March 6, the newspaper recorded: "Among the important bills passed were. . . . [far down the list] the Scott bill, making the State narcotic law conform to the Federal statute."

That is the sum of the publicity received by the Uniform Act and the statute that first regulated marijuana in any way in Virginia.

sources: http://imdb.com/title/tt0028346/
http://www.druglibrary.org/SCHAFFER/library/studies/vlr/vlr3.htm


Uniform+Narcotic+Drug+Act marijuana Virginia+drug+laws appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

In winter one must draw the little hickory split chair close to the hearth, for most of the heat from the great glowing fire goes up the chimney. The house may have a small window-sash immovably built in. Often there is none. The woman cooks breakfast before sun-up, and supper after dark, by the smoky light of a tiny kerosene lamp with no chimney. It is difficult to carry lamp chimneys long distances in saddle-bags.

There are many homes where even the moderate luxury of kerosene is not found. A sliver of pine knot gives an even more smoky light, and occasionally a “ladle” is used. It is preferably made by a blacksmith, an iron saucer with a handle to hang it by. Narrow strips of cotton cloth, twisted or plaited together, are laid in the ladle in grease. The end of the rag is hung over the edge and ignited. Its illumination is not measured in candle power.

The Land of Saddle-bags
by James Watt Raine

The Land of Saddle-bags is one of the three most important books from the early twentieth century that, according to Dwight Billings (a contributor to the 1997 reprint), have "had a profound and lasting impact on how we think about Appalachia and, indeed, on the fact that we commonly believe that such a place and people can be readily identified". Originally published in 1924, it was advertised as a "racy book, full of the thrill of mountain adventure and the delicious humor of vigorously human people."

James Watt Raine provides eyewitness accounts of mountain speech and folksinging, education, religion, community, politics, and farming. In a conscious effort to dispel the negative stereotype of the drunken, slothful, gun-toting hillbilly prone to violence, Raine presents positive examples from his own experiences among the region's native inhabitants.

In 1906 Raine became an English instructor at Berea College in Kentucky, where one of the courses he taught was on English and Scottish ballads. He eventually submitted several course proposals - all apparently denied by the college - that would have allowed him to grant credit upon a student’s successfully collecting a certain number of ballads from the student's home territory. However, Raine persisted in his ballad collecting activities.

Raine - an actor, playwright, and author – ultimately headed Berea’s English and drama departments. He was much in demand as lecturer for cultural entertainment programs on through to his retirement in 1939. He died on February 12, 1949, age 88, in Berea, Kentucky.


source: www.berea.edu/hutchinslibrary/specialcollections/saa06.asp
The Land of Saddle-bags, by James Watt Raine, 1997, University Press of Kentucky


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Berea+College Berea+KY James+Watt+Raine The+Land+of+Saddle-bags

[Eastern Kentucky, 1920s] Caption reads: Two boys, wearing knit caps and short pants with long socks, and a little girl, wearing a fur coat, play with a dog and a sled in the snow.
















Caption reads: Children Building a Snow Fort at Arthurdale, W. Va.








Snow Battle at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, winter 1932-33. Caption reads: First suitable snow in three years, therefore, three classes ('34, '35, and '36) were in it. It was a big one.


sleds snowball+fights snow+forts Arthurdale+WV Blacksburg+VA Virginia+Tech appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

There is a town in Maryland’s westernmost county of Garrett that got its name from a happy accident. In 1750, Maryland settler George Deakins was granted 600 acres of land as a payment of a debt from England’s King George II. Deakins sent out two corps of engineers, each without knowledge of the other, to survey the best land in this area. When the two crews presented their findings, to their surprise and to Mr. Deakins’ satisfaction, they had both marked the same oak tree as their starting and returning points. Doubly vindicated that this land was prime, Mr. Deakins had it patented "The Accident Tract."

The town was eventually settled by the Dranes. James Drane moved to the area in 1803 from Prince George’s County, which was part of the Maryland tobacco belt. Apparently Drane intended to turn his farm into a tobacco plantation. However, the climate of Garrett County proved unsuitable for growing tobacco, and he turned to normal farm crops.

The Dranes lived in a log cabin built by James’ brother-in-law William LaMar in 1797. LaMar owned Flowery Vale, a 900 acre tract of land. Half a century later, most of the town of Accident was built on that land; the Accident tract was incorporated into the Flowery Vale tract. James Drane added an addition to the cabin shortly after he arrived, giving the building a total of six rooms; three upstairs and three down.

