"So Much To Be Angry About, Appalachian Movement Press and Radical DIY Publishing, 1969-1979" by Shaun Slifer--Comments On A Book

This book was published by West Virginia University Press in 2021, and I read it shortly after it was released since I had known the primary subject of the book, Tom Woodruff, who built and ran Appalachian Movement Press for its entire effective life before he left the publishing industry to become a union organizer for Local 1199 and to eventually rise to be its national leader.  About a week ago, I had posted a blog post about John Hennen's excellent book, "A Union For Appalachian Healthcare Workers, The Radical Roots and Hard Fights of Local 1199". That review of Hennen's book is available at the link above.Tom Woodruff, the primary subject of this book founded Appalachian Movement Press in 1969 and ran it in Huntington, West Virginia, where he had attended Marshall University.  During several years of the life of the press, Tom was also an adjunct professor at The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, a branch campus of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, which had been founded by Robert "Bob" Snyder. The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antoch College was initially founded in Huntington, West Virginia, and after a short time, was moved to Beckley, West Virginia, for the remainder of its existence.  The press published a large number of excellent, small publications with political leanings to the political left by authors including Don West, Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, Rod Harless, and Woodruff himself. Don West eventually bought the printing equipment of the press from Tom Woodruff and transported it to the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, where he managed to use the equipment to produce a few pamphlets primarily of his own political oriented writings.  But the equipment was stored in the watery basement of a chapel at the Folklife Center and fell into disrepair due to the fact that West could not operate it himself and had no full time printer who knew the intricacies of operating and maintaining such equipment which Woodruff had actually bought used, and we might say "well used".  

 

In 2016, Shaun Slifer and  his wife paid a visit to the Folklife Center during which he discovered the press and a large amount of publications both from the time when Woodruff had operated it in Huntington and those few items which Don West has managed to publish after he bought the equipment.  Slifer salvaged as much of the publications as he could and wrote this book about the press and Woodruff.  He also implied in the book that there were other such Do It Yourself, radical leaning presses in the Appalachian Region at the time.  But the book contains little or no actual information about any of those other presses. It is fortunate that Slifer managed to stray into the press and publications, salvage as much as he could, and took the initiative to write the book.  It is, however, unfortunate that he did inadequate research and writing about the other implied presses of a similar nature.  That work remains for some other interested researcher and writer, if one ever appears on the scene.  I knew both Tom Woodruff and Don West, spent a period of time as a student at The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, and lived for about a year at the Folklife Center. That entire series of experiences was one of the formative influences in my adult life as a writer and political activist.  I am grateful that as much was salvaged as has been of the publications.  They are a genuinely important piece of the history of the leftward leaning political actions which were taking place in West Virginia and Appalachia at that time.  There are some excellent photographs of some of the publications in the book which can serve as clues for any future researchers and writers who may take on the task of completing the job which Slifer began. I am proud to say that I own a few of the publications from that period. This book was a beginning but nowhere near the work which deserves to be produced about the Appalachian Movement Press, the Appalachian South Folklife Center during the time Don West was operating it himself, and of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College at which Bob Snyder assembled one of the finest collections of Appalachian educators, political activists, and writers which has ever been in one location in the region for any significant period of time. That assemblage of people included both the faculty and several of the students who have gone on to produce effective works about, for, and in defense of Appalachia. All three organizations deserve to have their history(ies) fully and adequately told and preserved for the future in a single work which would address the interconnections and influences which existed between them.  Slifer's book did not even begin to scratch the surface of that collective history and the interconnections of the triumvirate.  Due to the fact that both West and Woodruff taught at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College and several students at Antioch worked with either Woodruff or West and, in some cases, lived at the Folklife Center, this complete story needs to be adequately addressed by another better researcher and writer.  But Slifer's book is worth reading for the student of Appalachia and Appalachian History.  The image below is of a literary journal which was produced by the students and faculty of The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College and produced at Appalachian Movement Press. 

This Is The Battle I Was Trained To Fight!

America is in the midst of the worst constitutional crisis in the history of the country.  I had considered saying that we are in the worst constitutional crisis since April 12, 1861, the day the Civil War began.  But after careful consideration, I realized that even during the Civil War, the forces which were fighting against the United States of America were not controlled by a foreign power.  They were not fully committed to destroying Democracy in North America.  They were not fully committed to destroying the US Constitution.  Today, we are in a battle in which the individual who illegally occupies the White House is fully committed to destroying America, American Democracy, the US Constitution, and everything they all represent as he works to support his Russian master and the ideas of his heroes such as Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Adolph Eichmann, and every other Fascist and dictator who ever lived.  These are the worst days in the history of the country, worse than the Civil War, worse than World War I, worse than World War II, worse than the Great Depression.  We are literally engaged in a battle which will decide if this country will survive as the greatest democracy in the history of the world.

Statue Of Liberty--Photo by Ellis Island

So the question becomes what will each of us do in response to this widespread Fascist attempt to destroy America.  I don't know about you but I will fight it to my dying breath.  Just as the title of this blog post says 'This is the battle I was trained to fight'.  I have been incredibly lucky to be born in the greatest democracy on the face of the earth and so were most of you. And, of course, some of you were born in other countries and chose to immigrate to America for a better life in a better country.  I applaud each immigrant in America and know that the great majority of you are also deeply involved in this battle for the country you loved enough to leave everything and everyone you had ever known to become Americans. Each immigrant citizen in America is under attack today and living in fear of seeing the destruction of the constitutional process which made you an American.  I was incredibly lucky to have been born into a family which was composed of intelligent, politically aware people who were able to understand an attack on our country and to train me to understand it also along with being able to see and understand any future attacks long after the people who raised me were dead.  I have been incredibly lucky to have found, wandered into, or been divinely guided to other teachers, mentors, heroes, and friends who expanded on that early education I received at the feet of my elders.  Collectively and individually these people gave me a base of knowledge, morals, values, and resources which make it not only suggested but mandatory that I stand up for what is right in the face of any attacks which occur to destroy that which is valuable to and life sustaining for a democracy.  I sincerely hope each of you who read this has also had some level of the same type of mentoring, instruction, and moral training to teach you the same things.  At this time of incredible crisis in America, it is necessary that every American citizen with enough intelligence and morals to understand the nature of the intensifying attack on our country and its sacred institutions  must be willing to stand up, stand out, speak up, and speak out on a daily basis to confront the incredibly Fascist and anti-American ideas which are arising from the Radical Right and from Russia and their minion in Washington.

Albert Stewart--Photo by Lexington Herald-Leader

I have often written on this blog about some of the people I have encountered in life who have reinforced the democratic and patriotic values which my parents instilled in me.  Probably the first such person I met was William Howard Cohen when I was about 14 years old in Upward Bound on the campus of Alice Lloyd College.  Bill Cohen became my professor, mentor, and friend and taught me both by example and by didactic methods to stand up for what is right.  Bill Cohen went out in Eastern Kentucky to strip mines and lay down in front of coal trucks in his fight against strip mining and eventually lost his job at Alice Lloyd College because of it.  But because he was right, he never stopped speaking out against wrong.  At about the same time, I met Albert Stewart who also taught at Alice Lloyd College but fought his fights in a much quieter  but just as firm a manner.  In his effort to save his family farm on Yellow Mountain in Knott County from destruction by strip mining, he eventually willed it and gifted it to the University of Kentucky to prevent that destruction.

Robert "Bob" Snyder--Photo by Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College

A few years later, I became a member of a group of people in Beckley, West Virginia, who have gone on to become some of the most respected writers, teachers, and social activists in all of Appalachia.  The Southern Appalachian Circuit Of Antioch College in Beckley was created and directed by Robert "Bob" Snyder one of the best poets and most brilliant minds Appalachia has ever produced.  He also put together a tremendous group of professors and students at that time in the early 1970's who are often spoken of as a group when Appalachian writing and social activism are discussed.  In that group of professors was Don West, P. J. Laska, Rod Harless, and William C. "Bill" Blizzard.  Each of those people further reinforced my commitment to do the right thing no matter the circumstances or the opponent.  I learned valuable lessons from each of them along with several of the other students in that group.

