Appalachian History

"A Hard Journey" brings to life Don West, poet, ordained Congregationalist minister, labor organizer, educator, leftist activist, and one of the most important literary and political figures in the southern Appalachians during the middle years of the twentieth century. Author James J. Lorence is a professor emeritus of the University of Wisconsin, Marathon County, and served as Eminent Scholar of History at Gainesville State College, Gainesville, Georgia, when writing "A Hard Journey."


"I first met Don West in the early summer of 1983," says Jeff Bigger, author of The United States of Appalachia.

"I was a dropout from the University of California and had just gone through a wild nine-month tour of duty in Berkeley’s corridors, spending more time in jail and at leftist political meetings than in classrooms. I failed to finish my last quarter.

"Returning from a stint in jail for a demonstration in central California, I was involved in a tragic car accident, which resulted in the death of a young woman. I was at the wheel. Still in a daze, I eventually took a Greyhound across the country, and then started hitching and hiking through the South, drifting into the Appalachian Mountains. I was angry, resentful, and adrift. I had lost faith in the power of education, politics or even activism. Don West saved my life that summer.

"Here are his bona fides as I see them: Raised by a sharecropper from the north Georgia mountains, West put himself through Lincoln Memorial and Vanderbilt Universities at the same time the southern Agrarian literary movement took the stage in the late 1920s. But West was no youthful antebellum sycophant; he earned a master’s in divinity, traveled around Scandinavia and Europe to examine folk schools, and returned to the South to launch his own revolution in the mountains. Raised by a radical Republican grandfather in a part of Appalachia that had supported both the Union and Confederacy, West rejected the hillbilly stereotypes for his proper place in the mountain South’s vanguard for independence, freedom, and enlightenment.

"In 1932 he co-founded the Highlander Folk School, which became the training ground for the civil rights movement. As one of the lonely activists in the generation before the glorious Montgomery bus boycott, he went underground and defended a radical black (Communist) leader in Atlanta in the mid-1930s. Wanted dead or alive by the Atlanta authorities, he fled the state and became a union organizer for mill workers and miners in the Carolinas and Kentucky and was often beaten and jailed, often forced to quietly return to work his farm in Georgia.

"Not too quietly: In a top secret FBI file, West was added to a proposed list of dangerous Americans who should be interned during World War II. In fact, one memo referred to the poet as the most dangerous man in the South.

"There were some good times. After turning a small Georgia school district into an acclaimed model of transformative pedagogy and cooperative learning, he returned to the national scene with his Clods of Southern Earth. In 1946, New York publishers Boni and Gaer (Boni had published Ernest Hemingway’s first stories) announced the release of West’s record-breaking volume of poetry. Here is where his secret life began to haunt him.

"During all of these years, riding an Indian Chief motorcycle across the mountains and down the East Coast, West had left a legacy of poems in his wake, as author John Egerton has written, like a phantom revolutionary—poems that unveiled the miseries of mill hands, miners, and sharecroppers, and the hopes of justice and racial unity in the South. His pioneering work reclaimed Appalachia as a progressive region and purveyor of the good life. For a while, he became the proverbial people’s poet, his work passed out at rallies and memorized by miners who had never read a book in their lives.

"Hounded and red-baited by newspaper after newspaper in the late 1940s and 1950s, West drifted into oblivion, losing job after job, called time and again into the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings that popped up in the South with the regularity of catfish fries. In one of the most unusual persecutions in American literary history, West’s poetry was often used against him at hearings and in newspaper editorials. Destitute, he even took to peddling vegetables from his garden on the streets of Atlanta. The Ku Klux Klan added a final touch, burning down his farm and his collection of books, manuscripts, and family heirlooms. After editing a newspaper in a mill town in North Georgia during a volatile period, he even had to flee a lynch mob; scurrying across the back mountain roads, West shot his way out of a jam, when a car attempted to drive him off the road. He finally left the South in exile.

"When I was literally dropped on Don West’s doorstep in the 1980s, he had returned to Appalachia as one of the elder statesmen in their folk revival. He had become the link between the Old Left and New Left activists in the 1960s, and had founded a new folk school and farm, the Appalachian South Folklife Center in West Virginia, which had become a hub of activity for young Appalachians in search of their history and progressive culture. His poetry returned to print and sold thousands. His role as an Appalachian historian became more poignant with a series of pamphlets he printed in his barn in the tradition of his hero, Tom Paine.

"With less than 10 bucks in my pocket, I worked on West’s farm that summer. I attended classes he set up for school dropouts and mountain youth in an employment program. We listened in awe at West’s poetry readings and his lessons on the heroic role of mountaineers at Kings Mountain during the American Revolution. 'Remember,' he would shout, 'we had the first abolitionist newspaper, not the northerners,' and then pausing, he would always end, 'and we didn’t burn any witches in these hollows.'"


