Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change

IGHTING BACK lN APPALA c;_,HIA di'ange

Jradlitions of Resistance and

FIGHTING BACK IN APPALACHIA

FIGHTING BACK IN

APPALACHIA

Traditions of Resistance and Change

Edited by

Stephen L. Fisher

Temple University Press Philadelphia

Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122 Copyright © 1993 by Temple University. All rights reserved Published 1993 Printed in the United States of America Chapter 7 copyright © 1993 by Hal Hamilton and Ellen Ryan Chapter 12 copyright © 1993 by Guy and Candie Carawan

@ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fighting back in Appalachia : traditions of resistance and change I edited by Stephen L. Fisher. p.

em.

Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87722-976-7 (cloth: alk. paper).- ISBN 0-87722-977-5 (paper : alk. paper)

l. Community organization-Appalachian Region. Appalachian Region.

2. Dissenters­

3. Appalachian Region-Rural conditions.

I. Fisher, Stephen L., 1944HN79.A127F54

1993

307.72'0974-dc20

92-17683

Contents

ix

Acknowledgments Introduction

1

Stephen L. Fisher

BUILDING GRASSROOTS CITIZEN ORGANIZATIONS

PART I

1

Stopping the Bulldozers: What Difference Did It Make?

17

Mary Beth Bingman

2

Like a Flower Slowly Blooming: Highlander and the Nurturing of an Appalachian Movement

31

]ohnM. Glen

3

Racism and Organizing in Appalachia

57

DonManning-Miller

4

From Fussin' to Organizing: Individual and Collective Resistance at Yellow Creek

69

Sherry Cable

5

Save Our Cumberland Mountains: Growth and Change Within a Grassroots Organization

85

Bill Allen

6

Practical Lessons in Community Organizing in Appalachia: What We've Learned at Kentuckians For The Commonwealth joe Szakos

101

Contents vi

7

The Community Farm Alliance in Kentucky: The Growth, Mistakes, and Lessons of the Farm Movement of the 1980s

123

Hal Hamilton and Ellen Ryan

NEW STRATEGIES IN LABOR STRUGGLES

PART II

8

Appalachian Women Fight Back: Organizational Approaches to Nontraditional job Advocacy

151

Chris Weiss

9

The Memory ofMiners and the Conscience of Capital: Coal Miners' Strikes as Free Spaces

165

Richard A. Couto

10

Singing Across Dark Spaces: The Union/ Community Takeover of Pittston's Moss 3 Plant

195

jim Sessions and Fran Ansley

11

The People's Respirator: Coalition Building and the Black Lung Association

225

BennettM.]udkins

CULTURE, CLASS, AND GENDER IN APPALACHIAN RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS

PART III

12

Sowing on the Mountain: Nurturing Cultural Roots and Creativity for Community Change

245

Guy and Candie Carawan

13

Engendering the Struggle: Women's Labor and Traditions of Resistance in Rural Southern Appalachia Mary

14

263

K. Anglin

Appalachian Studies, Resistance, and Postmodernism Alan Banks, Dwight Billings, and Karen Tice

283

Contents vii

15

Politics, Expressive Form, and Historical Knowledge in a Blue Ridge Resistance Movement

303

Stephen William Foster

16

Conclusion: New Populist Theory and the Study of Dissent in Appalachia

317

Stephen L. Fisher

Dissent in Appalachia: A Bibliography

339

Stephen L. Fisher

Directory of Organizations List of Contributors

361 363

Acknowledgments

This book has its origins in my experience as activist, teacher, researcher, and witness in the Appalachian region. It is a direct response to my frus­ tration over the portrayal of Appalachians as passive victims, the dearth of material documenting the extent and nature of dissent in the Appalachian mountains, and the lack of Appalachian voices and examples in national discussions of community organizing strategies. Many people helped make this book a reality. First, and foremost, I want to thank the contributors for their cooperation, responsiveness, and belief in the importance of this project. In many ways this was a collec­ tive endeavor. Mary Anglin suggested the title. Some of the contributors attended a meeting, organized by Jim Sessions, where they discussed each other's essays and made suggestions for the overall project. A number of the contributors cmiqued the Introduction and Conclusion. Candie Carawan helped select and locate photographs for several of the essays. Throughout the process Mary Anglin, Beth Bingman, Dick Couto, and Joe Szakos offered advice and encouragement that kept me grounded and focused. Mike Yarrow read the entire manuscript, and this is a much b etter book because of his insightful suggestions. Harry Boyte, Nina Gregg, Bill Horton, and Herb Reid offered valuable comments on particular essays or the manuscript as a whole. Michael Ames of Temple University Press understood and supported the political and intellectual motives behind the project and gave gentle but firm direction throughout the editing pro­ cess. Emory &: Henry College provided generous financial support for my work on this book through the Mellon Challenge Fund for Faculty De­ velopment and the Reverend E. L McConnell Scholarship. Finally, I most gratefully acknowledge the love, support, and good company of family and friends. I am indebted, in this venture as in so many others, to my wife, Nancy Garretson, for her companionship, her unyielding support of my work, and her empowering optimism. This book owes its existence and is dedicated to the countless indi­ viduals who have fought over the years for social and economic j ustice in Appalachia.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS X

The Appalachian Community Fund, an activist-controlled founda­ tion committed to supporting progressive social change in central Appa­ lachia, will receive the royalties from the sales of the paperback edition of this book.

FIGHTING BACK I N APP AL A C H I A

Introduction Stephen L. Fisher

In the midst of the long and bitter United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) national strike in 1977-78, angry miners, feeling that the news coverage of the strike had been unfair, confronted a CBS camera crew at a union meeting near Phelps, Kentucky. "It makes us out to be the troublemakers," said one miner. "Why aren't you telling our side of it?" This question has been raised time and again throughout the Appa­ lachian mountains and reflects a long history of media bias and neglect that has firmly implanted in the national consciousness two conflicting images of the people who live in Appalachia. Appalachians are generally viewed as backward, unintelligent, fatalistic, and quiescent people who are complicit in their own oppression. But, at the same time, these "submis­ sive" mountaineers are seen as among the most vicious and violent people in the United States.1 The many bloody mine wars and skirmishes between miners and the coal industry throughout this century are responsible, in large part, for this latter image. As contradictory as these stereotypes may appear at first glance, they are related. For most of the nation, the coal miners are uninformed workers blindly following corrupt and manipula­ tive union leaders. In the end the verdict is the same-they are gun-happy, illiterate bumpkins who are culturally incapable of rational resistance to unjust conditions. The media are not alone in developing and perpetuating this por­ trait of Appalachians. Novelists, missionaries, social workers, industrial­ ists, folklorists, politicians, and academicians have in their own ways and for their own reasons portrayed Appalachia as an isolated, underdevel­ oped area of inferior and dependent people.2 During the 1960s and 1970s, some in Appalachia sought to counter this image, either by painting highly romanticized pictures of traditional Appalachian culture and then lament­ ing its destruction by outside forces or by describing the many ways in which the region had been economically exploited by the rest of the coun­ try. But far too often these efforts unwittingly reinforced the notion of Appalachians as victims, as non-actors in determining their fate. In the 1980s and 1990s, an impressive array of scholarly studies have laid the groundwork for transforming the way we understand and

STEPHEN L. FISHER 2

think about the Appalachian region. They explain how, why, and for whose benefit the damaging and misleading stereotypes of Appalachians were developed. They document how the economic problems faced b y many ,!!?- Ap_palacbia are a result not of iso1ation .apd a la.ck....9i..econo.rni_