Don West--Photo by Georgia Encyclopedia

Don West had been born in North Georgia as the son and grandson of poor mountain farmers.  He grew up to write, teach, preach, do social action work, and to influence dozens of other American social activists.  He co-created Highlander Center in New Market, Tennessee, with Miles Horton.  He and his wife Connie Adams West created the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia.  Don fought for the UMWA in Harlan County Kentucky in the 1920's, worked in the defense of Angelo Herndon in Georgia in the 1930's, and saw himself fired from Oglethorpe University due to his social activism.  He was run out of Georgia under a death warrant for his defense of Herndon, saw two homes burned out from under him, and was ostracized in many ways in many places.  But Don West never stopped fighting for social justice.  He also never stopped working to teach anyone he met about the importance of doing the same thing and never stopping in a fight for the good, just, correct thing in a crisis. By the time Don West died in 1992 at 86, his battles had earned him an obituary in the New York Times and a biography in the encyclopedias of two states, Georgia and West Virginia. 

Roderick Mansfield Harless--Photo by the Harless Family

Roderick Mansfield "Rod" Harless was also one of those professors at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College.  Rod had grown up in a large family which produced both him and a brother who was a long term official in the United Mine Workers of America.  Rod was quiet, low key, and a wonderful writer.  His "Prince of New Rock" satire series about the candidacy of Jay Rockefeller for governor of West Virginia is an unknown and unrecognized classic. He was a social activist who was deeply committed to always doing the right thing in all circumstances and passed that commitment on to those who knew him.

William C. Blizzard--Photo by Kimberly Clear

William C. "Bill" Blizzard was also a member of the faculty at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College after having spent most of his life as a writer at the Charleston Gazette  which fired him for refusing to cross a press men's picket line at the paper during a strike.  Bill Blizzard would likely have chosen to die rather than cross a picket line.  He was the son of William Blizzard, the leader of the United Mine Workers at the Battle of Blair Mountain in Logan County, West Virginia.  Bill Blizzard published a book, "When Miners March" about the West Virginia unionization effort late in life and devoted his life and much of his free lance writing to passing on the socially active values his father and the United Mine Workers had passed on to him as a child.

P. J. Laska--Photo by Roger D. Hicks

P. J. Laska was also a key member of the faculty at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College and has been my professor, mentor, and friend since we met in the 1970's.  He is the one living member of that incredible group of teachers and activists who came together in Beckley along with a sizeable group of their students who have continued the good fight in nearly all causes we have encounter.  Laska was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry in 1976.  I have been blessed to have known all of these people I have listed so far in this blog post.  But I have been especially blessed to have had P. J. Laska as a friend and mentor for the past forty plus years.  Today, at 80, he is still fighting the good fight just as many of his former students are.  After knowing and having been mentored by this group of people, how could I do anything except keep up the good fight until it is won just as the American Revolution was won, just as the Civil War was won, just as all of our greatest challenges such as the Great Depression have been won?

Dr. Daya Singh Sandhu--Photo by Sikhnet.com

I have also been blessed to know several immigrants who have influenced me deeply over the years.  I have written about some of those people and their contributions to America in this blog and I will continue to do so.  Recently, I have met two new immigrants who work in two of my favorite restaurants who are also inspirations to me.  After having known people like Dr. Elif Arioglu-Oral, Dr. Daya Singh Sandu, Dr. Surjit Dhooper, Dr. Noor Loynab and his wonderful wife, Amena Loynab, all of whom are immigrants, how could I not continue to fight the good fight to keep the open door of America open to all who are willing to come and work to make this country better?  But I have also been influenced by many other immigrants who came to America, became citizens, and spent their lives working as horsemen, waiters, laborers, and other jobs which make a country function successfully?  And, of course, how could any loyal citizen of this country not fight to their dying breath against the nameless TRAITOR who now lives illegally in the White House based on his TREASON with Russia?  I call upon every person who reads this blog post to join in this greatest fight in American history and to continue unflinching until the battle is won.  Do not allow our country's greatest enemy to destroy the US Constitution, American Democracy, and America herself as they are working daily to do?   

Dr. Elif Arioglu-Oral, M. D.--Photo by U of Michigan Health Net

"Night And Day" by P. J. Laska--A Book Review

"Night And Day" by P. J. Laska available from Amazon.com at $29.99 and also on Kindle.

"Night And Day" a retrospective book of poetry by former National Book Award Nominee, P. J. Laska, takes the reader through a body of work which has been accumulating over the past forty or fifty years by one of the finest poets in America and particularly among Appalachian poets. P. J. Laska has traveled a life which took him from being the Polish-American Catholic son of a West Virginia coal miner to altar boy to Buddhist philosopher and from Morgantown, West Virginia, to the University of Arizona to the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College to Cleveland, Ohio, to a brief retirement in Mexico and back to Arizona. Such a varied experience deserves to be documented and that is exactly what Laska has done on nearly a daily basis since he first learned to read and write in the coal fields of Northern West Virginia.

P. J. Laska Photo By Roger D. Hicks

This work is far too brief to fully depict the poetic career of one of America's best poets. Laska has worked in the creation of this edition of his work much like an Alaskan prospector or a ten year old boy picking slate in a 19th century West Virginia coal mine. He has gleaned the best nuggets from his lifetime of work while also working diligently to pick the few small pieces of slate from what has been a remarkably productive and high carbon seam of literary coal. The reader of poetry can walk upright in this seam without fear of linguistic kettle bottoms or wordy water dripping from the ceiling. The top is solid. The bottom is clean. There is no linguistic methane but from time to time the language, ideas, ethics, and history can become explosive and incendiary in the best possible definition of both words. P. J. Laska has devoted his life to poetry, philosophy, social activism, and working to better the condition of the human race. I first met him in the early 1970's when he was a professor at the Southern Appalachian Circuit and I was drifting about on the edges of one of the finest collections of poets, writers, and social activists the region has ever seen. P. J. Laska easily stands with the best of a group of writers which included Bob Snyder; Don West; Bill Blizzard, Jr.; Gail Amburgey; Yvonne Snyder Farley; and about a dozen others who have produced bits and pieces of the best poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in the history of Appalachia. This collection by Laska joins the best works of this group which include Bob Snyder's cumulative body of poetic and non-fiction works; Don West's several books of poetry over a sixty year career including "Crab Grass" and "No Lonesome Road"; and "When Miners March" by Bill Blizzard, Jr. With the publication of "Night And Day", Laska has clearly cemented his reputation as having literary and historical importance in Appalachia equal to Snyder and West. He had already established a wonderful literary reputation in terms of single pieces of high quality poetry and with the National Book Award nomination. But publishing the collection of works written over such a lengthy period into a single book places the cumulative work easily in the hands of the general reader and gives the everyday educator a major point of reference for teaching Laska's work in the classroom.

Roger D. Hicks & P. J. Laska Photo By Candice Hicks

"Night And Day" reprises many of Laska's best poems from several works over the years while also introducing several newer pieces which many readers have not seen. It opens with "The Day The Eighties Began" and sets an immediate tone of social activism and outspoken opposition to wrongdoing. Then as we read on we find poems like "Uncle Frank's Death" which is a fine comment about family and love in the hills of Appalachia. The book examines Appalachian issues such as strip mining, love of place, outside ownership and corporate greed, and devotion to family. It gives the reader who has never met Laska's work a wonderful window into the soul of a poet who has lived a life of action and activism in a beautiful but often stormy land. It serves to create a picture frame around a portrait of a life lived at the cutting edge of social action in the 20th century.

Several other fine works came out of the Southern Appalachian Circuit group and, to date, the best had been Laska's "D. C. Images And Other Poems" which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Now, with this retrospective of his work both before and after "D. C. Images..." P. J. Laska has outdone himself. He is leaving footprints in the sands for other aspiring Appalachian poets to follow. The work contains many of the best poems from several of his earlier works including "D. C. Images...:", "Old Martins, New Strings" a work done with friends Bob Snyder and Joseph Barrett, and a few minor collections which had been self published over the years. It also contains newer works which had not been collected before. It is well worth the price of admission. Buy it! Read it! Seek to take up some of the social activism it portrays and espouses! Go back to it from time to time! Leave it dogeared and lying in a prominent place in your home for your friends to read and perhaps even steal.

