Kentucky in the 1900’s
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The collapse of the first great industrial boom
Displaced workers move in with kin on farms,
subsisting on poor farms (think River of
Earth!)
Neglected coal camps: unemployment,
hunger, disease
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WWII boom: WPA (roads and public
buildings), TVA (electricity for factories that
produced tents, uniforms, blankets, and
aluminum) , coal, timber, and military
(highest enlistment rates in nation)
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19% of population leaves in ‘40-42
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Indigenous entrepreneurs could open a seam
of coal, construct a wooden bin down the
hillside to load the coal into trucks and
transport it to markets/tipples
5 or 6 men could produce 80-100 tons of
coal/day
4,200 truck mines open in the ‘40’s
 Non-union, non-mechanized
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Undercutting equipment: could produce
many times more coal in an hour than a
worker could in a day
Actually required more workers to load coal
and operate haulage systems
But with conveyor belts and mechanical
loading equipment, by 1950, 69% of nation’s
coal was loaded by mechanical
means=reducing need for workers
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1948, coal demand began to level off
Oil began to be used as a fuel source
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Between ’50-70, the region’s deep mines
mechanized to increase productivity and
reduce labor costs
The continuous miner made it possible for 10
men to produce 3 times the tonnage mined
by 86 hand-loading coal miners
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1960: fewer than half of the 475,000 miners in
the region at the end of WWII still worked
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1970: only 107,000 left
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3,000,000 people left Appalachia between
1940-70
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For jobs! (by word of mouth from relatives
and friends)
“hillbilly highway” from Akron, Dayton,
Cincinnati, Detroit, Chicago
Clusters in urban areas
 (ex: in Ohio factory, sign that said “Leave Morgan
Co and enter Wolfe Co)
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Opportunities for education, health care
Economic independence for women
 (1st time!)
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BUT:
 Cramped, ghetto living
 High rent, a “hostile world” to Appalachians
 “They are worse than the colored, vicious and knife
happy….I can’t say this publicly but you’ll never
improve the neighborhood until you get rid of
them.” --Chicago policeman
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1950’s: Appalachian KY lost 35% of its
population
And birth rates began to decline
Mechanization of coal mining displaced
thousands of families, unemployment,
poverty and welfare dependence became a
way of life in communities
Between ‘50-60: half of the farmers left the
land; only 6% of mountain population was
employed full-time in agriculture
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1 in 3 Appalachians had running water/indoor
plumbing
½ had access to a vehicle
92% had electricity
Primary cash crop: TOBACCO
Limited growth in manufacturing
E KY had 20% unemployment rate
1 in 3 Appalachian families lived below
poverty level (national rate was 1 in 5)
In Eastern KY, that rate was 2 in 3!!
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After 3 decades of declining opportunity,
Appalachians lost hope
An increase in dependency on public
assistance
Quotes on paternalistic nature of coal and
welfare being intertwined
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6neSdVO
h_BM
1. What were the primary periods of “boom” for
the coal industry in the 1900’s?
 2. Name 2 sources of work (outside of coal)
during the 1940’s.
 3. Describe the change in population of
Appalachia in the 1950’s.
 4. What increased coal production but
decreased the need for workers?
 5. Explain how Appalachia’s history with the coal
companies may have predisposed them to a
dependency on public assistance.
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Original owners were left with land
ownership (and responsibility to pay taxes)
But now….mining companies sought access
to mineral property without regard to rights
of the surface owners:
 Roads needed to be built
 Farm families had little control over their land
Floods in E KY, southern WVA and SW VA
a federal disaster, towns washed away because
land was ravaged by strip mining and logging
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Result: the beginnings of an environmental
awareness
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JFK’s campaign in West Virginia brings attention
to Appalachian poverty
The importance of describing it as
“underdeveloped” rather than “depressed”
 Resource extraction, no infrastructure (schools, roads,
factories, public services)
A symbol of growing disparity between poverty
and affluence in postwar America
 In 1961, the Area Redevelopment Act created an
administration to fund low-interest loans, grants
for public facilities and worker training
programs.
