“A lot of what we’re doing is saying, ‘No, it is not monolithic.’ Appalachia is a thirteen-state region that is diverse in every way that a region can be diverse in terms of race, in terms of gender and sexuality, in terms of size of cities and rurality. In all of the ways that it can be diverse, it is diverse.”
In the latest episode of the University of Press podcast, The UPside, we sat down (virtually) with the Editor and Associate Editor of Journal of Appalachian Studies, Rebecca Scott and Meredith McCarroll, and Guest Editor Wilburn Hayden, Jr. to discuss a new special issue on Black Appalachia, the importance of peer reviewers, an editorial transition in the Journal’s future, the difficulty of defining Appalachia, and more. You can listen to the podcast here or read below for a transcript of the conversation.
UIP: Welcome to the University of Illinois Press podcast, The UPside. I’m Mary Warner, the Journals Marketing Assistant for the Press, and today I’m excited to present our podcast highlighting a special issue of Journal of Appalachian Studies. Volume 30, Issue 1, focuses on Black Appalachia, and we’ll be discussing the editorial process behind the issue, the articles, and much more.
I’m joined today by editor of the journal, Dr. Rebecca Scott:
RS: Hi, thank you for having me, it’s great to be here.
…as well as associate editor Dr. Meredith McCarroll:
MM: Thanks for having us.
…and guest editor Dr. Wilburn Hayden, Jr.
WH: Howdy, great to be here.
UIP: Before we dive into our questions, I’m sure our listeners would love to get to know you all better. Rebecca, could you please start us off by telling us a bit about your background, including how and when you became involved with Journal of Appalachian Studies?
RS: Hi. I should say that I’m from West Virginia, I grew up in West Virginia. I went to WVU as an undergrad and I’m sure it’s a pretty familiar story that everybody knows that I couldn’t really find work there. I couldn’t really find a way to stay in West Virginia and ended up doing my PhD in Santa Cruz. At that time, I got interested in environmental issues, and of course, mountaintop removal was going on, starting to really become prominent in the media at that time around 2000. And so that’s where I got the inspiration for my work on mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia. My interest is really in the intersections of human social inequalities and environmental destruction.
My work right now is looking at the creation of Appalachia as a sacrifice zone. You know, the way that some of the issues that we talk about in this particular issue of the Journal, the way that the erasure of Black Appalachians and the construction of the region as a white region not only plays into the social construction of white supremacism in the U.S., but also creates some of the conditions of possibility for the environmental harm that we see in the region through extractive practices like mining and logging and fracking. So that’s kind of where my work is at. And because some of my work is really interested in the construction of Appalachia as a region, the kind of dualistic view of it as sort of like this pure place of White America, and also a place where it’s like a degraded backwards kind of whiteness. Those kinds of images that get made in the media about this mythological Appalachia. That’s part of my interest and part of what my work is about.
So, when the editorship came open for the Journal of Appalachian Studies in 2020, I was really interested in getting involved. And that’s when I started in 2020. I’m about to finish up my tenure as editor, and I guess I can say that Meredith is actually going to be stepping into take over the role in 2025. So, that’s awesome. We’re going to be in super great hands. It’s going to be an exciting new chapter.
UIP: So exciting to hear! So, Meredith, you’re actually up next along with an introduction. I’d love to hear about a bit about your current role as associate editor and how you ended up in that position, and also maybe a bit about your future role as editor and what you’ll be taking on.
MM: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think, as Becky said, a lot of us have a similar story. I grew up in Appalachia from Western North Carolina, went to Appalachian State University. But I wasn’t really thinking about Appalachia or Appalachian studies when I was an undergraduate, or even when I went on to graduate school. I was studying African American literature and film and critical whiteness studies. And it wasn’t until toward the end of my PhD program that I started thinking about the ways that I could apply the critical race theory lens to look at region. And that was actually really because I went to a reading of the Affrilachian poets, who we might be able to talk about later in our conversation. But that brought me back to think about, to kind of apply that critical lens to Appalachian studies. I pay a lot of attention to not only the hidden—or erased, not hidden, but really intentionally erased—history of Blacks in Appalachia. But also, I’ve been thinking a lot about and writing a lot about the ways that whiteness in Appalachia is normalized and made invisible, and therefore given a lot of power.