Writer's Note: I had published this post several months ago on a "Page Important Enough To Stand Alone" and it never seemed to get read as much as I think P. J. Laska's work deserves.  So here it is where you cannot miss it.  But the book, read it, pass it on.  Roger

"A Picture From Life's Other Side: Appalachian Poems" by Bob Henry Baber

At times when I am in a book buying mood, I will often stray into other books I had not set out to search for and buy one or two I had not foreseen. Although, I had not planned to buy this book, I had been aware of its existence virtually since the day it was published. I was recently searching for a book or two which had roots in the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, especially one or two which had been published by individuals such as Gail Amburgey, Pauletta Hansel, P. J. Laska, and Robert "Bob" Snyder. I found a copy of this book by Bob Henry Baber who had also been a student at the Southern Appalachian Circuit and decided to buy it. It has been relatively rare to find it on the typical used book websites such as Abe Books and Alibris from which I have bought hundreds of books over the years. Amazingly the copy I found was also in near perfect condition and signed with a generic signature. Bob Henry Baber self published this book in 1994. The title is taken from the music of Hank Williams and his song by the same name. Several of the poems had been previously published in small journals around the country including "Appalachian Heritage", "Appalachian Journal", and "Cold Mountain Review". Many of the poems are rooted in the coal mining industry as is a great deal of Appalachian writing. Some such as "Let Me Hide Myself In Thee" are comments on or reflections of the sometimes fundamentalist religion of much of Central and Southern Appalachia, Others of the poems such as "Taking Title" are strong examples of the Appalachian Value which Loyal Jones called Love of Place. Bob Henry Baber's life, as I have known him, has always been deeply rooted in his historical family farm near Richwood, West Virginia, which Bob has always referred to as "Baber Mountain". For several years, he held a summer get together there which was attended by both members of his family and his friends in the world of Appalachian Literature. Like many other, if not most, native Appalachians Bob Henry Baber has also penned his own paean to the Appalachian family cemetery in the poem "Severed Threads". The lines: "Who will bury our spirits beneath hearthstones to protect them from frigid air? Who will stir our memories and throw kindling on our ancient dreams? Who will cut the cemetery grass that will so shortly be given over to woods?" are another feelingly rendered manifestation of the deep rooted Appalachian people to the many cherished but overgrown mountain cemeteries on long lost family farms which had been scratched out of the resistant mountains of West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Western Virginia, and North Carolina. He chose to end the book with that poem and it was a fitting tribute to the ties which have always bound him to those mountain acres near Richwood where his ancestors made love to the land with gooseneck hoes, double bit axes, and hillside turning plows, and carried their hard earned raisings from the field to the root cellar in order to weather one more winter on the place which had woven its way into their hearts.

"The Town And The City" by Jack Kerouac--Thoughts On A Rereading

 

"The Town And The City" was Jack Kerouac's first published novel and was released by Harcourt, Brace, and Company in 1950.  It began one of the greatest careers in American fiction for Kerouac and was the initial expression of what would become known as The Beat Writers.  I read it the first time in about 1974 after having been exposed to Kerouac by Robert "Bob" Snyder who was the Director of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia.  Bob was a professor, mentor, and friend to me and dozens of other young Appalachian writers.  I had no exposure to Kerouac at all prior to that, especially in the public school system of Knott County Kentucky.  I might have heard his name but had never read a single thing he wrote until that time.  By the time I began to read him, he had published more than a dozen novels and was a household name in most of literate America.  I had slowly evolved from a young Appalachian boy who was deeply interested in literature, politics, and the arts into a more developed reader and writer and a hippy and opponent of the Vietnam War.  That metamorphosis was complete after my time at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in the company of Bob Snyder and the other faculty and students at what was a small, somewhat experimental campus Antioch had set up as an outreach to what they considered to be disadvantaged groups in several locations around the country.  I was immediately enthralled with Kerouac's writing and the first of his books I read was probably "Dharma Bums" or "On The Road".  I quickly went on to devour nearly every printed word the man ever wrote and regretted that he did not live to write that much more.  He is truly one of the 8 or 10 greatest writers America has ever produced and one of the few about whom it can be said that he actually established, along with several of his friends, a new school of writing.  

Recently, on one of my many trips to small "junk stores", I wandered into a first edition copy of "The Town And The City" which I had bought in a small pile of other older, less  important books in which I was also interested.  As I was going through the owner's small shelf of used books in what is essentially a small antique shop, now on its way out of business to be replaced by a booth in a Peddler's Mall, I saw the title on the spine of the book, pulled it off the shelf and was amazed to see that Kerouac and Harcourt, Brace, and Company had originally published the book under the name "John Kerouac".  I never said a word to the owner whom I like personally, but who knows little or nothing about books and writing.  I immediately laid the book in "my pile" and moved on, as I always do, to find what I want in such stores and then to negotiate a blanket price for the lot.  To say the least, I paid less for the lot than I would have to obtain this book alone which was published under his legal name instead of the pen name he had adopted later and which became how he will always be known to the world.    Admittedly, the book is an ex-library copy with typical library markings and some clinging evidence of a former library dust jacket, but it still well worth keeping forever to me.  

My wife had previously read only two of Kerouac's books and had liked those: "Visions of Gerard" and "The Subterraneans" which we had actually read together with me reading out loud while she washes dishes which I rinse and put away later.  She had tried one of his other more stream of consciousness novels previously and didn't like it at all.  So I had decided to try the softer, gentler, deeply loving pair of novels to attempt to hook her on Kerouac. It had worked and now we moved on to this unique copy of "The Town And The City".  This book is in most ways a very typical first novel by an American author who is deeply committed to getting himself published.  But is also a very good novel, not great, but quite good, well structured with a well developed group of central characters, the Martin family in a small town in Massachusetts and later in New York City.  It is about their lives as a family unit and as individuals and is quite long at 499 pages compared to most of Kerouac's later works.  It leads us through this large family's lives in the years preceding World War II and the War itself, shows the development of the individual children into unique adults, their individual departure from the family nest, a wonderful old farmhouse on the edge of a small, close knit town.  It also depicts the father's descent into gambling, drinking, and losing his small printing company, and eventually the home.  He becomes a printer in companies owned by others, and eventually moves with the wife and two youngest children to New York where he works the last of his career and dies old and broken down in a small apartment.  

The later sections of the book contain two interesting segments.  First, in an encounter on the streets of New York, one of the Martin sons who seems to most closely depict the author himself meets a small group of other young men who appear to depict the young Ginsberg and Burroughs or perhaps Gregory Corso.  Another of the characters in that small group is called "the young thug Jack" which is a fascinating way for Kerouac to have described himself.  To my knowledge, this is the first time America was exposed in literature to part of the group of people who would become known as The Beat Writers.  At the end of the book, the funeral of the father, George Martin, is set in the small New England town in which he and his wife grew up and were married.  The depiction in the conclusion of the novel is one which could have been typically been written about a funeral and visitation in almost any small, rural town in America.  It could have definitely been written about funerals in general in Eastern Kentucky where I grew up.  The entire town turns out to bring George Martin home, say goodbye to him, and bury him in the little country church yard.  A large collection of distant relatives from both sides of the family show up, many of whom the Martin children have never met.  But all of them seem to remember George Martin and his wife.  It is a wonderful depiction of a funeral in rural America and points out just how clearly Kerouac intended to contrast his character's lonely death in a small apartment in the largest city in America as opposed to the funeral which his native small town was willing to provide to one who had not lived there in many years.  It is the perfect ending to a long, complex, wonderful first novel by anyone's standards. 

"A Union For Appalachian Healthcare Workers, The Radical Roots And Hard Fights Of Local 1199" by John Hennen

 

The advertising blurb on the back cover of this book states in part:

"The union of hospital workers referred to as the 1199 sits at the intersection of three of the most important topis in US history: organize labor, health care, and civil rights.   John Hennen's book explores the union's history in Appalachia, a region that is generally associated with extractive industries but has seen health care grow as a share of the overall economy."