Related posts: “Poverty pays unless you’re poor”

appalachia appalachia+history appalachian+language Appalachian+poetry Don+West Highlander+Folk+School James+J.+Lorence

Author Gretchen Laskas caused quite a stir at the WV Book Festival several weeks ago in Charleston, where she discussed her newly published second book, “The Miner’s Daughter.” We decided to find out what all the fuss is about, and ask her a bit about she’s up to in this young adult novel.



Appalachian History: You wrote another novel, “The Midwife’s Tale,” which was also set in West Virginia. Did you intend any connections between the books or any parallels in the stories?

The first rough drafts of each were written around the same time, but other than some of the crossover in terms of timeline and the research I was doing, the two novels don’t share many parallels. I speak briefly of coal towns in The Midwife’s Tale and use a little bit of my midwifery history knowledge in The Miner’s Daughter, but each is, to my mind, its own story.

AH: You call your grandmother "a true miner’s daughter," and your father was born in Arthurdale, the town where Willa’s family eventually settles. How much did your family history influence you when writing this book?

I don’t deny that family history influences my writing – I’m the oldest child of the oldest child of the oldest child of the oldest child. Far more of my extended family was living when I was growing up than not, an unusual situation in today’s world. I came from one of these sprawling, kin-filled worlds where we might argue amongst ourselves, but we could come together at the drop of a hat. This sense of solidarity and on-going communal storytelling definitely influences the work, although interestingly enough, this doesn’t mean the individual stories I tell are based on family ones. My family was not part of the original settlement in Arthurdale, although my family has been part of the community since 1943. But I certainly wouldn’t be a writer without the eight generation of West Virginians that came before me, and I owe a lot to both of my grandmothers in particular.

AH: The Depression is a key piece of the setting, and a major challenge for Willa’s family is keeping together through the tough times. How were your grandparents affected by the Depression?

No one has ever asked me this question, so I hadn’t thought about it, but it’s a good one for the novel. My grandparents had very different experiences of The Great Depression, all of which are in the novel.

My paternal grandparents were among those who like Willa, were more isolated and connected to the coal camps. But each family owned or was able to rent a little bit of land, which made food production easier. We see this in The Miner’s Daughter in references to the farm work the Lowells are able to do, as well as Mama’s ability to can and make the most of all food brought their way. The family is tied to the coal industry, but they came to the camps with more than one skill, which helps them in the selection for Arthurdale.

My maternal grandparents (who are Wayne and Ginny, the couple Willa meets in Fairmont) had very difference experiences. Growing up in the city, without a garden, husbandry or the skill sets of more rural areas, my grandmother experienced real hunger. At school, more affluent students’ dress made her own lack of clothing all the more apparent. Both of these emotions run through the novel: Willa’s black and white dress is taken from an actual blouse my grandmother made at this time, which I now own.

And my maternal grandfather had a life virtually untouched by the Great Depression. The family owned a home on Country Club Road; he had a car, a good job as an accountant, and enjoyed roaming around the country with “the fellows” attending college football games. My grandparents’ wedding video (imagine, a wedding video in the 1930’s!) was lost when the camera it had been taken on was stolen at the Army/Navy game. This is, of course, the world of Grace McCartney and her family.

AH: Willa’s discovery of poetry marks a new stage in her life. What was the awakening moment for you as a writer?

There wasn’t only one, but I remember keenly each and every person who believed in me. My seventh grade English teacher was the teacher I had who thought I’d grow up to be a writer. She taught me the poetry that Willa learns in the novel. I also had an outstanding middle school librarian, who made sure I read all the books to prepare me for life, no matter what choices I decided to make. Such small, everyday actions by adults can have large impact in a younger person, and I take them very seriously, now that I’m the adult.

AH: Willa struggles against government officials who are prejudiced against Americans who do not fit into the “white, native-born, and Protestant” mold. Do you see any parallels between the nativist ideas in Willa’s world and the anti-immigration movement of today?

There are parallels, and they are, to my mind, rather obvious ones. But what I find interesting is how little effort creatively on my part was required to draw them. Simply writing the words that were used at that time made comparisons to “the good old days” stand out. There were people I knew growing up who were prejudiced towards families that came from recently non-English speaking backgrounds such as Italian or Polish, and that was a full generation later. Of course, growing up in Pittsburgh, where it seems EVERYONE is from such a background, I longed for my own Ellis Island story. In that regard I “married in” – my husband is only two generations removed from Europe; none of his grandparents spoke English as their first language.

AH: You mentioned the Appalachian Writers Workshop in your acknowledgements. How did the workshop help you more clearly imagine the coal company town of Riley Mines?