Although it wasn’t the first log cabin in Garrett County, by the mid-1900’s the Drane House had been occupied by successive families for over 150 years. The last owners of the house were members of the Heinrick Richter family who purchased it in 1856. They leased it to a number of people; the last family left in 1952.

From the early 1950s, Mrs. Mary Miller Strauss, an Accident native who taught in the elementary schools of the Garrett County public school system for 33 years, took an active lead in the restoration of the Drane House. She ultimately made possible the placement of the Drane house on the National Registry of Historical Homes. The Accident Cultural and Historic Society was formed in 1987, and one of its main projects was the restoration of the Drane house. Restoration of the house, now owned by the town, began in 1992.

Photo caption reads: The Richter Tannery is located where the smoke is spewing from the stack. It was built in 1872. The Drane House is located to the right of the picture. (It cannot be seen.)

This tannery in Accident MD was operated by John Richter and later his son Adam for 56 years. Hides were tanned by the vegetable tannin method, using tannin obtained from the ground rock oak bark, furnished to the plant before World War I for four dollars and fifty cents a cord. It was put out of business in 1928 by the development of large tanneries.

sources: www.whilbr.org
www.accidentmd.org
www.hmdb.org/Marker.asp?Marker=2313



Accident+MD appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Drane+House Garrett+County+MD Richter+Tannery

February is Black History Month (if you’re in the UK and reading this, make that October!). West Virginia educator Carter G. Woodson, the son of former slaves, was pivotal in its development.

Woodson (1874-1950) was a graduate and later principal of Douglass High School in Huntington, WV, a dean at West Virginia State, and was the second African American to earn Harvard Ph.D. (1912).

Dr. Woodson authored numerous scholarly books and magazine articles on the positive contributions of blacks to the development of America. He reached out to schools and the general public through the establishment of several key organizations, and founded Negro History Week (precursor to Black History Month).

On September 9, 1915, Woodson and four others organized the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. The purposes of the organization, in Woodson's words, were "the collection of sociological and historical data on the Negro, the study of peoples of African blood, the publishing of books in the field, and the promotion of harmony between the races by acquainting the one with the other."

In the beginning -- and for a long time thereafter -- the Chicago-based association was a one-man show with Woodson producing, directing, writing, organizing, and providing most of the money. Even after the organization was launched, he said later, "few of the members were anxious to assume any pecuniary responsibility and therefore urged further delay before undertaking to carry out the program."

On January 1, 1916, wary of said delays, and without consulting the Executive Council, Woodson published at his own expense the first issue of the Journal of Negro History. This naturally enraged the Executive Council, and one member, the only woman, resigned in protest.

Although Woodson alienated some friends and supporters, he succeeded by the power of example and the sheer force of his personality in creating a structure which published books, funded researchers and shaped the thinking of large masses of people. In 1920, he organized Associated Negro Publishers "to make possible the publication and circulation of valuable books on colored people not acceptable to most publishers."

In 1922, after serving as dean of Howard University and West Virginia State, he left the teaching profession and gave himself body and soul to the movement. In the same year, he published one of the major books in the history of Black America, The Negro In Our History. On February 7, 1926, he organized Negro History Week, which was expanded in 1976 to Black History Month. This was perhaps his proudest accomplishment. "No other single thing," he said, "has done so much to dramatize the achievement of persons of African blood."

Dr. Woodson often said that he hoped the time would come when Negro History Week would be unnecessary; when all Americans would willingly recognize the contributions of black Americans as a legitimate and integral part of the history of this country. Whether it's called Black History, Negro History, Afro-American History, or African American History, his philosophy has made the this field of study a legitimate and acceptable area of intellectual inquiry.

In honor of all the work that Dr. Carter G. Woodson did to promote the study of African American History, an ornament of him hangs on the White House's Christmas tree each year.


sources: http://chipublib.org/002branches/woodson/woodsonbib.html
http://usinfo.state.gov/scv/Archive/2005/Jun/08-276343.html
www.asalh.org/woodsonbiosketch.html


Carter+G+Woodson Black+History+Month Huntington+WV appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history

Black Man o' Mine,
If the world were your lover,
It could not give what I give to you,
Or the ocean would yield and you could discover
Its ages of treasure to hold and to view;

Could it fill half the measure of my heart's portion . . .
Just for you living, just for you giving all this devotion,
Black man o' mine.

Black man o' mine,
As I hush and caress you, close to my heart,
All your loving is just your needing what is true;
Then with your passing dark comes my darkest part,
For living without your love is only rue.

