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View of mountains on the horizon

Who Owns the Mountains?

Hurricane Helene has revived urgent questions about the politics of land — and tourism — in Appalachia.
by Olivia Paschal via New York Review of Books on November 3, 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
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
Black and white photo of Camp Washington Carver, opened in 1942, with a crowd of Black children standing outside the front with an American flag in the forefront.

The Forgotten History of the US's African American Coal Towns

One of the US's newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover about its African American coal communities.
by Stephen Starr via BBC News on October 24, 2022
A street of brick storefronts in Cumberland, Kentucky.

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

A landslide that exposed racial inequalities embedded in Appalachian communities.
by Jillean McCommons via Black Perspectives on June 16, 2020
A map of the Kingdom of the Happy Land.

A Black Kingdom in Postbellum Appalachia

The Kingdom of the Happy Land represents just one of many Black placemaking efforts in Appalachia. We must not forget it.
by Danielle Dulken via Scalawag on September 9, 2019
Hand-drawn map proposing the Appalachian Trail

An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning

In its original concept, the Appalachian Trail was a wildly ambitious plan to reorganize the economic geography of the eastern United States.
by Benton MacKaye, Garrett Dash Nelson via Places Journal on April 1, 2019

Appalachian Women Fought for Workers Long Before They Fought for Jobs

Two new books recount the leading role women have played in Appalachian social justice movements.
by Heather Duncan via Scalawag on March 25, 2019

Appalachian Whiteness: A History that Never Existed

The “fetishization” of Appalachia’s supposed racial and ethnic purity and Trump's proposal to end birthright citizenship.
by Timothy Pratt via 100 Days in Appalachia on December 24, 2018
Children bringing home remains of a bed. Coal mining camp, Scotts Run, West Virginia. (1938)

James M. Cain and the West Virginia Mine Wars

Sean Carswell looks into James M. Cain and his time reporting on the West Virginia Mine Wars.
by Sean Carswell via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 25, 2018
partner

The Legendary Language of the Appalachian "Holler"

Is the unique dialect a vestige of Elizabethan England? Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? Or something else altogether?
by Chi Luu via JSTOR Daily on August 8, 2018
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
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
Book cover of "What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia."

Appalachia Isn’t Trump Country

A region that outsiders love to imagine but can’t seem to understand.
by Elizabeth Catte, Regan Penaluna via Guernica on March 7, 2018

Carter G. Woodson’s West Virginia Wasn’t ‘Trump Country,’ It Was a Land of Opportunity

In his travelogues, Woodson rhapsodized over what he saw as a love of democracy among hard-scrabble mountain settlers of both races.
by Cynthia R. Greenlee via 100 Days in Appalachia on February 28, 2018

Combatting Stereotypes About Appalachian Dialects

Language variation is just as diverse within Appalachia as it is outside of the region.
by Kirk Hazen via The Conversation on July 13, 2017
Talc and soapstone statue from North Carolina.

Who Were the Mysterious Moon-Eyed People of Appalachia?

Tales of strange, nocturnal people haunt the region—and so do theories about who they were, from a lost Welsh "tribe" to aliens.
by Hadley Meares via Atlas Obscura on October 22, 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
A group of Transappalachain migrant workers in Department 312 of the Anderson Delco-Remy plant pose for a photograph in February 1953.

On the New Book, "Hillbilly Highway"

Recovering the long-overlooked significance of the “hillbilly highway” in the US, with implications for labor history as well as US history broadly.
by Max Fraser, Joseph Rathke via LaborOnline on December 15, 2023
Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina.

"If America Doesn't Become America": Outlander and the American Revolution

"Outlander" challenges the myth of American exceptionalism at the root of much U.S. popular culture.
by Michelle Orihel via Age of Revolutions on July 3, 2023
Two youths in Uptown Chicago, 1974.
partner

When Uptown Chicago was “Hillbilly Heaven”

In the 1960s, white Appalachian workers attempted to put down roots in Chicago by building an integrated model neighborhood called Hank Williams Village.
by Livia Gershon, Roger Guy via JSTOR Daily on January 16, 2023
Black and white photograph of Loretta Lynn holding a microphone

Personifying a Country Ideal, Loretta Lynn Tackled Sexism Through a Complicated Lens

The singer wasn't a feminist torchbearer, but her music amplified women's issues.
by Amanda Marie Martinez via NPR on October 9, 2022

What Made the Battle of Blair Mountain the Largest Labor Uprising in American History

Its legacy lives on today in the struggles faced by modern miners seeking workers' rights.
by Abby Lee Hood via Smithsonian on August 25, 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

The Commercial Rise of Country Music During the Great Depression

The Depression was the gravitational pull that created country stars and their nationwide universe of listeners.
by Christopher C. Gorham via We're History on October 7, 2019

A Lifetime Of Labor: Maybelle Carter At Work

Maybelle Carter witnessed the dawn of the recording era and helped create country music as one of the genre's biggest acts.
by Jessica Wilkerson via NPR on August 14, 2019

Rhiannon Giddens and What Folk Music Means

The roots musician is inspired by the evolving legacy of the black string band.
by John Jeremiah Sullivan via The New Yorker on May 13, 2019

‘They Will Remember Us’: The Miners of Black Harlan

A photographer travels to the heart of Appalachia to spend time with the area's last surviving black former coal miners.
by Radcliffe Roye via New York Review of Books on May 3, 2019

Living with Dolly Parton

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

The Little College Where Tuition Is Free and Every Student Is Given a Job

Berea College has paid for every enrollee’s education using its endowment for 126 years. Can other schools replicate the model?
by Adam Harris via The Atlantic on October 11, 2018
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