The Appalachian Writers Workshop is a wonderful regional resource. I know of few other conferences anywhere in the country that bring such talented and professional writers together every summer in a setting that is energizing to any writer who takes her work seriously. Several people in particular from that conference have encouraged and strengthened me as a writer; you certainly need talent in this business, but in order to survive the process of writing and then publication, you need what might be called gumption (half courage, half a kick in the pants), and the Workshop gives you that a hundred times over.

AH: At one point in the book, Willa comments on the relative value of money when she says, “If anyone would have told me a month ago I’d be sad about getting only a penny for a treat, I’d have called them crazy.” How would Willa react to modern consumer society?

Good Question. In the Reading Guide, I ask how Willa might feel about our society today. Have we lived up to her hopes of the future? I think we have in some ways, but not in others. This is perhaps the question I hope readers find themselves asking the most. One of the reasons I love writing historical fiction is to ask readers questions like these.

AH: Miss Grace, Willa’s missionary friend, is very supportive of her. What kind of role did churches and missionaries play in 1930s coal towns, especially with regard to education?

Miss Grace has much in common with Mary Behner, a young woman who came to Scott’s Run, West Virginia to teach Sunday School in the 1930’s. She opened a library (of particular interest to me), started the first African-American girl scout troop in the area, and took children who had never left the coal camps to Morgantown to see a little of the world around them. She was one of many who came, and the work they began continues today in many areas of the region.

Eleanor Roosevelt was first alerted to the conditions of the WV coal camps by the Quakers. They had begun trying to revitalize handicrafts as a way for out of work coal miners to earn some money. Eleanor bought one of the chairs – a lovely piece of work that convinced her that anyone who could make a chair like this was well worth trying to help. That was the beginning of what would become Arthurdale.

AH: Willa’s older brother, Ves, wants to help organize labor unions. What shape did the 1930s labor union movement take in southern West Virginia?

In the West Virginia Mine Wars, in southern West Virginia, the Federal government armed itself against its own people and threatened them. And why? For unionizing and fighting for the right for better wages, work safety and fair treatment. To have the federal government turn around in the 1930’s and claim “The President Wants you to Join the Union!” would have been an incredible moment in time, and I understand why Ves and Johnny wanted to be part of that. My family came out of the northern VA coal mine unionization efforts, and my husband’s grandfather was blacklisted in Europe as an organizer, which was how he ended up in the US. My husband also worked for the AFL-CIO and interned with the United Mine Workers during law school. Our sympathies and gratitude for labor run very deep.

AH: When Miss Grace first meets Willa, she mistakes her for a “coal mine girl.” Why does Willa seem slightly offended at this label, when she willingly identifies herself as “a miner’s daughter”?

Believe it or not, my editor and I actually discussed this back and forth a lot. She was in favor of titling the book “Coal Mine Girl” and I was adamantly against it. First, Willa, to my mind, wouldn’t appreciate being called a “girl” after she has grown so much. Also, while the family can leave the mine behind them, we know that the father carries the mine (dust) literally within him. My grandfather stopped mining in the 1950’s, but that didn’t keep black lung from killing him years later. In West Virginia, at some level, we are all “Miner’s Children” no matter how many generations (if any) we are out of the mines themselves.

AH: Your first two books have been set in Appalachia. What’s next for you in your writing?

I’ll come back to West Virginia again – it’s simply too full of stories and characters that are waiting to be written. But I would like to explore some other places in my fiction, especially Pittsburgh, where Appalachian influences play a tiny, but vital, role. Or here in Washington DC, where every third person I meet comes from the region. I’m part of the great Appalachian diaspora, and that is also a side of our history and culture that needs to be told.

Interviewed by Esther French

related post: "author Ted Anthony discusses 'Chasing the Rising Sun'"

Gretchen+Laskas The+Miners+Daughter WV+book+festival West+Virginia+history appalachia +appalachian+culture appalachian+language

ONE TIME away back years ago there was a boy named Jack. He and his folks lived off in the mountains somewhere and they were awful poor, just didn't have a thing. Jack had two brothers, Will and Tom, and they are in some of the Jack Tales, but this one I'm fixin' to tell you now, there's mostly just Jack in it.

Jack was awful lazy sometimes, just wouldn't do ary lick of work. His mother and his daddy kept tryin' to get him to help, but they couldn't do a thing with him when he took a lazy spell.

Well, Jack decided one time he'd pull out from there and try his luck in some other section of the country. So his mother fixed him up a little snack of dinner, and he put on his old raggedy coat and lit out. …

--from Jack in the Giants' Newground!

Remember “Jack and the Beanstalk”? There’s more where that came from! Jack Tales are part of a cycle of folk stories that revolve around a central character named ---wait for it!--- Jack. The tales originated in Europe, with American Jack Tales being most closely related to those of the British Isles. Richard Chase first demonstrated the existence of the Jack Tale cycle in America, when he published ‘The Jack Tales’ in 1943. Chase compiled his collection of stories from oral interviews taken from members of the Council Harmon family of Beech Mountain, North Carolina, and also from three families in Wise County, Virginia.