Black man o' mine, if the world were your lover
It could not give what I give to you.

Poet Anne Spencer, of Bramwell WV, was born on this date in 1882. Many of Spencer's poems convey a romantic concern with the human search for beauty and meaning in a disgusting world, as well as people's wasted attempts to enforce order on God's earth. While attending Lynchburg's Virginia Seminary Spencer penned her first poem, The Skeptic (1896), and also met her future husband, Edward. The couple married on May 15, 1901, settled in Lynchburg and raised three children.

In 1918 Spencer was visited by James Weldon Johnson, author of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), then field secretary for the NAACP. Their meeting launched a lifetime friendship—and with Before the Feast at Sushan, which she submitted to the Crisis (1920), it inaugurated her publishing era.

With the rise of black literature in the 1920s, Spencer began to receive the attention she deserved. Her work typifies the style of the Harlem Renaissance school of writers. She published most of her poems during that decade in the period's most prestigious collections. These include: James Weldon Johnson's The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922); Robert T. Kerlin's Negro Poets and Their Poems (1923); Louis Untermeyer's American Poetry Since 1900 (1923); Alain Locke's The New Negro (1925); and Countee Cullen's Caroling Dusk (1925).

One of Spencer’s last poems, For Jim, Easter Eve was published in Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps's The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949 (1948). In addition to her writing, Spencer organized Lynchburg's NAACP chapter and opened a library at the African American Dunbar High School. Among the many visitors to her Lynchburg home were W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall. After her death in 1975, many of her writings were lost. However, her strong feminist voice carried far beyond her mountain roots, calling out to women of color everywhere.


sources: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/spencer_anne.html
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2016/Anne_Spencer_a_poet
http://web.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/spencer.html


Lynchburg+VA Anne+Spencer appalachia appalachian+history Appalachian+poetry Bramwell+WV

Los Angeles, February 6, 1934
Editor Tribune: Sixty years have passed since the writer answered an advertisement in the columns of The Tribune's honored predecessor, The Ironton Register, resulting in his employment as a boy in the Register office. That was on February 6, 1874. I remained in the service of the Register twenty-seven years, until moving to Chicago.

What changes have come about in sixty years?

Then, the "Old Brick" school in Ironton was standing, on the Kingsbury site. The high school had one teacher, and afterward two. Part of the time, its principal was also the school superintendent. Superintendents changed frequently. Saul Wood and Jos. Le Sage were successively long time janitors. They suffered more devilment from the kids than did the school heads.

"East Ironton" then had a few scattered houses not many blocks ("squares" we called them) beyond Adams Street. The direction is now known as south because of the confusing diagonal position of Ironton on the map. The Deaconess Hospital was then the W. D. Kelly home, and the grounds included a deer park with a fine herd.

"Kelly's Graveyard" was the principal cemetery. Processions marched all the way to that hallowed spot on "Decoration" days, headed by the Silver Cornet Band. I remember when beautiful Woodland, where so many now sleep, was laid out. When "Big Etna" furnace was built, it cost more than a million dollars and sold at auction for ten thousand.

Every church now standing in Ironton was built in my time, as well as some that have been razed. So every school building up to the Ironton High School. So probably three-fourths of the business places of every kind. The occasional launchings of steamboats and other large river craft built by Mike Wise above Vernon Street, were gala occasions and beautiful sights.

I remember when Emerson McMillin, then a young school teacher and later one of the eminent and wealthy men of the nation, labored in laying the first gas mains in Ironton and assisted in the installation of the gas works, becoming the company's secretary. That was in 1867. My father was the town's first gas fitter.

When palatial river packets like the Fleetwood and Bostona arrived at the Ironton wharf from Cincinnati each morning on schedule time. When a railroad on one side of the river or the other was a far-off dream. When the Scioto Valley railroad came to town following the high pressure exerted by its promoters to secure the franchise through the streets. When the Iron Railroad sold for $500,000.

When the Ironton Plow factory followed by Henry's mill, was where the Crystal Ice factory is now. When Park Avenue was Olive street and when "Cory's tunnel" was blasted through the hill.

I recall the great occasions of county fairs in the fair grounds out by the "iron bridge." The bridge which I understand is now an antique in the hands of Henry Ford. I vaguely remember when my grandfather, James Amlin, was postmaster at Ironton in wartime. When a big fire below the railroad on Second destroyed the Register office and Wright's drug store.