So, my first book is called Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film, and then I co-edited Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Response to Hillbilly Elegy. So, my work really is looking at constructions of identity and power, often intersecting with race in the region. And I have taught literature and writing for a couple of decades, and I just left an academic position in order to learn more about publishing. I’ve enjoyed being on the writing side of publishing and have had an opportunity to kind of pull back the curtain and see what’s on the other side. And so that was part of why I was really excited when the Associate Editor position came open so that I could get in at that ground level and understand the nitty gritty, all the all the ins and outs of how a journal gets made. Then, as you heard, I will be trying to replace Becky as the new editor. I’ll be beginning that role, kind of in transition right now. So, I’ve been able to see a couple of different steps in the process with the Journal, which has been fun.
UIP: Great. Thank you so much for that background! Finally, Wilburn, could you please give us an overview of your background and how your academic career informed this issue?
WH: Yes, I grew up in Winston Salem, which is in the Appalachian region, Forsyth County. When I was completing my MSW from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, I had a final field Practicum at Clinch Valley—then it was Clinch Valley College. I think it’s called Clinch Valley University or University of Virginia now. I think that’s the title. And there, one of my supervisors was Dr. Helen Lewis and Helen, in a very subtle way but fairly direct, opened the door to my Appalachian identity. From that point on, it was just part of who I was. I’ve taught in three different Appalachian universities. Since 1973, I’ve been doing a number of projects from publications to research activism, throughout the region, and I’ve be in and out of the region over this time period. And it’s just who I am, being an Appalachian.
UIP: Thank you all so much for those introductions, and welcome again to The UPside.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with the Journal, the Journal of Appalachian Studies (or JAS) is the official journal of the Appalachian Studies Association, a multi-disciplinary organization for scholars, teachers, activists, and others whose work focuses on the Appalachian region. The journal publishes articles of interest to scholars pertaining to Appalachia, especially but not limited to culture, ethnographic research, health, literature, land use, and racialized populations, including Indigenous groups. You can learn more about the Journal, including how to subscribe, submit your own work, or read online, at https://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/?id=jas.
Now that we know a little bit more about the Journal and each of you, Wilburn, as the guest editor, could you give us a brief overview of the focus of this special issue, Black Appalachia?
WH: Yes, the focus pulls together some historical, some analysis. It starts in Cullowhee, the Valley of Lilies, in which Liz Harper and Adam Thomas pulled together and documented the coming existence of Western Carolina University, particularly as the as the contributions of Black and Indigenous people were involved. And then we move to an opportunity to look at how the Black Lives movements state the perspective of Blacks in the region, going back to Blair Mountain. And Kristan McCullum gives us a look at a historical Black school in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Then we followed with a number of podcasts and book reviews that give a wider area than the articles do as resources in which people can continue to follow up and look at other aspects of Appalachia.
There’s a piece in which I’ve been involved in: we’re just trying to put together the Appalachian region—ARC, I should say—counties by the census data in terms of race. And then we just sort of pull it all together, I guess, in terms of trying to say, “Hey, look! This is part of our history, as Appalachians.”
UIP: So, how did this issue come to be? Can you all walk us through the original ideation of the topic and the editorial process leading to publication?
WH: I think maybe I should start! We were at one of our editorial board meetings, and we were talking about various possible special issues that we may engage in. Then this conversation came toward looking at Blacks in the region, and I sort of slid it down slowly in my chair, hoping no one would pay attention. But in the discussion, it was clear I needed to volunteer. So, that’s how it came about from my end. It was just like, okay, who’s up? And it was me. So, I took it.
