Appalachia

Lady Vols Country

by Jessica Wilkerson

The author remembers Pat Summitt's championship women's basketball teams at the University of Tennessee as a demonstration of how sports "encompass a battleground for determining how gender manifests in the world, how women and girls can use their bodies, and who can access self-determination."

The Real Story Behind "Cocaine Bear"

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

The Hidden History of Black Coal Towns

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

How Decades of Coal Mining Left West Virginia Vulnerable to Flooding

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

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

by Kristan McCullum

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

Life After the Mines

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

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

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

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

by Dave Kamper

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

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

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

Left Behind: The Trouble with Euphemism

by Nancy Isenberg

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

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

by Emily Hilliard

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

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

by Emily Badger

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

The Real Meaning of Hillbilly

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

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

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

Unearthing New Histories of Black Appalachia (Review)

by Jillean McCommons

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

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

by Jillean McCommons

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

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

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

‘Matewan Massacre’ A Century Ago Embodied Miners’ Struggles

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

60 Years Ago, West Virginia Helped Make JFK President

by Robert Rupp

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

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

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