John Hennen is professor emeritus of history at Morehead State University and this is his third published book.  He is a native West Virginian and was educated at Marshall University and West Virginia University.  This is his third book.  He is an excellent researcher and a damn fine writer.  This book is the history of one of the most unique unions in America, Local 1199, a union which defends the rights of healthcare workers in several states, most of which are in Central and Southern Appalachia.  But the union was actually chartered and did its first organizing work in New York City.  The book provides a scholarly account of the work of original organizer Leon Davis who was an immigrant from Belarus.  It also covers the work of Tom Woodruff, another native West Virginian who was educated at Marshall University, and explores the connection between Tom Woodruff and Don West, the founder of The Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia, and co-founder of the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.  Woodruff and West both taught at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia, during a time when Woodruff was also running Appalachian Movement Press in Huntington, West Virginia, before Woodruff left those two positions to become an organizer for Local 1199 and began what is a storied career as a union organizer and eventual operating officer.  

The book chronicles organizing efforts by 1199 in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Southern Ohio in the 1970's which were both successful and hard fought.  The union and its organizers and members were resisted, red baited, and drug through the court systems of nearly every county they attempted to organize in.  Hospital administrators frequently hired strike breaking companies which were generally billed as "consultants" and which used every means possible including arrest, red baiting, and general harassment to attempt to break 1199.  The union did not win all its organizing effforts but, in the long run, it was more successful in organizing healthcare workers in Appalachia than anyone in the region ever imagined it could be.  Across several small communities and small  hospitals, they won key strikes, benefited from support among the communities which often had been strongholds of the United Mine Workers of America, and made union membership and its benefits a real part of life and the American Dream for workers who had generally been poorly paid, without benefits, and forced to live and work at the whim of hospital administrators many of whom proved to be just as mercenary as the local coal operators had been in earlier times when the United Mine Workers were attempting to organize coal miners in the early twentieth century.  

If you are a student of organized labor, the Appalachian Region, a healthcare worker anywhere in America, or simply a supporter of basic human rights, you should read this book.  It is a fine lesson in how determined organizers and union members can win against long odds.  This union, its officials, and members lived a proud portion of history in the Appalachian coal fields and their story deserves to be heard wherever workers have felt as Ma Joad did in "The Grapes of Wrath" when she said, 

"...it looked as though we was beat. Good and beat. Looked like we didn't have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we was lost and nobody cared... ."

 The organizers, national officials, and members of Local 1199 never gave up, never backed down, and never were willing to accept being in a world where it seemed the whole world was their enemy.  Read this book!  :Union, Yes! 

"Written In Blood" edited by Wess Harris--Book Review

 

"Written In Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction" is edited by Wess Harris who is employed by Appalachian Community Services, Inc. located at 229 Birtice Road, Gay, West Virginia 25244, and the book can be ordered directly from Mr. Harris.  The book is listed at $19.95 plus shipping and is well worth the price if you have any interest in the Appalachian coal mining industry and the efforts of coal miners to achieve and maintain safety in their relationship with the generally absentee owners of mines in Central and Southern Appalachia.  This book was my first contact with what is known as Esau in the coal fields.  My earlier discussion of this practice has been read by hundreds, perhaps a few thousand readers on this blog.  The book is composed of about 20 generally short chapters written by several of the more important writers in the ongoing effort to accurately portray the history of the Appalachian coal fields.  Those authors and/or interviewees include Wess Harris himself; William C. "Bill" Blizzard who was a writer for the Charleston Gazette for many years before being fired for refusing to cross a pressmen's picket line during a labor strike, and who later worked as a professor of West Virginia History and Labor History at the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia; Michael and Carrie Kline whose writing and oral history has been featured in many newspapers and magazines for the past several decades; UMWA official Cecil Roberts; former Mine Safety and Health Administration executive Jack Spadoro; and Joy and Chuck Lynn who previously owned the Whipple Company Store and first brought about awareness and documentation of the practice of Esau in the coal fields.   

The book provides an excellent timeline of labor efforts and operator resistance to those efforts primarily  in the West Virginia coal fields but also discusses the Adkins Coal Company explosion at Kite, Kentucky, in my native Knott County, along with a discussion of the Martin County Kentucky coal mine blowout of millions of gallons of black water and coal sludge into the Tug Fork River below Warfield, Kentucky.  Jack Spadaro's discussion of his inspections and reports at the Adkins facility at Kite, Kentucky, squarely places the blame for the deaths of several miners on the owner's refusal to pay a paltry price for clay "dummies" which were usually inserted into blasting holes behind explosive charges in order to prevent dangerous sparking into the mine's atmosphere during those explosions which could ignite suspended coal dust in the air and which Spadaro found to be the cause of the explosion and the fatalities.  Spadaro was also a major player in the research and regulation following both the Buffalo Creek Flood and the Martin County Kentucky mine blowout which caused the severe pollution of the Tug and Big Sandy Rivers and the need for municipalities to shut down 17 water intake facilities downstream from the blowout. It is generally not necessary to explain the Buffalo Creek Flood to most people in coal mining areas since it resulted in the deaths of more than 125 people. Spadaro, Blizzard, and Roberts are all historic figures in the history of the Appalachian coal fields.  It is my opinion that, in time, Joy and Chuck Lynn will also be viewed as historically important people in the effort to disseminate the truth about the persistent efforts by the coal industry to stymie organized labor, cover up non-compliance, and minimize the importance of the average worker in one of the most dangerous professions in America.

This book is not a clean, neat, saccharine sweet piece of reading.  It tells the cold, hard truth page after page and is not for the timid reader who might have previously been misled into believing the standard propaganda of the typical coal mine operators or acquiescent government officials who would allow anything short of cold blooded murder in order to hang onto a few jobs in the coal fields.  The book reports honestly and realistically on opposition to union organizing including the Battle of Blair Mountain in which Blizzard's father, William Blizzard, led UMWA miners in the effort to unionize the Logan and Mingo coal fields in southern West Virginia while facing machine gun fire from coal company hired gun thugs.  It also exposes the practice of Esau in the coal fields, particularly at the Whipple Company Store in Raleigh County which I have discussed at length in the blog post linked at the beginning of this story.  That is a practice in which wives and daughters of miners who were temporarily unable to work were forced into sexual servitude in order to obtain food or other necessary commodities for their families.  That practice was first brought to light by Joy and Chuck Lynn when they were operating the Whipple Company Store as a privately owned museum. They documented numerous accounts of the practice of Esau which were related to them spontaneously by women who had either lived in the coal fields or descended from mothers whose husbands worked in the industry.  I spoke at length by telephone with Wess Harris earlier this week about the book and many other issues related to the coal industry in Appalachia.  I also made multiple attempts to speak with Joy Lynn this week about many aspects of the book including Esau in the coal fields but was never able to make contact with her other a short e-mail which said nothing.  I have also communicated via Facebook Messenger with the West Virginia singer and song writer Mary Hott who has written and recorded an entire CD of songs, "Devil In The Hills", about the practice of Esau and has created a private website at this link both to market her CD and to disseminate the truth about Esau.   Joy Lynn has produced two books about the entire experience of operating the Whipple Company Store Museum which can be ordered directly from her and her information can be accessed from Mary Hott's website above.  

I repeat that this book is not for the timid or doubtful reader. It will cause you to feel anger, disgust, and a desire to help make the world a better place and that is a good thing.  In many circumstances, it is necessary to feel all those emotions in order for wrongs to be righted, evil to be resisted, good to be sown, and for justice to be served.  And everyone who has been wronged deserves to have justice even if they never lived to see it while alive in the world.  This truly is a story "Written In Blood".   

"Twigs XI/I Kentucky Bicentennial Issue" Fall 1974--What An Issue!

I have mentioned in a few blog posts lately that I have recently bought a sizeable number of books from a friend in the antique business which had come from the estate of a local newspaper writer who knew many of the regional writers in Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia and literally kept everything that fell into her hands.  One of the books in that pile I bought is an issue of the magazine "Twigs" which was originally published by the University of Pikeville.  The magazine, at that time, benefited from the fact that Lillie D. Chaffin and Leonard Roberts both worked at the university and served as the editorial staff of "Twigs".  There is an Appalachian literary award named for Chaffin and her husband Thomas at Morehead State University.  

"Twigs" also deserves a great deal of credit in the history of Appalachian Literature for having been the first place in which Loyal Jones' seminal work, "Appalachian Values", was published.  But my first pleasant surprise in this issue of "Twigs" came when I saw that it contained a poem by Loyal Jones about the death of his brother as a child.  Loyal Jones is one of the most famous names in Appalachian Literature and the entire field of Appalachian Studies and I had never known that he ever wrote poetry.  And it is actually a pretty darn good poem.  The poem is called "To Elmer" and contains these powerful lines from an adult brother who never saw his sibling grow to adulthood:

"But how does one fashion a brother?

