Impoverished and backward area continues to haunt the region to this day. Indeed, many residents have absorbed and inverted negative stereotypes of the region and its people and have constructed new identities for thems based upon how they think they are perceive asmed classic example of this, i think is the recent bestselling book hillbilly elegy a book well turn to later on in this lecture. For these reasons, it is beholden on us to understand how appalachia stereotypes have evolved over time and how theyve been mobilized for the benefit of outsiders and those who live here. I would like to start our story with a negative stereotype. I want to dissect a negative impassenger of appalachians in American Culture, beginning in the mid to late 19th century. Among the oldest and perhaps most persistent aspects of the outside worlds view of the people of the mountain south is their cultural and economic backwardness, supposed backwardness. Edgar allen poe set one of his early short stories First Published in 1844 in a fiction aloe case situated to the south and west of charlottesville, virginia. He titled this short story the Ragged Mountains and its interesting partly because its the only short story poe set in virginia despite having attended university here, or in at that point virginia. Those hills, those Ragged Mountains, according to the main characters of the story were a place of dreary isolation. And were steeped in a, quote, solitude that seemed absolutely virgin. The narrator feared the area because of local tales regarding the, quote, uncouth and fierce races of men who tended to their groves and caverns. This early gothic rendering of appalachia touches on two themes that would become mainstays of outside perceptions of the region and its people. First, the mountains are geographically isolated, and this becomes a key factor in the development of the hillbilly stereotype. Second, the geographic isolation of the region shelters the people of the mountains from modernity. Three modern traditions according to those who subscribe to this image, survive in isolation in appalachia. The southern mountains in the words of one observer who well turn to in greater detail later on are populated by, quote, our though the image of the mountain south as a backward and isolated region has existed in one way or another for centuries, these stereotypes only became rooted in the National Consciousness after the civil war. Indeed, scholars argued that the whole idea of appalachia as he unique cultural and geographic region came into existence only in the late 19th century, and it came into existence for two reasons. One, the rise of what is known as local color or regional literature in national magazines. And two, the rapid industrialization of the mountains resulting from the rise of the extraction industries. But before we turn to these topics, we must remember the United States in the 1870s and 1880s was a nation seeking to understand itself and its place in the world in the aftermath of extraordinary tragedy and in the midst of rapid economic change. The country as we have seen it in past lectures emerged battered after the 1860s following decades of sectional strife and the devastation of civil war. Americans particularly in the north understandably chose to look at the possibilities of a new future rather than turn to the recent painful past. The u. S. In the gilded age was a nation infatuated with economic expansion, industrialization, and progress. Indeed, americans were aware they were living in a period of change and conscious that their country had emerged on the global stage as a world power. American progress and ingenuity had brought into being Thomas Jeffersons dream of an empire of liberty. In this environment of optimism and in the face of the new, the stubborn persistence of old customs in the Appalachian Mountains seemed a strange anomaly. Lets go back to local color literature. Industrialization brought prosperity to American Cities and resulted in the swelling of the urban middle class. This new middle class had wealth and leisure time. Though economically well off, many northern urbanites craved distraction from the tedium of the mundane and humdrum of everyday life. Many found escape in travel literature and local stories printed and the new monthly magazines that emerged in the years surrounding the war. Magazines such as harpers weekly and cosmopolitan thrived on travel and adventures in the nation and in the world. Appalachia was a region very near the urban centers of the northeast and was in the late 19th century rural and forrested. It was also culturally southern. All of this made it an ideal locale for local color scouts who contrast its picturesque landscapes and people with the new America Emerging in cities of the north. I think at this point, lets turn to our first hand out for an example of local color literature. Published in 1899 in harpers weekly, this is a pretty famous example. It is handout number one, our contemporary ancestors. It is a very brief reading. If you can turn to it quickly with these questions in mind. Who wants to answer that first question . Who wants to take a stab at that . Michael . A highlight from the text in the conditions of the colonial times, i think that is reflective of the colonial economies that the coal industry brought to West Virginia and extorted from the Appalachian Region in general. By saying our contemporary ancestors, he is making a reference to the english colonies themselves, but West Virginia because of this colonial economy has not been able to escape the extortion or colonial economy that made up most of the colonies. So in a way it is still stuck in the past. Benjamin ok. He is certainly touching on this idea of a pastoral colonial past surviving into the present, but what is a contemporary ancestor . How can you have a contemporary ancestor . Arent ancestors deceased . Isnt that the very nature of ones ancestor . They predate you. What