RS: Yeah, we were talking about all the different kinds of themed issues that people were proposing. We had a call for themed issues and we’re going to have another one coming up next year on material culture in Appalachia. We have one in the works about intersectional approaches to gender. Previously we had a themed issue around LGBT issues in Appalachia. So, we’ve had different kinds of issues, and it was clear that we needed to have an issue on Black Appalachia. Also, it’s a large interest area for our Association and, as we mentioned before in the popular imagination and in histories, and in the academic representation, and all kinds of representations of Appalachia, Black communities and histories get erased. And there’s this continual kind of reproduction of Appalachia as a white region. So, the talking back to that has got to be a constant effort, too, so this issue is part of that ongoing work.
MM: And then I’ll just add something that Dr. Hayden probably can’t say about himself. But we’re lucky to have this really top scholar in this topic be able to lead us as a guest editor. When I first was turning my attention to thinking about race in the region, I did my homework, and I read lots of articles and followed those research trails and so many of those trails led to Wilburn Hayden and his work. He’s been really focused on paying close attention to Black Appalachian and bringing those stories and the facts around Black Appalachia to the surface for many years. And so, that’s something that he wouldn’t be able to say about himself necessarily, but it’s really important to be able to point out that we have not just someone who’s kind of reaching or new in a certain area. But we really have the person who has been paying attention to Black Appalachia for a really long time serve as the guest editor here.
UIP: Yeah, that’s amazing. So, diving into the issue, Wilburn, in the issue’s introduction, you mention difficulties around finding peer reviewers to read the articles. Can you talk a bit about what the role of peer reviewer entails and why it’s so important? Did you run into any other challenges in creating this special issue?
WH: Well, I think that trying to get peer reviews perhaps, was the most difficult. I mean, I think we lost about a year and a half trying to get people to read the articles that we have. And it’s really interesting, because at the heart, at the core of academia, is peer review. But so many of us have so much on our plate—and other reasons as well—it’s just not something that’s appealing, it’s not rewarded so much for those that are pursuing tenure. It’s almost hidden from the public view, you can’t talk about “I did that review for such and such’s article.” So, it’s almost one of those things that we define in academia as central, but we don’t have any way of keeping people or having people to do that that’s measurable. So, when it’s time, if I’m sitting here and I have you send me a note to review an article and I’ve got two papers I’m working on, I have classes, I have that. It drops to the bottom of the list.
I understand in my colleagues why it is a problem, but it makes, from an editor standpoint a real difficult thing to get a handle on because you have to have the peer review people to be there. I guess the second thing I would add is that just that trying to get scholars, particularly Black scholars, even though we’re not—you know, anybody can write about Black Appalachians. No racial mandate to do that. But it becomes really difficult because any Black scholars have all these other things that I was speaking to in terms of peer review, and students, Black students, come to us all the time to get involved in it. So, there are numbers of my colleagues I hoped to be included in here, and they were following along, but at some point, their priorities shift. And therefore, we weren’t able to include a number of other scholars because they just didn’t have time to do it. Those are the two biggest things I think that, for me, made it difficult and dragged out the whole process. It’s just made it very difficult.
RS: Yeah, I would just add that the challenge of finding peer reviewers is always there. It’s really hard to find peer reviewers. People just sort of find it pretty easy to put that, like Wilburn said, on the bottom of the pile, and when they have so many different kinds of balls in the air and people are more and more stressed in academia by having the kind of increase of work that the financial crises where people aren’t getting replaced, jobs aren’t getting replaced, and people who are in the jobs have more and more work on their plate. I think also just the Journal of Appalachian Studies in general has not a huge, huge community out there that works in Appalachia, It’s a relatively small community, and a lot of people who see that word “Appalachia,” then they think that’s a specialized thing that I don’t know anything about or I’m not interested in. You could be talking about environmental issues, for example. And then, “oh, you’re talking about Appalachian environmental issues,” you know. So, there is that also that part of the American academic community.
UIP: Yeah, I could see how that would really pose a difficult challenge. And on the other hand, is there anything that went particularly well during the creation of this issue?
