The Southern Appalachians is a region of great contrasts. In an area with great wealth in mineral resources, an area which produces one and one-half billion dollars worth of coal in a year, one finds great poverty, sub-standard housing, hunger, and poor health. In an area which has an extensive network of railroads, highly sophisticated machinery, industries linked to the largest, most powerful corporations in the world and a non-farm, indus­trialized population, one finds low levels of education, a low rate of skilled labor, and a socially and physically isolated people. How does one explain these incongruities? Are the people...

The first stage of the colonization process is the acquisition of land and natural resources. The following essays describe this process as it has been carried out in different agents in different forms of appropriation: agriculture, tourist development, government forest development, coal development, and the general industrialization of the area.

Ronald Eller in “Industrialization and Social Change in Appalachia: A Look at the Static Image” attacks the interpretation of Appalachia as a passive, static, undeveloped region left out of modernization and progress. Eller points to the type of industrial development which occurred in the area and the changes which resulted....

The belief that time and geography somehow set the South­ern mountains off from the rest of the American experience has been part of our understanding of the Appalachian region for al­most a hundred years.¹ As early as the 1870’s, writers for the new monthly magazines which flourished after the Civil War had begun to develop and exploit a literary image of the region. Initially drawn to the mountains in search of the interesting and the picturesque, local color writers such as Mary Noailles Murfree, James Lane Allen, John Fox, Jr., and others were quick to turn the quaint and simple...

It must be at least six years ago now that an exchange team of young people came to the mountains from various South American countries. The church group sponsoring their visit called me and asked if they could visit Appalachia, thinking that in all honesty they should have exposure to some less affluent areas of America. There were six in the group—four boys and two girls. In Harlan, Kentucky, in a church basement after some mine and coal camp visiting, we were discussing the economic situation of the coal fields, and how this economic system determined so much else...

The American Family Reference Dictionary defines the termpioneeras one of those who first enter or settle in a region, thus opening it for development or settlement by others. There­fore, to speak of a pioneer life style with regard to the Appa­lachian region must of necessity raise the question “which pioneer?” The presupposition which we follow with regard to the term is that followed by most Americans when referring to the pioneers, that being the earlier Europeans who established themselves in the region; and when we refer to remnant pioneer life styles, it is with reference to the way...

As a Life Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, you are no doubt familiar with these lines. The thought has been applied widely—and rightfully—to America’s involvement in Vietnam. Yet as that war winds down, another one continues—a quiet, sordid little war in the once-verdant mountains of the states of Kentucky and Tennessee. The victims of this war are the local residents and their lands; the aggressors are “strip miners.” And the responsibility falls in large part upon the American Association, Ltd., a British-based landholding and development company of which you are Chairman of the Board.

The American...

Much has been written about the effects of corporate and absentee ownership on the Appalachian land and people. The massive holdings of coal, oil, timber, land and power companies have been well documented—not to mention the way in which these lands have historically escaped fair taxes. The acquisition of lands by private and semi-public (TVA) power companies has also been well researched.

In fact, however, the largest single landowner in Appalachia is neither a coal/oil corporation, a land or timber company, nor an electric utility, but the United States government. Through­out Appalachia, the Federal government through the U.S. Forest...

The following five essays detail the process by which outside interests develop political, economic, social and cultural control over the Appalachian region. The articles point to the control over schools, courts, media, and the role of missionaries and local modernizing elites who assist in the take over and help set up systems of control.

In the first essay, Helen Lewis, Sue Kobak, and Linda Johnson outline the colonization process and illustrate it from the history of Southwest Virginia. The two most resistant aspects of mountain life were religion and the family, both of which became defensive and reverted inward in...

The Southern Appalachians has been called “the last unchallenged stronghold of Western colonialism.” (Caudill) In recent years this concept or refinements of it—“neo-colonialism,” “imperialism,” or “third world pillage”—have been applied to the region (Lewis and Knipe 1970; Dix 1970; Simon 1971; Diehl 1970; Lesser 1970; Burlage 1970).