So I wonder still what you were, 

What you held in your heart

That quit so soon.

I can only wish for more

To go with the half-etched face

Which is all I have of you, my brother."  From "To Elmer" by Loyal Jones

That poem reminds me of one I also published more than forty years ago, at roughly the same period as Loyal Jones published his.  Mine was published in "What's A Nice Hillbilly Like You..." and was about the coal mining death of my brother Hewie Hicks which was called "Huey, My Brother" and is printed here in its entirety.  

"I don't remember much about him

Except the flowers he grew were beautiful.

(He talked to flowers you know.)

And how one side of his face in the casket

Was lower than the other

Because the rock fall that killed him

On his retirement day almost missed.

(He listened to the mine you know.)"  From "Huey, My Brother" by Roger D. Hicks

I find it fascinating that many miles apart, at nearly the same time without having ever met at that time, that Loyal Jones and I were both writing and publishing poetry about the deaths of our brothers and both of us were using references to the faces of the dead brothers to build our poems.  Robert "Bob" Snyder, the wonderful Appalachian poet and founder of the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in Beckley, West Virginia, used my poem as an illustration of a quality he referred to as "enmaskedness".  He described "enmaskedness" as "...the ability to rest calmly in one's self, one's role, without anxiously reaching for irony or escape, within a larger situation that is stormily comical or tragic or otherwise energized"  (Robert F. Snyder, "Colonial Memesis and the Appalachian Renascence" in "Appalachian Journal, Vol. 3, No. 5, 1978).  Snyder also used a poem by Lillie D. Chaffin about the Buffalo Creek Flood to illustrate the same quality of enmaskedness: 

"Deadlines! Deadlines of the feeble, the small

and the laggards. Damnation to dams, and to, 

rubber dolls bobbing on indigo waves

with no one to press their "Mama" cry buttons

or scold at how soggy diapers can get."  From "After The Buffalo Creek Dam Break" by Lillie D. Chaffin.

I had never intended to use this blog post to discuss Bob Snyder's exposition of what he called "enmaskedness".  But, since I referred back to that article of his, I realized that the three of us, Jones, Chaffin, and me, had all provided evidence of what my mentor, Bob Snyder, was talking about, in our poems about death of various kinds.  And, of course, Chaffin and I were both discussing death due to the shortcomings of the Appalachian mining industry and Loyal Jones and I were both discussing the deaths of beloved brothers.  I seem to come up short in drawing a terminal conclusion about this whole quality of enmaskedness and the poetry of the three of us, but I am fascinated by how well it all seems to tie up in a neat little ball.  I am really glad I found this copy of "Twigs"; and, I will be forever grateful that I was blessed to know and be mentored by both Snyder and Jones.

To return to my discussion of the issue of "Twigs", it also contains work from several more significant writers including a short story, "Sail On And On", by Leonard Roberts who was just as generally unknown for his short stories as Jones was for his poetry.  The list of authors on the cover of the book mentions Joy Bale, a former Kentucky Poet Laureate; Wendell Berry, who generally needs no introduction; Jack Cady, a former Kentuckian who was successful as a mainstream fiction writer; Jim Wayne Miller, who is actually listed as "James Wayne Miller" a name which I had never seen used to refer to him before; James Still, who also needs no introduction; and my other friend and mentor, Albert Stewart.  Interestingly, the book also contains poetry from William Howard Cohen, another of my early mentors; and Jane Stuart, the daughter of Jesse Stuart.  The cover does not even list these two.  To say the least, this particular volume of "Twigs" contains a great deal of writing from nearly a dozen well known Appalachian writers.  Naturally, since it is 45 years old, it will be very difficult to find on Internet used book sites and likely impossible to locate except in estate sales such as where I found it.  But if you stray into a copy, buy it, read it, enjoy it.  It is well worth whatever it will cost if you are an actual aficionado of Appalachian Literature.   

"Soupbean: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature" by Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, et. al.

After thirty or more years of periodic searches on used book websites, I finally located a copy of "Soupbean: An Anthology of Contemporary Appalachian Literature" by Bob Snyder, P. J. Laska, et. al, a group of Appalachian writers connected to The Soupbean Poets Collective of Antioch College/Appalachia. The book was published by Mountain Union Books of Beckley, WV, in 1977. Mountain Union Books was an imprint which was briefly operated by Antioch College Appalachia, which was a branch of Antioch College of Yellow Springs, Ohio. This branch campus was created by Antioch College in the early 1970's, initially opening in Huntington, WV, and after a couple of years relocated to Beckley. The branch was operated for roughly 8 years before being shuttered by the mother institution which had created a group of such campuses in California, Alaska, West Virginia, and one or two other locations. The campus in Beckley was never large with an annual enrollment which was generally less than 100 students. But Antioch Appalachia, which also operated briefly as The Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College, was staffed by several of the best writers in all of Appalachian Studies including Robert "Bob" Snyder, P. J. Laska, Don West, Bill Blizzard, Rod Harless, and Yvonne Snyder Farley. The campus also produced several well known authors of Appalachian Literature most of whom are still writing and publishing today. During the brief life of the campus, four of its female students were featured in an issue of "MS Magazine" as "Women Writers of Appalachia". Those four women were Gail Amburgey; Pauletta Hansel who eventually became the first Poet Laureate of Cincinatti, Ohio; Peggy Dotson Hall, now deceased; and Sylvia Evans. I ahve to admit that I have never met either Evans or Hall and know little about any subsequent work they did. But I have known both Gail Amburgey and Pauletta Hansel for years and read a great deal of both women's work. Other published student writers who attended or graduated from Antioch included the late Joseph Barrett who has two published books as the product of his brief life; Bob Henry Baber, the eventual mayor of Richwood, West Virginia, and the author or editor of several books. I am proud to say that I was briefly a student at Antioch Appalachia but didn't complete a degree there. I have published fiction and nonfiction in a dozen states and one foreign country. My first collection of short stories is pending publication at this time in late June 2026. I always have and always will say that being exposed to the faculty and students at Antioch Appalachia and the high level of education they provided was the greatest influence on my writing. Antioch Appalachia was a wellspring of and for writers and writing in Central and Southern Appalachia. In addition to the Appaachian writers who were produced by the campus, two other students achieved success in divergent fields. Sam Farley, a Vietnam veteran and eventual social worker who in 2007 was in 2007 recognized by The National Association of Social Workers, West Virginia Chapter, with the Catalyst Award for Direct Social Work Practice. Barbara Placier Ervin, another graduate of Antioch Appalachia became a professor at Lander University in South Carolina and served as Director of Montessori Education at that institution where she earned the Mary Frances Poole Alston Award, which is presented to a faculty or staff member who has provided "visibility for Lander University throughout the state of South Carolina, the United States and the world" which was a recognition of her internationally recognized work in her field. By percentage of the student body, this group of highly successful individuals stand out very favorably in comparison to nearly any other college in the nation. The book being reviewed here contains writing from several members of that group including Pauletta Hansel, Gail Amburgey, Mary Joan Coleman, Bob Henry Baber, and Joseph Barrett. It also includes work by Bob Snyder, P.J. Laska, and Yvonne Snyder Farley who all served as faculty of Antioch Appalachia. This little book contains the powerful and sometimes biting poetry of Gail Amburgey who was a survivor of the Buffalo Creek Flood and one of two Antioch Appalachia products who went on to be among the early female coal miners in Appalachia. Gail's writing is frequently colored by her exposure to that flood which was a glaring example of everything that can go wrong when an American industry is underregulated and its actions go awry. It also contains contributions from Joseph Barrett who published poetry in numerous journals around the world before his untimely death at only 39. There is also some fine writing by former student David Chaffins who became a career Navy noncom. Jim Wayne Miller, who was a professor of German at Western Kentucky University and a well recognized writer of literature in Appalachia, also contributed to this book which must be considered a complement to the little college that could. This is a generally difficult little book to find for sale since it was issued in a small edition in 1977. But if you can locate a copy, buy it, read it, come to enjoy one of the most productive institutions to ever exist in Appalachia and Appalachian Literature. You won't be disappointed.!