MM: One of the things that I was trying to figure out if I wanted to talk about as a challenge or something that went well, and it’s sort of both: I wondered, Wilburn, if you could talk a little bit about gathering the census data and your decision to include certain counties that the ARC, the Appalachian Regional Commission, does not include. To me, that was a really interesting thing as a reader, thinking about the ways that we draw these borders and decide what is Appalachia and what’s not Appalachia, and how it’s very political, the way that these borders are made. And I know, in a couple of counties, Wilburn, you extended and included some other counties, and that to me was maybe a little bit challenging to make that decision, but also is something that I think is going to be really important about the work that you are presenting. Do you want to talk about that?
WH: Yeah, the ARC’s definition of what counties are in the region is a political definition, come out of the great society. And if you look back at that history, a part of the history is the fact that Johnson was trying to get votes in Congress, just sure that it passed, the whole Appalachian package. So, that sort of came about by linking counties together, who many people before then didn’t consider to be Appalachian counties, but it touches or was contiguous to the area, and it made sense from a political standpoint, to include them to get that vote. There have been a numerous other ways of trying to define overall, since I’ve been involved now, who is and who isn’t.
Some people like to stay with Central Appalachia, which is essentially Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and beyond. But I like the ARC for a lot of reasons. One is that’s it’s geographical: the Coal seam that we dig from Alabama to Maine, and goes all the way to Scotland, it makes sense to me. I like that the fact that we do include those other counties that went out of the traditional way of happening. A couple of things in my work that struck me in part in terms of that political decision: some places, some counties, some cities in the region didn’t want to be tagged with being Appalachia. And one particular—hope I don’t step on any Roanoke people’s toes—but Roanoke City was one. Roanoke County and Roanoke City, were ones that decided they didn’t want to be a part of it. From my work, it’s very clear, all the characteristics we talk about, about Appalachians, particularly Appalachians living in cities and towns: it was part of it. So, I included them into my definition. I say ARC, but it’s ARC plus one, plus two, and then in a couple of counties in Tennessee, that because the city or town is located right on the line, it made sense to include them in in the discussion of it.
I would say, in short, that you know it’s a moving definition. When I first did the census in 1980, there were 413 counties. I think when I first started doing this work, there were 95 counties of Black concentration. Much smaller, and every year some people wake up and say, Yeah, I think we can get some of this money, and then they go through the process and they become a part of the ARC. So we’re around 424 I think is the official count. And if you add Roanoke, there’s 425 counties.
RS: I could just add that the contributors are a definite plus. We have some great articles in the issue. And, you know, they’re covering different things like contemporary Black Lives Matter, histories of universities like Western Carolina University. It’s just a diverse group of things, and we really appreciate the contributors bringing their expertise to this issue.
UIP: That’s great. Thank you so much. So, Rebecca and Meredith, as editorial staff working on all of the issues of JAS, why did you feel this special issue was valuable in the larger context of the Journal? And in the same vein, how do you feel it contributes to the mission of the Appalachian Studies Association?
RS: I think the Appalachian Studies Association has a really strong commitment to inclusion and to uncovering the histories and regional complexities that the processes of regionalization in our national culture are constantly making difficult. When Appalachia is imagined and mythologized as a white place, it erases all kinds of complex histories of Indigenous people, of Black people, of mixed-race people, of all the kinds of histories that come together and make this a really complex area. Part of what the Appalachian Studies Association is really committed to is helping to create a more accurate picture of Appalachia. It’s difficult because the region is just so mythologized and so othered in the American imagination as a white place. Part of the work is uncovering the histories, part of the work is creating new ways to picture the region, including LGBT representation, immigrant histories, histories of the Black and Indigenous people who participated in the creation of the region itself, and all of those kinds of things.
The Journal and the Association are both really committed to that kind of work, and we hope that this publication is just the beginning. It’s not like we can have a token Black Appalachia issue and have all the other issues be unmarked white issues. This is just a beginning, and it’s one issue, but hopefully it will help encourage scholars of color, diverse scholars to submit their work to the Journal, because we definitely are an audience for it, we definitely want it. We want to include it, not just in special issues, but all throughout all the issues of the Journal. That’s one of the big contributions that this issue makes is just sort of getting that ball rolling and making sure that we have the representation we need.
