Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
Appalachian Journal of Law
Author: Remaking Appalachia
Author: Nicholas F. StumpPublisher:
ISBN: 9781949199925
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Transforming the Appalachian Countryside
Author: Ronald L. LewisPublisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807862975
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
In 1880, ancient-growth forest still covered two-thirds of West Virginia, but by the 1920s lumbermen had denuded the entire region. Ronald Lewis explores the transformation in these mountain counties precipitated by deforestation. As the only state that lies entirely within the Appalachian region, West Virginia provides an ideal site for studying the broader social impact of deforestation in Appalachia, the South, and the eastern United States. Most of West Virginia was still dominated by a backcountry economy when the industrial transition began. In short order, however, railroads linked remote mountain settlements directly to national markets, hauling away forest products and returning with manufactured goods and modern ideas. Workers from the countryside and abroad swelled new mill towns, and merchants ventured into the mountains to fulfill the needs of the growing population. To protect their massive investments, capitalists increasingly extended control over the state's legal and political systems. Eventually, though, even ardent supporters of industrialization had reason to contemplate the consequences of unregulated exploitation. Once the timber was gone, the mills closed and the railroads pulled up their tracks, leaving behind an environmental disaster and a new class of marginalized rural poor to confront the worst depression in American history.
Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed
Author: Shannon Elizabeth BellPublisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252095219
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Motivated by a deeply rooted sense of place and community, Appalachian women have long fought against the damaging effects of industrialization. In this collection of interviews, sociologist Shannon Elizabeth Bell presents the voices of twelve Central Appalachian women, environmental justice activists fighting against mountaintop removal mining and its devastating effects on public health, regional ecology, and community well-being. Each woman narrates her own personal story of injustice and tells how that experience led her to activism. The interviews--many of them illustrated by the women's "photostories"--describe obstacles, losses, and tragedies. But they also tell of new communities and personal transformations catalyzed through activism. Bell supplements each narrative with careful notes that aid the reader while amplifying the power and flow of the activists' stories. Bell's analysis outlines the relationship between Appalachian women's activism and the gendered responsibilities they feel within their families and communities. Ultimately, Bell argues that these women draw upon a broader "protector identity" that both encompasses and extends the identity of motherhood that has often been associated with grassroots women's activism. As protectors, the women challenge dominant Appalachian gender expectations and guard not only their families but also their homeplaces, their communities, their heritage, and the endangered mountains that surround them. 30% of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to organizations fighting for environmental justice in Central Appalachia.
The Roots of Appalachian Christianity
Author: Elder John SparksPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813158397
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350
Book Description
Appalachia's distinctive brand of Christianity has always been something of a puzzle to mainline American congregations. Often treated as pagan and unchurched, native Appalachian sects are labeled as ultraconservative, primitive, and fatalistic, and the actions of minority sub-groups such as "snake handlers" are associated with all worshippers in the region. Yet these churches that many regard as being outside the mainstream are living examples of America's own religious heritage. The emotional and experience-based religion that still thrives in Appalachia is very much at the heart of American worship. The lack of a recognizable "father figure" like Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Knox compounds the mystery of Appalachia's religious origins. Ordained minister John Sparks determined that such a person must have existed, and his search turned up a man less literate, urbane, and well-known than Luther, Calvin, and Knox—but no less charismatic and influential. Shubal Stearns, a New England Baptist minister, led a group of sixteen Baptists—now dubbed "The Old Brethren" by Old School Baptists churches in Appalachia—from New England to North Carolina in the mid-eighteenth century. His musical "barking" preaching is still popular, and the association of churches that he established gave birth to many of the disparate denominations prospering in the region today. A man lacking in the scholarship of his peers but endowed with the eccentricities that would make their mark on Appalachian faith, Stearns has long been an object of shame among most Baptist historians. In The Roots of Appalachian Christianity, Sparks depicts an important religious figure in a new light. Poring over pages of out-of-print and little-used histories, Sparks discovered the complexity of Stearns's character and his impact on Appalachian Christianity. The result is a history not just of this leader but of the roots of a religious movement.
Black Huntington
Author: Cicero M Fain IIIPublisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252051432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
How African Americans thrived in a West Virginia city By 1930, Huntington had become West Virginia's largest city. Its booming economy and relatively tolerant racial climate attracted African Americans from across Appalachia and the South. Prosperity gave these migrants political clout and spurred the formation of communities that defined black Huntington--factors that empowered blacks to confront institutionalized and industrial racism on the one hand and the white embrace of Jim Crow on the other. Cicero M. Fain III illuminates the unique cultural identity and dynamic sense of accomplishment and purpose that transformed African American life in Huntington. Using interviews and untapped archival materials, Fain details the rise and consolidation of the black working class as it pursued, then fulfilled, its aspirations. He also reveals how African Americans developed a host of strategies--strong kin and social networks, institutional development, property ownership, and legal challenges--to defend their gains in the face of the white status quo. Eye-opening and eloquent, Black Huntington makes visible another facet of the African American experience in Appalachia.
Trans-Appalachian Frontier, Third Edition
Author: Malcolm J. RohrboughPublisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253219329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 697
Book Description
The first American frontier lay just beyond the Appalachian Mountains and along the Gulf Coast. Here, successive groups of pioneers built new societies and developed new institutions to cope with life in the wilderness. In this thorough revision of his classic account, Malcolm J. Rohrbough tells the dramatic story of these men and women from the first Kentucky settlements to the closing of the frontier. Rohrbough divides his narrative into major time periods designed to establish categories of description and analysis, presenting case studies that focus on the county, the town, the community, and the family, as well as politics and urbanization. He also addresses Spanish, French, and Native American traditions and the anomalous presence of African slaves in the making of this story.
Removing Mountains
Author: Rebecca R. ScottPublisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816665990
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
Book Description
An ethnography of coal country in southern West Virginia.
Degrees of Elevation
Author: Charles Dodd WhitePublisher:
ISBN: 9781933964393
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
16 stories of Appalachia today by some of our top writers. This collection brings us into the present with its struggles and beauty. Human character remains strong in these stories of life in Appalachia. Writers include: Rusty Barnes, Sheldon Lee Compton, Jarrid Deaton, Richard Hague, Silas House, Chris Holbrook, Denton Loving, Mindy Beth Miller, John McManus, Jim Nichols, Valerie Nieman, Chris Offutt, Mark Powell, Ron Rash, Alex Taylor, Crystal Wilkinson
Coalfield Jews
Author: Deborah R. WeinerPublisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
The stories of vibrant eastern European Jewish communities in the Appalachian coalfields Coalfield Jews explores the intersection of two simultaneous historic events: central Appalachia’s transformative coal boom (1880s-1920), and the mass migration of eastern European Jews to America. Traveling to southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia to investigate the coal boom’s opportunities, some Jewish immigrants found success as retailers and established numerous small but flourishing Jewish communities. Deborah R. Weiner’s Coalfield Jews provides the first extended study of Jews in Appalachia, exploring where they settled, how they made their place within a surprisingly receptive dominant culture, how they competed with coal company stores, interacted with their non-Jewish neighbors, and maintained a strong Jewish identity deep in the heart of the Appalachian mountains. To tell this story, Weiner draws on a wide range of primary sources in social, cultural, religious, labor, economic, and regional history. She also includes moving personal statements, from oral histories as well as archival sources, to create a holistic portrayal of Jewish life that will challenge commonly held views of Appalachia as well as the American Jewish experience.