This paper is an attempt to look more closely at the colonization process in Central Appalachia and to look particularly at the two most resistant aspects of traditional mountain culture, the family structure and religion, to see in what ways they resisted or adapted to the process or how they were...

In Appalachia, property is theft.

We can understand the meaning of this relationship of poverty amidst wealth by looking closely at the example of the Clear Fork Valley, stretching between Pine Mountain and Cum-

berland Mountain and lying on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. Here one finds the results of corporate exploitation at its worst. Once a booming mining area, automation and strip mining have left 30 percent of the population unemployed. Mountains are gouged by the relentless blade of the bulldozer and blasts of dynamite. Streams are filled with silt and flooding; timber and wildlife are destroyed.

Not...

The historian Frederick Jackson Turner has suggested the year 1890 as the end of the American “frontier.” I suggest, not to contradict the Turner thesis but as a slight supplement to it, that 1890 marks the opening of a certain portion of the Appa­lachian frontier: that portion of eastern Kentucky to which John Fox, Jr. refers in the title of his novelThe Heart of the Hills. These are the mountainous coal-mining counties where the topography at the head of the watershed in Letcher County lies little less than perpendicular and only gradually improves in the direction of south central...

For the past decade, North Carolina’s mountains have endured the shock of rapid and uncontrolled development—development which is changing farming communities to “recreational shopping centers.” Mountain and farm lands have been gobbled up and chopped away by developers who have transformed Watauga and Avery counties from farming valleys shield-

ed by gently sloped mountains to a cacaphony of strip-development/ fast-food chains. The land grab has boosted land prices so that farmers can’t afford farmland and has intruded a culture of affluence on farmers who are left to work as greens-keepers and domestics, to commute to industry towns, or to...

The seven articles which follow demonstrate a variety of ways in which control over the colony is maintained socially, culturally, and politically through the various institutions, commercial control of music, the development of stereotypes through literature, maintenance of economic dependency, control over state and local government, and regional planning and control agencies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Appalachian Regional Commission

Jim Branscome in “Annihilating the Hillbilly” points to ways institutions working in the area: the media, ARC, education, health care, governmental agencies, the corporate structure, and the church denigrate native culture and exploit the native. They act...

The seven articles which follow demonstrate a variety of ways in which control over the colony is maintained socially, culturally, and politically through the various institutions, commercial control of music, the development of stereotypes through literature, maintenance of economic dependency, control over state and local government, and regional planning and control agencies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Appalachian Regional Commission

Jim Branscome in “Annihilating the Hillbilly” points to ways institutions working in the area: the media, ARC, education, health care, governmental agencies, the corporate structure, and the church denigrate native culture and exploit the native. They act...

Not too long ago, CBS television featured, back-to-back on Tuesday nights, three of America’s most popular TV programs: “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Green Acres,” and “Hee-Haw.” This combination has to be the most intensive effort ever exerted by a nation to belittle, demean, and otherwise destroy a minority people within its boundaries. Within the three shows on the one night, hillbillies were shown being conned into buying the White House, coddling a talking pig, and rising from a cornpatch to crack the sickest jokes on TV. All of this occurred on the same channel, all only a short while after Eric...

In 1916 an English scholar travelled through the Southern mountains hunting for folk songs from England, and he found them—so many, in fact, that his book,English Folksongs of the Southern Appalachians, has become a classic. Cecil Sharp found more than just songs; he found a culture alive with music. In England, he recalled, only the old people remembered folk songs, but in the mountains: Sharp’s book contains hundreds of beautiful tunes and poetic texts, but there was more. He looked only for English material and so passed over the vast amount of fiddle music brought from Scotland and...

Half a century after his death, John Fox, Jr. still dominates the “cultural” activities of the little town in southwestern Vir­ginia to which he came in the 1890’s hoping to make his fortune in land and coal speculation. Although he failed as an industrial entrepreneur, he stumbled upon another natural resource ripe for development and proceeded to exploit his discovery with a vigor that has preserved his name as one of the very few readily recog­nizable in any list of Appalachian authors. Both at home and abroad, Fox achieved a great popular success in his novels and stories depicting mountain...