MM: Yeah, I’ll just add, I think it’s really important that the Journal of Appalachian Studies aligns with the mission of Appalachian Studies Association and the Appalachian Studies Association was established as a gathering of scholars, activists, and practitioners who often felt like they were doing their work in isolation. So, to come together and to find other people who are working in this field, paying attention to Appalachia, has been really important for a lot of people for over forty years. There is such a powerful voice saying that Appalachia is this monolithic place, and so when we get together, and when we bring our words together in the Journal, we’re constantly pushing back against that voice that is really pervasive, saying what Appalachia is. A lot of what we’re doing is saying, “No, it is not monolithic.” It’s a thirteen-state region that is diverse in every way that a region can be diverse in terms of race, in terms of gender and sexuality, in terms of size of cities and rurality. In all of the ways that it can be diverse, it is diverse.
I think of this issue as one moment of many, as Becky was saying, that we will continue to push back and say, “Nope, this is important. We got to look at the history. Forget that story that you’re hearing. These are the actual histories of this school, of this university, all of these different perspectives that are present in this issue.” But I think it’s really important to know that this has been ongoing for many years within the Association. There’s a long history of pushing back against those misrepresentations of the region, and I think it’s important to note that Doctor Hayden was one of what year were you President of Appalachian Studies Association?
WH: I think it was 1988—in the eighties, I think.
MM: Okay, yeah, so his work has been highlighted. He’s been very involved in the Association for a long time, and one of the neat things that he’s done that readers will have access to in this journal, that I think he’s been doing on his own for a while, is tracking when we get together at the conference which papers are paying attention to Black Appalachia. Do you want to say a little bit about that, Wilburn?
WH: Yes, from 1989 or at some point, I just started saying, “Okay, let’s see what we’ve done, for that particular year of that conference.” So, people can get a sheet of paper that has for this particular year: here are Black-focused sessions that you may want to attend. And it’s just been growing and growing. And we initially thought about including it, but trying to get that together from my rough memory would have been a lot of headaches. It’s just been something that many scholars have contacted me about, “Have you got your list out?” And it goes out, and it just highlights that we have been involved. I think last year I did a count, and we had about thirty sessions that were Black-focused. Within those sessions there was often at least four papers in there. So, there were four times thirty scholars presenting at the Appalachia Studies Conference around issues of Black people. That’s just refreshing. I can remember some of the earlier conferences that we were lucky to have four or five focused on Black perspectives. So that’s been very refreshing for me to watch and be involved in the process of more research coming toward Black folks.
UIP: And in that vein can I ask, given the long history that you both just described of the ASA and the Journal focusing on Black Appalachia, why do you feel like now is an especially important time for the Journal to be highlighting it in a dedicated special issue?
WH: Yes, first of all, Black people have been a part of the Appalachian experience since the beginning of colonization. So, we’ve always been in the region, and some were free, some were slaves. So, that’s been part of it. We live in a time in which you’re having to, as Meredith was saying, we’re having to claim that we are not one large group of white folks, that we are very diverse. We have lots of populations involved in it. In terms of Black people, in the last few decades, we have begun to portray, or present that there are a number of us, which wasn’t the case years ago. So, I think what’s important for this issue and for looking at Black—it unmasked Black Appalachians within our region. It says, yes, we’re here. We’ve been here. And the issue itself points to that: here are some things that we’ve been involved in, and some things you need to look at, if you take the position that this is a white country in terms of Appalachia.
MM: I think it’s my hope that this is not an especially important topic right now. I don’t think that this issue is about a particular moment. This would always be an important special issue to come out. It’s always important to keep focusing on the racial diversity of the region. To me, and we may have different opinions on it, but I feel like it’s always an important topic, not that it’s necessarily timely. It’s always timely.