Jack is a kind of trickster-hero, one who is successful through his cleverness. Certainly he is not the admirable prince of fairy tales, but rather a quick witted and not always too scrupulous farm boy. In these tales as told in Appalachia Jack is an ordinary poor boy who achieves success in only one of two ways: either by his wits, or by sheer luck --- and the latter predominates. Quite a contradiction to the “American fairy tale” mythos that honesty and hard work are the means to success!

“In April 1939, while I was recording folklore for the Library of Congress, I was fortunate enough to get a number of these Jack Tales from Sam Harmon in Tennessee," says Herbert Halpert, who wrote the appendix to ‘The Jack Tales.’ “Just the previous month I had been collecting folksongs in Wise County, Virginia, and nearby Letcher County, Kentucky, and never thought to ask for tales.”

“About a year later, Mr. Chase worked in the same area and with some of the same informants from whom I had recorded songs – and got tales from them. Mr. Chase deserves considerable credit for tracing the folktales in one family tradition. The discovery of the interrelationship of the Ward-Harmon-Gentry families is a fine achievement.”


Sources: http://www.ibiblio.org/bawdy/folklore/giants.html
http://tinyurl.com/38af68
http://tinyurl.com/2ley75

Related post: "Indian tales told by firelight"
"Now I've got my Tailypo!"


Jack+Tales Richard+Chase appalachia Appalachian+tales appalachian+language appalachian+history appalachian+culture history+of+appalachia

Home-Coming (1946)

And I've come back to you,
Mountain Earth--
Come to laugh
And sorrow
And sing--

To dig my songs up
From your soil
And spin a melody
Of corn blades,
Top-fodder,
Crab-grass,
And a clean-plowed furrow.

I've come to sing and grope--
With a people who know
Deep songs,
Who stumble up
A long crooked road....

I've come because
Your great silent agony
Echoed everywhere

And the weary foot-steps
Of my old Dad
Still sound upon the mountain
Where his sweat dripped down
To water your dirt....

Don West achieved success as one of the foremost southern regional poets of the twentieth century. He was at different times a labor organizer, political radical, preacher, progressive educator, and outspoken spokesperson for human equality in the generation before the civil rights movement. Although he is best known for his literary works, West was also an effective proponent of the Social Gospel, embraced by some of the South's most dedicated religious reformers.

Born in 1906 in Devil's Hollow, near Ellijay in Gilmer County, Donald L. West grew to young adulthood in the north Georgia mountains. The eldest son of a farmer, he took pride in the independent spirit that had made his forebears nonconformists who opposed slavery in the antebellum years. This heritage of independence expressed itself in West's career, during which he often found himself at odds with the folkways and beliefs of the communities in which he lived and worked. Throughout his life he remained committed to a progressive view of ethnic and racial harmony, which linked him with his personal family history.

In 1964 West and his wife helped to open the Appalachian South Folklife Center at Pipestem, West Virginia, where West worked until his death in 1992.

Source: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2569&hl=y

Don+West Georgia+poets appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+history appalachian+language history+of+appalachia

"Tarnation!" reads the title at the bottom of the Aug 1922 National Sportsman cover.

"What in tarnation?" is one of a wide variety of euphemistic expressions of surprise, bewilderment or anger that arose in 18th and 19th century America. Perhaps due to our Puritan legacy, Americans were, during this period, especially creative in devising oaths that allowed us to express strong emotions while still skirting blasphemy.

Such inventions as "heck," "drat," "darn," "gosh," "jiminy," "gee-whiz" and "goldarn" were all devised to disguise exclamations that would have been considered shocking in polite society. "Sam Hill," for example, is simply an early 19th century euphemism for "hell" (and while there have been many people named Sam Hill throughout history, the expression does not come from the name of any particular Sam Hill).

"Tarnation," which dates back to the late 18th century, is an interesting example of this generation of euphemisms because it's actually two euphemisms rolled into one word. The root of "tarnation" is "darnation," a euphemistic modification of the word "damnation," which at that time was considered unfit for polite conversation. "Darnation" became "tarnation" by being associated in popular speech with "tarnal," an aphetic, or clipped, form of "eternal."

It may seem odd that "eternal" would ever have been considered a curse word, but to speak of "the Eternal" at that time was often to invoke a religious context (God, Heaven, etc.), and thus to label something or someone "eternal" in a disparaging sense ("You eternal villain!") was considered a mild oath. Shakespeare, for example, used "eternal" in this way in at least two of his plays.

So at some point someone, probably in a moment of exasperation, mixed "darnation" with "tarnal," and we ended up with "tarnation."

Source: www.word-detective.com/050404.html


tarnation appalachian+language appalachian+culture appalachian+history history+of+appalachia appalachia