I retain distinct impressions of some local incidents of the Civil War, although too young to realize all it meant. I remember the deep sorrow when President Lincoln was assassinated.

In my boyhood, the block bounded by Fifth, Sixth, Washington and Adams was the "Dempsey field," and circus tents were pitched there. In winter, a pond in the field and extending across Washington Street furnished good skating. Storms creek when firmly frozen and Ebert's pond were larger centers for the sport.


F. B. Lawton.

Ironton Sunday Tribune, February 18, 1934, Sunday, Page 8.

source: www.lawrencecountyohio.com/ironton/stories/lawton.htm


appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history Emerson+McMillin Ironton+OH Lawrence+County+OH Ohio+River river+packets Scioto+Valley

Black Mountain, near the town of Lynch in Harlan County, is Kentucky's highest point, rising 4125 feet above sea level. It runs along the border of Harlan and Letcher counties, and also along the Kentucky -Virginia border.

Thousands of families, most of them Eastern European immigrants, streamed into the shadows of Black Mountain between the World Wars to mine coal.

"I come to this country in 1938. I started workin' the mine when I was 19 years old. And United States Steel, they got a d.v. job in the mine before even I come to this country, and I work for United States Steel for 30-some years. We come over here and my Dad was workin' in Lynch, my brother, my cousins—my Daddy, even his grandfather was working Tom’s Creek back in the 1800s.

"Back in the days it was a different company. They’d recruit. They’d recruit the Italian fellas because most of them was rock masons. They was rock masons, see, and all these big companies like Lynch [The Benham and Lynch Company], they had 'bout five or six hundred Italians. They all a cuttin' rocks and buildin' these hotels and motels all off the bathhouse. They all would work on that part, and they's real Italians, that's how it was done, except a few that went in the mines. But the big majority, they was rock masons. Lynch Company told my Daddy and th'other people 'We need a certain class o' people workin' in the mine or workin' as rock masons, whatever: ok?'

"One part of the camp they separated from one another. There was Italians, there was Hungarians, there was Polish --- everybody had their own bunch. You could walk from one street to another, and they’d be a different language. See, when you go in that district where the Italians is, and when you go t'another place, they's all Hungarians come together. And then the Polish come together.

"This part of the country reminded me that where I come from – was born – because north Italy now they have all factories, and after World War II all the people moved north. They just like the southern people were here. They left the south and went to north because the south is just ‘bout like the slavery. And that’s what it is over there where a lot of people come from because the government don’t put no factory down there. And that’s what’s happening in the Appalachia mountains."

Joseph Scopa,
Lynch KY miner
b. 1919

At its peak 10,000 people called Lynch home. All coal mined in Lynch by U.S. Coal and Coke (a subsidiary of U.S. Steel) was shipped to U.S. Steel's coke ovens in Gary, Indiana. Though the preparation of U.S. Steel's coal was transferred to a newer plant at Corbin in 1955, the Lynch plant continued to serve as a loadout until 1991.

Nearby Benham, KY was a coal company town built by Wisconsin Steel Company, a subsidiary of International Harvester, between 1911 and 1919. The Benham mines were still owned and operated by International Harvester in the 1970s, but by the time the mines closed in the 1980s, they were run by Arch of Kentucky. Today the mines in Benham and Lynch no longer produce coal. Benham’s coal camp commissary is today the Kentucky Coal Museum.


sources: www.harlancounty.com/history.htm
www.kingdomcome.org
www.coalcampusa.com/eastky/harlan/harlan.htm


Black+Mountain Lynch+KY Benham+and+Lynch+Company coal+mining Italian+immigrants

Ice skaters glide on the frozen Jackson River at Covington [VA] in 1897

No wonder these skaters look so carefree! The 1890's brought economic boom to Covington, VA. Population jumped from 704 in 1890 to 2,950 at the turn of the century. The railroad ran fourteen passenger trains daily through Covington and the city was the fourth largest freight paying station on the entire C&O Railroad after Chicago, Cincinnati and Richmond.

The first industries included the Covington Iron Furnace in 1891 (in Sunnymeade) which produced 110 tons of pig iron daily, the steam powered Deford Tannery (near present Superior Concrete Plant) in 1892, the E.M. Nettleton planing mill, and the Covington Machine Shops, which produced coke extractors for use in furnace cleaning in the steel making process. The town also boasted two flour mills, two brick yards and the Alleghany Pin and Bracket Company.

source: www.allhighlands.org/area_history.htm


Jackson+River Covington+VA ice+skating appalachia appalachian+history appalachian+mountains+history