RS: I totally agree that it’s always timely, and it’s always necessary, and we do hope to have an ongoing conversation about Black Appalachia, not just in special issues that may come out in the future, but also in all the other issues. Because, like I said, it’s not one token issue, and then the rest is unmarked. But I will say that I do think that it’s kind of a good time for this issue to be coming out because our national conversation is polarized around race and there’s some tendencies in some rural states, especially the state I’m living in, which is Missouri, for these kinds of conversations to get shut down, or for diversity and equity and inclusion efforts to get shut down. And so, I think in that space it’s important for us to be louder than ever. I’m really happy that the issue is coming out at this time.
UIP: Yeah, all fantastic points, and looking forward to seeing what the Journal publishes on Black Appalachia in future issues. So, Wilburn, could you walk us through what readers can expect from the articles in the issue and explain why you thought the articles were a particularly good fit?
WH: Yeah, I was thinking about that. And I think it’s going to take a lot of time to sort of pinpoint each one of them from beyond what I said earlier about the articles. I guess the thing I would say is: check it out! When it comes out, form your own opinions and look at what we’re trying to do in that issue.
UIP: Yeah, hopefully, readers will take the chance to check it out!
And if you’re looking to check it out, the articles in this issue which were mentioned briefly earlier in the podcast include, “‘Woven into the fabric:’ The Legacy and Labor That Built a University” by Liz Harper and Adam Thomas, which documents how Western Carolina University came into possession of the land on which the university was built. The second article is Mich Nyawalo’s “Multiculturalism in the Coal Mines: Re-interpreting the Battle of Blair Mountain in the Age of Black Lives Matter,” which connects the activism growing out of the Black Lives Matter movement and the unity of Black and White miners and their supporters in the struggle against labor exploitation and state violence at Blair Mountain. And, finally, Kristan L. McCullum’s work “‘You will always be’: Remembering a Historically Black School in the Mountains of Eastern Kentucky” employs “subjective truth” and oral histories to reflect on Dunham High School, a segregated Black school in the Consolidation Coal Company town of Jenkins, Kentucky. All three of those brief synopses were from the introduction to the issue, written by Wilburn Hayden, which I highly recommend readers check out as well.
And you also mentioned this earlier, but you contributed some research notes. It would be great to hear more about that, if you would like to talk about it and how they fit into the overall issue?
WH: Yeah, what I’ve done is compile the list of 420 counties that are ARC or associated with ARC, and I used the 2020 U.S. census. The first time I did this was for the 1980 census. For the last four decades, I guess that would be, some kind of way got the census out into the Appalachian public agenda. I stay with the categories which the US census uses, which is with total population: white, Black Americans, and American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Native Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders, some other race, 2 or more races. Those categories are ones that the census has put together. When you see it, you would see each county, each state, and all the Appalachian counties based on those categories. It is more of a platform, a starting point for people who want to look at the numbers in terms of Black people. I didn’t attempt to do any analysis of the work. Some of the other pieces I did do—actually two things I would want to highlight when you look at it. I use a form of 4,000 Black folks in a county based on the 1980 census, when I did a mean of what it was for all the counties in the region, and it came around 4,000. So, what I’ve done each year I’ve done this, each decade I’ve done this, I look at those counties that have at least 4,000, and see how they touch other counties around those numbers.
What I came up with is that most Black folks in the region live in the cities and towns where there’s a university or some other population of employment opportunities. What that means then, is when you look at Appalachia, if you’re only looking at the rural areas, you will miss Black people. It’s easy then to, if you just stayed in the rural counties, to say it’s a white area. But that’s not all of Appalachia. Appalachia includes all cities and towns. So, one of the things that my work then points to is the fact that Black and white people live in different spheres for the most part, but we all are Appalachians, and we should all be looked at when we are looking at the region as a whole, as in any counties. So, I think that’s part of that.