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JFK’s Appalachian Regional Commission:
 Transportation
 Human resources
 Physical resources
 Water
 Establishing ARC permanently
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http://life.time.com/history/life-inappalachia-photos-from-a-valley-of-poverty1964/#1
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Highways, airports, flood control, sewage
management, programs for agricultural
improvement and cooperative timber
marketing, recreational tourism, coal
utilization and power production, funds for
vocational schools, health centers and
housing, literacy and nutrition programs
All to be coordinated by state, federal and
private institutions
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Martin County, KY 1964
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.ph
p?storyId=1589660
The “Other America”
The “Great Society”
 Food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start,
etc.
 Poverty level reduced from 20% to 11% in
following decade
 Today, it is 12%
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Influx of professionals and students that
answer the call for public service who want to
“develop” the region
Renewal in defining and appreciating
Appalachian culture
Activists who blame coal industry for
Appalachia’s issues
 Absentee-owned mining companies who paid few
taxes, extracted the resources, and left a poor,
impoverished land behind
In about a page or so,
Explain
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 1. Who you interviewed, how you know them, and
what interesting or important things you learned
by speaking with them.
 2. Why is conducting oral histories important?
What purpose do they serve?
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Extend social services to the poor, training
them to think/act like middle-class
Certainty that science, technology and free
markets would bring affluence
Community of activists develops
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With the Vietnam War, funds for the Great
Society decrease and people’s attention is
focused elsewhere
“Guns or butter”
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Voter fraud and interference
 Ex: Mingo Co, WVa
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Appalachian political machines
 Ex: Turners in Breathitt Co
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“Coal had been at the core of central
Appalachia’s economic distress since WWII.”
New technologies=unemployment in
underground mines=emergence of surface
mining
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1968: #9 mine of Consolidation Coal
Company in WVa explosion: 78 miners die
due to accident from coal dust/methane gas
UMWA Pres expresses sympathy, but blames
it on “inherent dangers”
Workers furious: within a few months, more
than 40,000 miners launch an unauthorized 3
week strike that shuts down industry
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Black lung compensation, mine safety and
union reform, better health care, ending strip
mining
Nothing united activists, small land owners
and educated mountaineers like strip mining!
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There were laws passed to regulate it, but
they were weak and poorly enforced
Buffalo Creek, WVa disaster ignites a
firestorm of activists demanding ban on strip
mining
 125 people dead, 4,000 homeless
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Set up federal guidelines, but left
enforcement to states, failed to protect
private property and compensate landowners
A ‘watered down’ bill that legislators and
Pres. Carter knew would pass
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In Appalachian counties, coal companies paid
minimal taxes
 Ex: in 14 WV counties, 25 co’s owned 17% of land
but paid only 3% of property taxes
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Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC)
and Save our Homeplace campaign :
 Unmined minerals should be taxed no differently
than any other property
 A constitutional amendment that limited coal
companies from using land w/out consent of
owner and requiring co’s to pay for damages
caused by mining
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Severance taxes are taxes on the removal of a
depletable resource, and are common around
the country—about 36 states have them.
KY: The coal severance tax is placed on the
gross value of coal severed or processed
(washed and loaded) in Kentucky. It’s set at
4.5%, $298 million in 2012
Education and social programs like education technology,
reading in schools, the Robinson Scholars program,
Pikeville Medical College scholarships, and Operate Unite;
 Coal-related programs concerning mine safety, energyrelated economic development projects and research,
workers’ compensation for injured miners, and mining
engineering scholarship programs;
 Projects like senior centers, cemeteries, ball fields, parks,
tourism projects, community centers, library supplies,
ambulances and fire trucks;
 Water and sewer projects for which bonds have been
issued that will be paid back through future severance tax
monies.
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What began as a campaign to bring poor
people into the mainstream became a
battleground of American values:
environmental quality, welfare reform, public
decision making and economic development
The Appalachian studies movement sought
to bring recognition and appreciation for the
culture and history
 (read quote from Ellers’ book)