Buffalo Creek, in Logan County, is reasonably typical for the southern part of West Virginia—a long, winding hollow, snaking between steep ridges on both sides for more than 20 miles from the town of Saunders at its headwaters to the town of Man, where the creek empties into the Guyandotte River, which flows north to join the Ohio River at Huntington. The narrow valley is just wide enough for the creek, the railroad, and an almost unending line of company-built houses stretching along both sides of the tracks. There are occasional wide places in the valley where tributaries flow...

Prior to his election as governor, Arch Moore represented West Virginia as a Congressman. Prior to his election to Con­gress, however, Governor Moore began his career in the corporate structure as an attorney serving Allied Chemicals, Mobay Chemi­cals (which he continued to serve while he was a member of Con­gress), Columbia Southern Chemicals, and Texas Eastern Trans­mission Company. His predecessor in office, Hulette Smith, had previously served as president of Investment Securities, Inc., vice president of the First Beckley Corporation, director of the Bank of Raleigh, vice president of Beckley College, director and treasurer of Beckley and Oak Hill hospitals;...

On May 18, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt leaned back in his chair and handed Senator George Norris the pen with which he had just signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act. While Roosevelt was an enthusiastic supporter of the TVA idea, he could hardly have guessed that this act of signing a bill, previously vetoed in 1928 by President Coolidge and in 1931 by President Hoover, would result in the creation of one of the most enduringly controversial and also saluted projects to emerge from the famous “hundred days.”

Roosevelt believed the crucial compromises had already been made. In his...

Regionalism—that is, the designation of quite large geographical units for planning and administrative purposes—is very much a part of the American system now, its current surge the perhaps inevitable result of problems grown too large and complex for local units of government to handle alone. It could be a welcome development: Water and air pollution know no city bounds; isolated rural counties can provide more adequate medical services by pooling resources. But if one can point to notable examples of regionalism working for the common good, there also have been some outright failures as well as instances of...

A somewhat facetious but thought-provoking essay by Dennis Lindberg, “Appalachia: A Colony Within a Colony,” suggests that America itself may be a Japanese colony. He points to the model of an advanced technological society which results from efficient control and manipulation of labor and resources. Appalachia can be viewed in a broader sense as a colony of a technological society. David Walls’ article “Internal Colony or Internal Periphery?” compares three models: Culture of Poverty, Regional Development Model, and Internal Colony. He points to weaknesses in all three and suggests an alternative model which analyzes the area in terms of advanced...

Much has been written about Appalachia as a colony—a place where American magnates have come to draw upon the natural resources which make the gears of capital intensive in­dustries outside the region turn.

But recent efforts to mine the high grade smokeless Sewell coal in Randolph County, West Virginia, suggest that history moves faster than theory. Appalachia may not be an American colony as much as America itself may be a Japanese colony.

The coal in question is found beneath the steep banks of the Shavers Fork of the Cheat River, which is reputed to be the finest trout...

In the course of the 1960’s, Appalachia was rediscovered as a social problem region. Efforts of mainstream social scientists to explain the stubborn persistence of poverty and underde­velopment in Appalachia can be categorized as two types: the subculture of poverty model, and the regional development model. In response to the inadequacy of these models, and the social policy that followed from them, radical intellectuals and activists developed an internal colonialism model for the Central Appalachian region. In recent years substantial gains have been made in the theoretical and empirical investigation of neo­colonialism, dependency, internal colonialism, advanced capi­talism, and the capitalist...

A new bumper sticker has recently come into prominence in Yancey County, North Carolina: Black letters on a yellow field politely request, “NO PARK PLEASE.” Such is the local response to an announced study by the National Park Service on the feasibility of turning the area around Mt. Mitchell, the highest mountain in the Eastern United States, into a sort of Yellowstone East.

A National Forest Service map of the Pisgah National Forest vividly demonstrates the “blocking in” process by which this agency purchases land for its Congress-ordained mission on a periphery of an authorized area and then moves inward,...