And then, because I’ve got this out over four decades, you can go back and do some looking in terms of what counties have gotten less. It’s hard, though, because the census has made some political choices over the years of how they’re going to include certain groups. So, you can’t really do direct comparisons, say, with 1980 Black populations or any racial groups, because they changed some definitions. For example, up until 2020—no, I think it was 2010 census—we were pulling out Hispanic groups as part of the racial group. So, if you try to do those, you know, you really try to compare those times before to this one, you have got to try to figure out how to sort out that group. things like that shifted over the years and you really can’t do that. Now it’s strictly racial, so Hispanics, they have another category for Hispanics, but they don’t show up in the racial categories. So, in part of that, I think, at one point, I don’t know many of you remember and I think it was in the nineties, there was concern that too many racial groups was going to change the mix. And so that by including Hispanics, which I think we found out in one census, is that something like 97% of the Hispanic population would identify it’s race as white. And so that boosted up, because of Congressional records, it boosted up the white populations within the U.S., in particular in Appalachian as well. So, the census has always been a place in which there will be pull and take, and how we’re going to find things about it.
UIP: So interesting to hear about. And this might be a bit difficult to narrow down, but what are some of the main takeaways you all hope that readers come away with from the issue with?
WH: For me, this has always been in the core of my work: that we are here. This work just says that Black folks are part of Appalachia, and that’s what’s been driving me for the three, four, five decades I’ve been doing this.
MM: And just to look again at Appalachia, and don’t assume that you know what Appalachia is.
RS: Yeah. And also, just to, what they both already said, get a more accurate picture of Appalachian history and present and the kinds of things that are happening there that are not what is always portrayed in the media, and how the region is portrayed.
UIP: Another broader question, but are there any further areas of research related to the topic of Black Appalachia, or the intersection of race and Appalachian Studies in general, that you would love to see more academics pursue (and possibly publish in JAS in the future)? Maybe you could inspire some of the listeners!
RS: Yeah, absolutely. I would love to see more work, especially intersectional work, that defies the categories of white or Black Appalachia. Intersectional work that brings contextual analysis to things like race and gender and environmental justice activism, for example. I think that would be a super-rich area for articles in our Journal. So, what Wilburn mentioned, the urban Appalachia… What are environmental activists doing in urban Appalachia? How was race and gender involved in that activism and those particular issues? I would be thrilled to see more of that kind of work in the Journal. I’m sure I could think of other things, but that’s the first one that I was really excited to mention.
WH: I think about, if I would respond to that with a different perspective, in that the research in general in the region really depends on scholars doing the work. So, for me, one of the things which is important is that we have to do a better job in our Appalachian Studies programs within the region of attracting Black students. When I go to the Appalachian universities that have a program, it’s a white program. Well, most of them. And I think, as Helen did to me, we as academia, white academics, really need to figure out why is it that—in fact, I probably can go on a limb and probably get a bunch of calls about this, but I think you probably can go on the campus and ask Black students what you think of Appalachian Studies, and they will have the same misconception of the region that it’s a white studies area.
So, one of the things that I would like to see to increase the productivity is to figure out how to do, as I said before, as Helen did to me, open up the notion that you have a Black identity, but you also have an Appalachian identity, and you should seriously look at Appalachian Studies program as your major, because to me, that’s where scholarship comes out of. It comes out of the undergrads. I mean, a lot of us who are taught in doctoral and graduate programs tend to don’t make that connection. But through the undergraduate programs, people get excited, and those who want to go beyond as teachers, as scholars, then we can identify them. But if there are not even black students in your class, then you can’t. You don’t have the opportunity to bring them into the fold, and then, once we do that, we will have a much richer collection of research coming out, as we see in our Appalachian Studies Conference. We’ve got to do a much better job, I think, in opening up, of figuring out how we can attract undergraduates into our Appalachian Studies programs. Those of us who’ve been teaching a long time know that most undergraduates change their mind five times before they settle. So, we have an opportunity, if we can connect with Black students, to bring them into Appalachian Studies, and then we will see more and more contributions, I think.
UIP: Yeah, another great point. So, finally, do you have any recommendations for resources or other scholarship for interested listeners to further explore if they want to learn more about Black Appalachia after reading this issue (and after checking out the amazing books and media reviewed in the issue)?