Appalachian Values As Discussed By Loyal Jones

Appalachian Values And Loyal Jones

Retired Berea College Professor Loyal Jones has had a lasting impact on public perceptions of Appalachian people with his book "Appalachian Values".  It is the first book I recommend to people who know little or nothing about Appalachians and express a desire to learn about us.  I believe it is the first book anyone should read who wants to know the truth about Appalachia and Appalachians.  It has done more to dispell the negative stereotypes of Appalachians than any other piece of written material and has been the basis of some of my own academic writing as well as the writing of hundreds of other authors both unknown and well known.  The links at the bottom of this blog will take the reader to two articles which I published with co-author Dr. Heather Ambrose, Ph. D., during the time I was working on my masters degree at Lindsey Wilson College.  We delivered one of those articles, "Culturally Appropriate Supervision of Counselors In Appalachia" at the 2005 National Conferece of The American Counseling Association and it was included in the book, "Vistas 2005: Compelling Perspectives On Counseling".  I have only spoken to Loyal Jones on one or two occasions and cannot say that  we are friends.  But I owe a debt of gratitude to Loyal Jones and so does every other native Appalachian who fights to diminish and dispell the stereotypes which persist today. 

Loyal Jones Photo By Candice M. Hicks

Jones wrote the book, which was originally an article in a Texas magazine published by the Texas Tech Press,  in response to the debilitating portrayal of Appalachian people by Jack Weller in his best seller "Yesterday's People".  Weller's book is the last or next to last book you should ever read about Appalachia. (The last book you should read is "Night Comes To The Cumberlands" by Harry M. Caudill.)   Weller was an outsider, a Presbyterian minister, and had come to the Eastern Kentucky area to preach and do community organizing.  Like many, if not most, of the missionaries who came and still come to Appalachia, Weller knew little of the people he wrote so devastatingly about.  Weller also failed to learn much while he was here. Jones is a native Appalachian who has spent his life in Appalachia writing about his own kind and working to lift the Appalachian people up and to fight the stereotypes.  Some other Appalachian writers of note have taken issue with Jones' work including Bob Snyder, a close friend and mentor of mine.  However, I have been greatly influenced by both and believe both are correct in major areas of their work.  Their disagreement was between them and should not influence any reader to view either of them negatively. 

Roger D. Hicks & Loyal Jones Photo By Candice M. Hicks

"Appalachian Values" was co-authored with Berea photographer Warren Brunner who actually was not an Appalachian.  His photos illustrate the work and actually take up more pages than the text. But, to my knowledge, Brunner did none of the writing and his photography is stupendous. The book is often mistaken for a coffee table picture book which is a major disservice to both the book and the people it depicts.  It is a masterful work of major cultural and political importance and is so deceptive in its simplicity that it is frequently ignored or avoided by academics.  It falls into a group of great little books like "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch and "Night" by Elie Wiesel.  These books are so small that they tend to be misleading to the average reader.  All write about groups of people who are unique and prone to be ignored, misinterpreted, pilloried, and even massacred. All three contain truths which are far more important than  the miniscule package in which they are contained. 

Jones discussed ten core values of Appalachians: Love of Place; Independence, Self Reliance, and Pride; Neighborliness; Familism; Humility and Modesty; Sense of Beauty;  Patriotism; Religion; Personalism; and, Sense of Humor. Jones has discussed these values in more depth in his other work, especially the book, "Faith and Meaning In The Southern Uplands".  Although that work is primarily about religion, it also serves to expand some of Jones' thinking on the other values. Jones may be best known for his work on Appalachian Humor, including several joke books with Billy Ed Wheeler.  Jones has also been a well known dinner circuit speaker because of his humor.  But he is first and foremost an Appalachian academic and writer. 

Later, as time allows, I will expand or expound, in ten individual postings on this blog, on my own perception of these core cultural vaules.  But, at this point, the most important sentences any reader should remember from the book are these:

"All work in Appalachia must be based on the genuine needs as expressed by mountain people themselves.  Whatever work is done must be done with the recognition that Appalachian culture is real and functioning." Loyal Jones, "Appalachian Values" p. 10.

What this boils down to in layman's terms is that the missionaries have never saved us and they never will.  They will persist in coming.  We Appalachians must persist in being ourselves and resisting the efforts at forced assimilation, both blatant and subtle.  I will also, as time permits, write a major posting on cultural assimilation and ways Appalachian people can best resist it and work to preserve Appalachian Culture.

 Go to this link to read updated reflections from both Loyal Jones and I  about his book "Appalachian Values" forty years after it was published.  Reflections On Appalachian Values by Loyal Jones

Observations On Reading "Rednecks and Hillbillies: A Thematic Analysis of the Construction of Pride and High Self-Esteem Exhibited by Southern Characters of Pride and High Self-Esteem Exhibited by Southern Characters" by Dr. Casey R. White, Ph. D.

 On January 25, 2021, I received a comment on this blog from a woman known as Dr. Casey R. White, Ph. D., on a post which I had written on December 2, 2020, entitled "Hillbilly Is A Cultural And Ethnic Epithet" which was my stated opinion of many years that the term "hillbilly" is a pejorative epithet intended to demean and degrade the person(s), culture(s), or lifestyle(s) to which it refers.  In my opinion, there is not now, never has been, and will never be a positive effect from anyone calling themselves or anyone else a "hillbilly". In the post in question, I had stated that:

"I have also been able to locate a second refreshingly positively entitled doctoral dissertation by Dr. Casey R. White at South Dakota State University which states its intentions in the title:  "REDNECKS AND HILLBILLIES: A THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF PRIDE AND HIGH SELF-ESTEEM EXHIBITED BY SOUTHERN CHARACTERS".   Its stated intent to examine the "construction of pride and self-esteem exhibited by southern characters" is exactly what I hoped to engender with this blog post.  I hope to be able to read (this dissertation) fully and to report on (it) succinctly in later blog posts." (Hillbilly Is A Cultural And Ethnic Epithet, This Blog, December 2, 2020)

That statement about having located the doctoral dissertation mentioned above whic was produced and approved at South Dakota State University in 2020, and resulted in Dr. White receiving  her doctoral degree in sociology subsequent to having produced that dissertation in addition to completion of all other work required for such a degree prompted  Dr. White's comment on my blog post was triggered by a notification to her from an academic service she subscribes to which reports to authors of academic articles and dissertations when their work is cited, quoted, and read by others.  Her comment on my blog at the blog post cited above is as follows:

Hi there! There's a website that tells me whenever someone cites or mentions my dissertation and that's how I ended up here. I'm Dr. Casey White you mentioned and it's very nice to see others are finding my dissertation to read. I'd love to see what you get out of it if you end up writing another blog post.

I've always been fascinated by words and how they change over time and their meanings. When I did my dissertation, being from Tennessee, I was fascinated by the words hillbilly and redneck. Historically, they were insults and in some scholarly research were comparable to racial slurs at one time which is something you mention above. Interestingly, I had to put a disclaimer in my dissertation when I said this because we now live in an extreme PC culture where people might get ticked off by someone saying any insults directed to white individuals can be comparable to racial slurs. Being from Appalachia and seeing mountain poverty and poor "hillbilly" culture firsthand I can make the argument easily but I'm drifting from my purpose in commenting :).
Over time the words hillbilly and redneck became more complex. Today capitalism is a big part of those words and stereotypes attached to them are big business. The point of my dissertation was to also discuss how in modern times these words could have positive meanings where on television the modern day hillbilly and redneck could be a billionaire with good family values and Christian morals. There's so much you could talk about just looking at the words hillbilly and redneck. Anyways, I thought I'd leave you a comment of encouragement since you ran across my dissertation. I think your blog is pretty neat and on a great subject I'm pretty passionate about. Keep up the good work. (Dr. Casey R. White, Blog Comment On This Blog, January 25, 2021)

As I frequently do with blog comments which merit a response, I left the following response to Dr. White's comment which said the following: 

