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Author Sanora Babb, with her husband James Wong Howe, in their library.

The Woman Who Defined the Great Depression

John Steinbeck based “The Grapes of Wrath” on Sanora Babb’s notes. But she was writing her own American epic.
by Scott Bradfield via The New Republic on November 12, 2024
Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson visit the Fletcher family in Inez, Kentucky, in 1964.

Who’s to Blame for White Poverty?

Dismantling it requires getting the story right.
by Elizabeth Catte via Boston Review on September 5, 2024
Volunteers at Big Creek Missions in Leslie County, Kentucky

Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

I’ve been going back to eastern Kentucky for over a decade. Since 2016, something there has changed.
by Bradley Devlin via The American Conservative on April 22, 2024
A man walking down an unpaved street in an impoverished Appalachian neighborhood.

What the Best Places in America Have in Common

The Index of Deep Disadvantage reflects a more holistic view of how we can define "poverty."
by H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson, Kathryn J. Edin via The Atlantic on August 5, 2023
Photo of young woman looking at camera in blue-walled room. Above her an image of Jesus Christ is framed. Through the room's window a shirtless man can be seen on a porch, also facing the camera

Left Behind

J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" and Steven Stoll's "Ramp Hollow" both remind us that the history of poor and migratory people in Appalachia is a difficult story to tell.
by Nancy Isenberg via New York Review of Books on June 28, 2018

A Cursed Appalachian Mining Town

An intimate portrait of a once-prosperous town in a forgotten corner of America.
by Emily Buder, Ivete Lucas, Patrick Bresnan via The Atlantic on March 13, 2018
Jimmy Carter speaking into a microphone in front of a crowd.

Unwavering

You can argue over whether Jimmy Carter was America’s greatest president, but he was undoubtedly one of the greatest Americans to ever become president.
by Jim Barger Jr. via The Bitter Southerner on October 1, 2024
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
by Justin B. Wymer via Literary Hub on August 27, 2024
Photo of a homeless person sleeping on the street wrapped in a blanket on top of cardboard.
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A Blueprint From History for Tackling Homelessness

During the New Deal, the U.S. knew that economic recovery depended upon housing.
by Jonathan van Harmelen via Made By History on November 2, 2023
Grant Wood’s sister, Nan Wood Graham, and his dentist, Byron McKeeby, stand by the painting for which they had posed, “American Gothic.”

Beyond the Myth of Rural America

Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on October 16, 2023
Jewish headstones in an abandoned graveyard in North Dakota.

In North Dakota, Endless Sky, A Few Gravestones, and the Remnants Of A Little-Known Jewish History

While most Jewish immigrants flocked to urban centers, a few -- like the Greenbergs -- tried their luck as homesteaders.
by Robert Zaretsky via Forward on August 21, 2023
Black and white photograph of a man. The main has his hair styled to point upwards, and a tattoo of the word Mississippi on his back.

Where Does the South Begin?

A new history cuts against stereotypes, to show a region constantly changing—and whose future is up for grabs.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on June 26, 2023
Henry Holt, a farmer near Black River Falls, Wisconsin, in 1937, who was moved off land by the Resettlement Administration.

How the Government Helped White Americans Steal Black Farmland

There was once a thriving Black middle class based on farm ownership. But during the twentieth century, the USDA helped erase that source of wealth.
by Darrick Hamilton, Thomas W. Mitchell, Nathan Rosenberg, Dania Francis, Bryce Wilson Stucki via The New Republic on May 5, 2022
Photo of a man lying face down on a bed under a coat, and a sad woman sitting in a chair next to him. There is a hole punched out of the center of the photo.

The Kept and the Killed

Of the 270,000 photos commissioned to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed.” Explore the hole-punched archive and the void at its center.
by Erica X. Eisen via The Public Domain Review on January 26, 2022
Rural front lawn with a Trump sign.
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Our Urban/Rural Political Divide is Both New — And Decades In The Making

Policies dating to the 1930s have helped shape the conflict defining today’s politics.
by Guian McKee via Made By History on October 8, 2021
Building with a currogated tin facade and sign saying "Richard Perkins Contractor"

The Anti-Nostalgia of Walker Evans

A recent biography reveals the many contradictions of the photographer who fastidiously documented postwar American life.
by Rahel Aima via The Nation on June 8, 2021
Map of the Appalachian mountain range

The Making of Appalachian Mississippi

“Mississippi’s white Appalachians may have owned the earth, but they could never own the past.”
by Justin Randolph via Southern Cultures on May 14, 2021

Living with Dolly Parton

Asking difficult questions often comes at a cost.
by Jessica Wilkerson via Longreads on October 16, 2018

The Body in Poverty

The decline of America’s rural health system and its toll on my family.
by Sarah Smarsh via The Nation on September 26, 2018
Drawing of two laborers in a vast agricultural field with a farmhouse in the background.

A Family From High Plains

Sappony tobacco farmers across generations, and across state borders, when North Carolina and Virginia law diverged on tribal recognition, education, and segregation.
by Nick Martin via Splinter on August 2, 2018
Black family on their front porch in West Virginia.

These Photos Will Change the Way You Think About Race in Coal Country

The myth that Appalachia is uniformly White lingers, but communities of “Affrilachians” were documented in the 1930s.
by John Edwin Mason via YES! on March 15, 2018
Political cartoon of the Populist Party python eating the Democratic Party donkey.

Historians Have Long Thought Populism Was a Good Thing. Are They Wrong?

Today’s populist resurgence has us rethinking the role these movements play in U.S. politics.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on January 14, 2018

A Hillbilly Syllabus

“Some people call me Hillbilly, Some people call me Mountain Man; Well, you can call me Appalachia, ’Cause Appalachia is what I am.” —Del McCoury
by Eric Kerl via ChiTucky on December 10, 2017

Coal No Longer Fuels America. But the Legacy — and the Myth — Remain.

Coal country still clings to the industry that was long its chief source of revenue and a way of life.
by Karen Heller via Retropolis on July 9, 2017
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How our Appetite for Cheap Food Drove Rural America to Trump

Consumer demand and government policy decimated rural America.
by Benjamin Davison via Made By History on June 30, 2017

Patterns Of Death In The South Still Show The Outlines Of Slavery

Blacks continue to die younger than people in other groups in the Black Belt.
by Anna Maria Barry-Jester via FiveThirtyEight on April 20, 2017
Bob Dylan.

Legacy of a Lonesome Death

Had Bob Dylan not written a song about it, the 1963 killing of a black servant by a white socialite’s cane might have been long forgotten.
by Ian Frazier via Mother Jones on May 8, 2010
Kwame Ture at at a 1966 Mississippi Press Conference. Public Domain.
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Stokely Carmichael Interview

A field secretary of SNCC discusses the importance of maintaining political power inside communities at the county level.
via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on April 21, 1966
Photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. speaking into microphones.

Let Justice Roll Down

"Those who expected a cheap victory in a climate of complacency were shocked into reality by Selma."
by Martin Luther King Jr. via The Nation on March 16, 1965
Reenactors working with performance artist Dread Scott in 2019 retrace the route of an 1811 rebellion of enslaved people in Louisiana.

My Gun Culture Is Not Your Gun Culture

In Black Southern life, guns have been a sign of readiness against constant threats.
by Chantal James via The New Republic on December 28, 2024
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