MM: So many! There’s so much great work out there. I’ll start with: I mentioned the Affrilachian poets earlier—that really for me was the gateway of thinking about how I could take my work in race and apply it to region, and I think that that intersection of thinking about race and region that so many of the Affrilachian poets are writing about can be really inspiring. A new Affrilachian poet that I’m really excited about is NitaJade Jackson, who is at Emory and Henry University. You should check out her poetry.
In terms of sociology, Karida Brown has a great book called Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia that I would really recommend. That’s with University of North Carolina Press, it came out in 2018. That book really kind of complicates in important ways what we think of in terms of Black migration. I’m looking closely at that.
The last one I’ll say is a new book by Crystal Wilkinson called Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts that is pulling together family recipes, family history, there’s some poetry in there. It’s a really interesting cross-genre publication that is beautiful, and again complicates what you might think of as Appalachian, Appalachian food ways, and tells a more accurate representation of at least one family’s Black Appalachian stories.
WH: Yeah. And I would add the Appalachian Studies Conference as a place where, as I said earlier, we had over thirty sessions—that’s not individual presentations—at the Appalachian Studies Conference. So, it’s one to really get in. And most of that is cutting-edge stuff. It’s contemporary, but also a lot of historical. I would have to push the conference, and we meet in March throughout the region as one place if you really want to get a dose of what’s happening, research-wise and activist-wise, that will be the place that you should be at.
Another plug for something that I’m involved in the next probably year, maybe a little bit longer. The Turner and Cabbell book Blacks in Appalachia, which has been a mainstay in Appalachia since 1985 when it was published. There’s a bunch of us who are now doing an update, and it won’t have any of the old articles, but it’ll be a whole new version of it. I will say, keep an eye on that. University of Kentucky is going to be its publisher. And it will provide a whole array, it’s almost like an anthology that we have poems, we have analysis, we have historical. It has everything in there. It’s going to be a wealth for resources. The people who are doing it are Cicero Fain, Sheena Harris-Hayes, Bill Turner from the original, and myself, and it will be titled Blacks in Appalachia: Been to the Mountaintop, so keep an eye up on that one.
Then I’ll add a selfish plug: you know, my website is under reconstruction. It’s been that way for, like—I had it up for like, six, seven years, and I thought it was time to do something different. So, at some point I have in there, it’s really Black Canadians, Black Appalachians, and the Black Diaspora. It’s all stuff that I like, what I want to say about it, in terms of research documentations on the region will be another resource that people could draw on. But it’s in progress.
RS: That forthcoming book. All that sounds fantastic. I’m going to be really excited to see that. I would shout out the podcast Black in Appalachia. That’s a great resource. And as a sociologist, I kind of have to shout out Joe Trotter, a labor historian. His classic work is Coal, Class, and Color Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32. He’s got some additional newer books about Black labor and the making of America. So, Joe Trotter is a great resource.
UIP: Yeah, thank you all. Those all sound like amazing resources. I think it’s about time for us to wrap up the episode, so I wanted to say again what a pleasure it was to have you all on the podcast to discuss this new special issue of Journal of Appalachian Studies.
Thank you to editor of the Journal, Rebecca Scott, and associate editor, Meredith McCarroll, for the care and work that you put into editing every issue of the Journal and for being here today. And thank you so much to guest editor Wilburn Hayden, Jr., for your fantastic work on this issue and for joining us to give our listeners a preview of Volume 30, Issue 1.
RS: It’s been great to be here. Thank you so much.
MM: Yeah, thanks so much.
WH: Yes, thank you very much.
UIP: And a big thank you to our listeners for tuning in to celebrate the thirtieth volume year of Journal of Appalachian Studies. To learn more about the Journal, please visit go.illinois.edu/JAS.
For further reading on related topics, the University of Illinois Press is also the publisher of Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of American Folklore, and American Music. The Press has also published several relevant books, including The Ruined Anthracite: Historical Trauma in Coal-Mining Communities by Paul A. Shackel, Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story by Cicero M. Fain III, and African American Miners and Migrants: The Eastern Kentucky Social Club by Thomas E. Wagner and Phillip J. Obermiller. You can view all of those and more at press.illinois.edu. Thank you.