 Dr. White:
I just found your comment on my blog post in which I mentioned your dissertation. I still have to admit that I haven't read the dissertation fully but intend to do so. I found it on Encompass which I am able to access free from the website of Eastern KY University although I have no connection to the university. I appreciate the response. I assume you know that the term "redneck" arose as a result of the Battle of Blair Mountain in WV. I was fortunate enough to know Bill Blizzard (Jr.) whose father Bill Blizzard (Sr.) led the UMWA miners at Blair Mountain and was charged with sedition and a variety of other crimes along with several others of his associates, tried and acquitted at Harper's Ferry. When Bill the younger died, mourners at his memorial service wore red bandanas in memory of both his work and that of his father. Bill the younger had been fired by the Charleston Gazette because he refused to cross a pressmen's picket line during a strike. The miners at Blair Mountain wore red bandanas to differentiate themselves from the Baldwin Felts gun thugs and thus arose the term "redneck" which has long since been relegated to negativity. If you wish to converse more directly, my e-mail is rchicks@mrtc.com Where are you working now? And where are you from in TN? Have you ever seen the AppalShop movie I mention above, "Strangers and Kin: A History of the Hillbilly Image"? I also assume you know the origin of the Appalachian State University mascot Yosef. And how on earth did you end up doing a Ph.D. in the Dakotas?(Roger D. Hicks, Blog Comment On This Blog, January 26, 2021)

I should also say that in cases when I receive comments from others who have legitimate academic, literary, or cultural credentials I often make an attempt to conduct a personal exchange with those people.  However, a basic Google Search was unable to lead me to an e-mail address for Dr. White which prompted me to respond in the blog comment section as I did.  I have found that at certain times this method of response never elicits a response from the person in question since they may never return to my blog which is why I have chosen to use the full title of her dissertation in this blog post which should trigger another notice from her service which generally works better than word of mouth or the barking and growling of a yard dog.  I am also saying at this point that I suspect many of my regular readers who are not in an academic field will find this entire blog post far too boring to read the whole thing.  I understand and will not hold it against those of you who left two or three paragraphs ago or henceforth.  But I also suspect that a few academics with a sense of humor will stick it out to the end of whatever communications take place between myself and Dr. White and are already somewhere between a soft smile and a chortle at one more silly academic argument between two suspected, or perhaps even legitimate geeks, on which many of us self-described geeks would have the world believe we thrive.  

I can now report that I have read Dr. White's dissertation, as many rural conservative Baptist preachers of a hundred different sub-denominations might say, "from kiver to kiver".  I must confess that I did not keep copious notes as I read it which might have made what I have to say more rational and cogent but I stopped that practice in most cases since I no longer have to worry about concluding such endeavors with a passing grade. I should also say that I am appreciative of the compliment Dr. White paid me by saying: "Anyways, I thought I'd leave you a comment of encouragement since you ran across my dissertation. I think your blog is pretty neat and on a great subject I'm pretty passionate about. Keep up the good work."  And since I am such a glutton for these types of compliments, and for passing them on in order to prove that I occasionally receive them, I can say that just this morning, February 9, 2021, an old friend Jerry Felty, with whom I attended the Southern Appalachian Circuit of Antioch College in the 1970's sent me an e-mail which said in part: "I finally realize that this blog is yours! I looked through some of the older posts and man is it really good and true to you and your mission on this here earth. In 2011, I was reading your lineup of local fantastic musicians. Very cool.  I love Patti Loveless, whether she believes it or not. Congratulations on being yourself dude. Not all that many people can honestly say that."  I have chosen to insert that comment from Jerry Felty into this rather rambling blog post both to prove that other intelligent people read this blog sometimes and a few of them seem to enjoy it.  Maybe, Dr. White did also. Further I insert it to state that Jerry Felty is correct in saying that I am "being myself".  In fact, one of my favorite, now timeworn, baseball caps has the caption "You be you and I'll be me."  

Now to get back to the real point of this little exercise, as I said earlier,I did not take extensive notes on the dissertation in question and that could well leave me looking less focused than I intended to be.  As Dr. White said in her comment to me, her purpose in her dissertation was to "discuss how in modern times these words [Hillbilly and Redneck] could have positive meanings where on television the modern day hillbilly and redneck could be a billionaire with good family values and Christian morals."  I will insist on sticking to my guns and saying that there can never be a positive outcome from using those words just as there can never be positive outcomes from using the "N" word, the "K" word, the "Q" word, or the "C" word, or any other word whose intent is to demean, defame, and belittle the members of the cultural and ethnic groups to which such words refer.  Sadly, part of the problem with the words "Hillbilly" and "Redneck" is that the group or groups to which they refer are still not widely recognized as a cultural and/or ethnic minority which should be eligible to receive all the considerations which are generally accorded to the members of the other groups which are implied by such words.  As for Dr. White's dissertation, it has some positive points and, since she is a native of Tennessee, I am willing to assume that her intentions were positive.  But just as the aforementioned Baptist preachers are also fond of saying, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions".  

It is my considered opinion that no minority group ever benefits from appropriating and using as self references those slurs, insults, and epithets which have been invented and used by the prejudiced members of the majority culture as they are appropriated and used by the people in most of the television shows which Dr. White studied for her dissertation.  This practice has long been and remains common among African American youth, especially, just as it does for the participants in these television "reality" shows about southern and Appalachian people. Patrick Huber in the journal "Southern Cultures Vol 1. No. 5 Winter 1995" in an article entitled "A Short History of Redneck: The Fashioning of A Southern White Masculine Identity" wrote in his introduction: 

Rural poor and working-class white southerners have endured a broad range of slurs throughout U.S. history, many derived from geographic regions, dietary habits, physical appearance, or types of clothing. Epithets aimed at urban poor white southerners are fewer and tend to focus on cotton-mill workers: cottonhead, cotton mill trash, cottontail, factory hill trash, factory rat, and linthead, for example. A few of the rural class slurs, especially redneck and hillbilly, are also applied indiscriminately to southern white migrants working in factories in Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, and other midwestern cities. (Patrick Huber See Citation Above)

In 2005, in nearly identical words, Anthony Harkins of Western Kentucky University wrote:

 "What defines the hillbilly more than geography are cultural traits and values. In this regard, "hillbilly" is no different than dozens of similar labels and ideological and graphic constructs of poor and working-class southern whites coined by middle-and upper-class commentators, northern and south-ern. These derisive terms were intended to indicate a diet rooted in scarcity ("clay eater," "corn-cracke~," "rabbit twister"), physical appearance and cloth-ing that denoted hard al!d specifically working-class laboring conditions ("redneck," "wool hat," "lint head"), an animal-like existence on the eco-nomic and physici\l fringes of society ("brush ape," "ridge runner," "briar hop-per"), ignorance and racism, and in all cases, economic, genetic, and cultural impoverishment (best summed up by the label "poor white," or more point-edly, "poor white trash"). Many of these derogatory labels were used inter-changeably as putdowns of working-class southern whites, especially those who had migrated to southern and midwestern urban centers." ( Harkins, Anthony, "Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon" (2005). History Faculty Book Gallery.Book 4.http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/history_book/4)

Thus we see that there is a basic flaw in any supposition that there can be positive outcomes from the use, acceptance, and appropriation of such epithets by those the epithets are intended to demean.   

 In 2013, in a senior writing project entitled "Coming to Appreciate the Redneck Stereotype: A Value Analysis of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" at California Polytechnic University, Bevie Tyo wrote: 

Reality TV ... producers selectively expose what the audience will see which in the end could lead to misinformation of a certain race, culture, or gender. When filming reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, they are constantly filming the family 24 hours a day for several weeks or months just to produce thirty minutes of footage for ten episodes of the first season. There is so much footage left out, giving the audience selective exposure to the most entertaining parts of their lives. This ultimately affects the viewer’s perceptions and leads the audiences to stereotype because they are only given certain information about people on reality TV. (Bevie Tyo See Citation Above)

 

Dr. White studied 110 episodes of a sizeable number of such shows for her dissertation in the effort to find ways in which those shows depicted their participants in positive ways. She studied that total of 110 episodes from a randomly chosen group of 12 different shows. The list of shows she studied included "Swamp People", "Rocket City Rednecks", "Moonshiners", "Hillbilly Blood", "Hillbilly Hand Fishin'" and 7 others. She used what is known as a convenience sample of the episodes from these shows.  A convenience sample is defined by the website "Statistics How To" as: Convenience sampling (also called accidental sampling or grab sampling) is where you include people (Or television episodes) who are easy to reach or easy to locate as was the case with Dr. White's work on this dissertation. Convenience sampling is a contrast and methodological opposite to Random Sampling which is defined by the same website as participants are randomly selected, and each has an equal chance of being chosen. In academic research, a random sample is always considered to be a higher quality sample of anything under study, or to use another word from academic research, random sampling gives a research project higher validity.  Validity is defined by the website Scribbr as: Validity refers to how accurately a method measures what it is intended to measure. If research has high validity, that means it produces results that correspond to real properties, characteristics, and variations in the physical or social world. Thus random samples always have higher validity than convenience samples.  

Now that we have explained some of the research terms related to Dr. White's dissertation, let's move on to discuss the work itself.  I must say that I almost never watch "reality" television with a few exceptions and those exceptions are not shows about those of us who are known as hillbillies and rednecks.  The one show on Dr. White's list which I have watched extensively is "Swamp People" both because I love to watch those people do high quality work in a dangerous profession and because I have spent some time in Louisiana and love to eat alligator, bullfrogs, and squirrels.  I also have watched a few episodes of "Hillbilly Handfishin'" because I wanted to see if it was possible to learn some techniques for use in that sport if I ever find an expert who is willing to take me out with them.  But, in general, I avoid like the plague those shows which attempt to present real life in the world of Central and Southern Appalachia and choose to present us as hillbillies.  I will also take umbrage with the effort to lump all southerners and all Appalachians into one group whether or not they refer to the collective group as either hillbillies or rednecks.  Central and Southern Appalachia is a very different area culturally from the greater geographic southern United States or the northeastern portions of the Appalachian mountain range.  The two areas in question do tend to overlap geographically a bit especially if you consider the greater political definition of Appalachia as being correct instead of the markedly narrower culturally based geographical boundaries which I believe are more correct. 

I also do not accept the fact that any of these types of shows are actually "reality" television.  Austin Carroll Baker on August 26, 2017, on the web page "Screen Rant" made this statement about scripting in reality television:  "Often times they will script scenarios or plant items so that they can make the show more interesting. What is real and what is fake?" One of the shows which Dr. White studied for her dissertation was "Moonshiners" which I have always believed is totally fake in one of two ways, possibly both.  The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms still regularly enforces the laws prohibiting the production of untaxed liquors and the possession of unlicensed distillation mechanisms.  As they state on this webpage dated April 15, 2019, the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the United States Treasury covers thoroughly the sections of the United States Code which prohibit moonshine production.  If the television personalities and production companies responsible for "Moonshiners" were actually producing untaxed, illegal moonshine and filming the commission of the crime, they would have been arrested years ago and every pixel of their video production would have been seized as evidence, presented in US District Courts, and would have resulted in their incarceration.  They are doing one of two things: either 1) they are producing steam from clear water and distilling even more pure water; or, 2) they are operating a fully legal distilling operation.  I can assure you they are not engaging in the "unlawful production of distilled spirts" as defined in the United States Code.  They are as fake and scripted as a three dollar bill.   As further evidence of the validity of my argument, I offer the following media documentation of occasions in which the authorities have pursued, arrested, prosecuted, and convicted moonshiners in the Central and Southern Appalachian region.  This first operation was in Louisville, Jefferson County Kentucky, and therefore well outside the region of Appalachia but may well have been operated by urban Appalachians.  This story comes from Barrackville, West Virginia, and occurred only 7 months ago.  I am also adding this story which occurred less than two years ago in Mingo County West Virginia, an area in which I lived and worked for five years as a salesman. This story from roughly four years ago details an arrest involving the production and sale of moonshine in both Tennessee and Virginia.   I rest my case as to whether or not the denizens of the television show "Moonshiners" are actually producing moonshine simultaneously with the evidence to send themselves to federal prison.  

Since we have now proven that the "reality" television show "Moonshiners" is highly likely to be fictitious and illegitimate, we must consider the need to remove it and all information it might have provided from Dr. White's research.  She utilized 10 episodes of the show in her research.  With 110 total episodes of all the shows she utilized, we see that this reduces her total data base by 9% and her total useful episodes to 100 which necessitates us to discuss the importance of "N" in all academic research.  The website mathnstuff.com describes "n" in this manner: "Number, n, is the statistic describing how big the set of numbers is, how many pieces of data are in the set." In their discussion of the importance of "n", or the total size of a data set, the website tools4dev.org states that "Most statisticians agree that the minimum sample size to get any kind of meaningful result is 100. If your population is less than 100 then you really need to survey all of them."  Further, the website statisticssolutions.com states "Some researchers do, however, support a rule of thumb when using the sample size. For example, in regression analysis, many researchers say that there should be at least 10 observations per variable. If we are using three independent variables, then a clear rule would be to have a minimum sample size of 30."  If we accept the basic assumption of nearly all academic researchers that the minimum sample size should be at least 100, after the deletion of all information from the reality show "Moonshiners", Dr. White was in a position that left her without any possible room for error in her sample or findings.  Further, Dr. White attempted to analyze 11 elements or variables in the television shows she examined: Patriotism; Ancestry/Family; Outside Cultures; Diversity; Wealth/Material Possessions; Females In Non-traditional Roles; Education; Specialized Educational Skills; Religion; Occupation; and Traditional Stereotypes. If we accept the rule of thumb from Statistic Solutions that a research project must have ten samples per variable, then the minimum n which could have provided valid data for her project would have been the 110 with which she began.  But when we consider the fact that "Moonshiners" must be invalid based on the total absence of law enforcement intervention in a case with extensive video evidence, then Dr. White's findings cannot be valid due to the low n. 

But, even if I were willing to accept the data based on the low n resulting from the inclusion of data from "Moonshiners", there is a basic error of judgment involved in the acceptance and adaptation of any negative stereotype by any member of any minority group.  The individuals who accept and attempt to adapt these stereotypes to their own use as members of the group being stereotyped are assenting to their own minimalization, defamation, degradation, and public abuse and every element of that assent has negative consequences.  In her paper "What Is The Nature of Appalachian Identity?", Elizabeth Trout states:

"The stereotypes of Appalachia are predominantly negative and their effect is powerful. Both Dannenberg and Hazen et al. observed a decline in the Appalachian English. This language, while still indicative of Appalachian identity, is not as pronounced as in previous eras. What this means to the future of Appalachian identity remains to be seen, but this phenomenon does prove that language is an important facet of Appalachian identity." (Trout, Elizabeth, "What is the Nature of Appalachian Identity?" (2015).Communication Studies Student Scholarship. 2.https://digitalcommons.hollins.edu/commstudents/2)

Chelsea G. Adams, in her masters thesis at the University of Kentucky, examined perceptions of  Appalachian students regarding negative stereotypes of Appalachians and came to three basic conclusions:

(a) Appalachian students in this study are aware of and can readily identify stereotypes about Appalachia; (b) Students in this study from Appalachia believe that people who are not from the area have mostly negative perspectives about Appalachia; and (c) though aware of shortcomings within their community and culture, Appalachians often feel the need to defend and protect the integrity of their community, culture, and people. (Adams, Chelsea G., "“I WONDER WHAT YOU THINK OF ME”: A QUALITATIVE APPROACH TO EXAMINING STEREOTYPE AWARENESS IN APPALACHIAN STUDENTS" (2017). Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology. 59. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/edp_etds/59)

From my point of view, Ms. Adams' most important finding is that the students she researched expressed their awareness "of shortcomings within their community and culture" which resulted in their  "need to defend and protect the integrity of their community, culture, and people".  That is a common element across all of the Appalachian Culture both among the educated and relatively poorly educated.  It has led to myself and two of my fourteen maternal first cousins all obtaining advanced degrees in three widely divergent fields: human services, medical anesthesia, and aircraft engineering.  It led to more than a half dozen of my high school classmates, in addition to myself, completing the same level of achievement of at least one advanced degree, while we graduated in a class which had only 58 members.  In conclusion, I must say that I find myself markedly disappointed to learn that Dr. Casey White, Ph. D. of stated Appalachian heritage failed to produce results stated in her dissertation title of finding "construction of pride and high self-esteem" in Appalachian characters and settled for supporting the adaptation of negative stereotypes by her research subjects.