is a contemporary ancestor . It is kind of like, um, the evolutionary theory of the caveman. It is like you found the caveman walking around. You know, oh, my gosh. We found one. This is awesome. We found our history. It is almost like a surprise and people approached it with a scientific spirit. We can analyze people and find out where we came from. It is kind of degrading and rather interesting. Benjamin it is degrading. You see with this feuding hillbilly stereotype, you see this idea that these people are subhuman, degraded. That certainly comes up in much of this literature. Again, a contemporary ancestor is who . He or she is somebody who is a past person living amongst us. This is a key component of the emerging pastoral image of appalachia, inhabited by people of a bygone era that survive into the present, almost like a museum. It is like colonial williamsburg, but it actually exists. It is not a museum show, right . Why does the author say that the people in the region are impoverished while those other people in upstate new york are not . What saved the people of upstate new york from poverty . Michael again. In the second paragraph, he goes into this. In upstate new york, the building of the erie canal and the almost interstate linkage of upstate new york with the surrounding metropolises kept it at least in stride with metropolis evolution, societal evolution. Benjamin ok. Anyone else want to Say Something on this . The erie canal is an important component. Yes. Later when he talks about the railroads connecting with West Virginia, how when the railroads came into the region, ideas, businesses, but those businesses were outsiders, so i think it was how isolated the region was when we needed transportation. We wanted transportation from the eastern side and finally got that. Benjamin good, yeah, industrialization, right . Industrialization, the connection to the modern economy saved the poor people of upstate new york from the fate the impoverished hillbillies are suffering, right . So reading between the lines, how might the people of appalachia escape their poverty . How might this conception of our contemporary ancestors, in other words, how might it be abused by outside interest . Yeah, great. It talked about communication as a means of progress. I thought it was interesting. It is almost like communication, being able to read and write is put in a desk on a pedestal. If you can do or this, then you will be able to pull yourself out of poverty. The people of appalachia had a way of communicating that could not be put on a page, you know what i mean . If you can read and stop drinking and stop killing each other, you can be saved, but it is a derogatory way of looking at them. Benjamin you have hit the nail on the head there. They are saying through progress that these people can be saved. What is progress . It is integration into the national economy, american progress, this idea of america that has come into being in the gilded age, yeah. That is what according to frost can save these people. I think that is the underlying assertion here. You can see how, for instance, when we look at the rise of the extraction industries, we talk about land seizures. You can see how this thinking could be used to justify certain actions. It is all in the name of progress. Perhaps these people dont know what is best for them, we know what is best. All right, great, guys. While the local color literature saw appalachian traditions as quaint curiosities, much of the south viewed the region has embarrassments, and obstacle to progress. We have seen in our discussion in the feud book how state authorities from kentucky and West Virginia only really got involved in the hatfieldmccoy feud after the Railroad Industry had brought outside investment and National Attention to the area. The wheeling intelligence a , newspaper out of wheeling, bemoaned the effects that the National Coverage of feud violence had fueled industry in the state. Capitalists refuse to come in prospect because they fear our outlaws. You cannot get them to go into the interior for fear they will be ambushed. The people of the mountains in the eyes of these capitalists and outlined in the article these people of the mountains with their strange ways, preindustrial agrarian routines and supposedly pensioned for suppose it pensioned supposed penchant for violence had no place in the emergent new south after reconstruction, or during reconstruction. There are obstacles to investment and hinder the advancement of the instruction industry. As such, they should either be reformed in order to make them useful members of the new industrial order or marginalized entirely. Many industrialists and outside investors opted for the latter option, as we see. Coal operators brought in workers in the form of africanamericans in the deep south and Eastern European immigrants, who they believe would be better suited to Industrial Labor and would work longer hours for less pay. As we have seen again in our last few lectures on the extraction industries, the perception of the ignorant mountain folk remember, this is a perception fostered in this local color journalism and within the newspaper coverage of the feud. The perception of the ignorant mountain folk did not make the most of their lands, that the potential of the Mineral Resources of the land was lost on them. This underpinned attempts by outside investors to seize the mineral rights of thousands of acres of land in southern West Virginia and kentucky in the last decades of the 19th century. In the late 19th century, the dismissive hillbilly stereotype became a major justification for the acquisition of Mountain Land and resource by outside investors. Now the question is, this is a depiction of a kentucky moonshiner published in harpers weekly in the 1880s. The question is, what are the real world effects of this stereotype . We talked about how it develops, but did it affect how people perceive appalachians . We can argue about how it came into play when industrialists came into the area to invest in mining, etc. , and how did it affect the people on the ground . To answer that question i want , you to turn to the second page in your packets. One of the things we talked about in the last lecture was the appalachian diaspora in the 1950s during one of those periods of decline in the coal industry. We saw thousands of people from West Virginia, kentucky, North Carolina move into the cities of the midwest and eastern seaboard. This is a problem that continues through the 1960s. What happened to these people when they got to the city . That is what i would like to turn to now. This is a story published in the sunday chicago tribune. Called girl reporter visits the jungle of hillbillies. It depicts a neighborhood on the Upper East Side of chicago that had become associated with rural, southern, workingclass whites who had come into the city to get jobs in factories, namely in the canning and Food Production industry. You see it here, the front page of the chicago sunday tribune. Here is the story. Front page and it stretches over several editions of the magazine, newspaper. Lets take a second to read it. I think this is particularly shocking. If you can take a look, read it, then like we had with the last hand outs, if you could take these questions under consideration, maybe we could talk about it as a group. Ok, that is so many questions about gender, race, but lets start with an easy one. What adjectives does the reporter and her sources use to describe southern migrants . Yes . Um, i think my favorite one or my least favorite one is like a plague of locusts. They have a lower standard of living, a capacity for liquor and savage and vicious tactics, which is most of the time. They have this stereotype in mind when they enter the jungle of the hillbillies and they were not trying to find stories that would help them disprove their bogus claims. They went in with a mindset and i guess they accomplished what they were trying to write. Benjamin great. Yeah . With that theyre like feeding the fire of what is going on. They are not making anything any better. The other article before that was talking about trying to get out of it. They are just making it worse because more people are coming in to see what is going on. They are not helping at all. They call them a rare, strange breed, feuding hillbillies, shooting cousins. Benjamin when we were discussing the feud and the rise of feuding in late 19th century appalachia as a whole, i said, look, this image of the feuding hillbilly will haunt people from the region to this day. This is evidence of this. Where does the notion of the feuding hillbilly come from . From the News Coverage of that feud in the 19th century. It was a major news story that continues, i would argue, to haunt people from appalachia today. This line, all right. Skid row dies, opium parlors and other associated dens of any iniquity are safe as a sunday School Picnic when compared with the joints taken over by the clans of fighting, feuding hillbillies and their shooting cousins, who today constitute one of the most dangerous and lawless elements of chicagos fastgrowing migrant population. So they are linking these internal migrants with the perceived threat of migrants as a whole, linking it with other immigrant groups. I mean, i have this provocative question here at the end of this section here. Many of you here from appalachia, you might be confronted with these similar stereotypes. You might feel when people ask you if you are from West Virginia, whether you might feel that is a loaded question and they might come back with all sorts of assumptions based upon similar stereotypes. That is one of the reasons i wanted to bring this to your attention. Again, we are living in an era of diaspora when many will leave the appalachia for other areas. I feel that if i was in a work situation and somebody asked me where i was from and i said West Virginia and they came back with oh, they are hillbillies, in the mountains, how do you have an education or something along those lines i , would use it as a learning component for them, exposing them to what i grew up with, the beautiful areas and more of the natural learning environments that i got to be around. We had river lots, we went hiking, things like that, and i think it can enhance a childs life. It wasnt the fighting, drunken hillbillies that most people think of. Benjamin ok. It is funny because i lived in chicago for a semester and went to school there, obviously not in 1957, and i know it is different than that time, but i left after a semester because the city was overwhelming for me. That is not to say my story is the same as these migrants who are coming here and working in the sweatshops and stuff, but they call them super unsocial and there is this disconnect between how they are able to connect with the other people in chicago, and i think that might have been because it was a huge Culture Shock for them. It was a Culture Shock on both sides and that was creating this incredible friction and xenophobia that was like crazy. Benjamin wonderful. All right. Anybody else have anything else to add on girl reporter visits the jungle of hillbillies . All right. Michael, last word . Um, i had written down going back to some of the early unionism we saw in West Virginia. I was wondering if since unionism in 1957 was becoming pretty prominent in chicago, this was a way of also suppressing the forming of unions in chicago as well by painting these West Virginians and people from appalachia as backwards, were industrialized trying to make a psychological move saying if you go to the union, you will be backwards as well. Benjamin interesting. Great, all right. Thanks, guys. The mountaineers, as one historian has observed, would become hillbillies and poor whites in the eyes of many as a result of tourism and local color literature. The mountaineers would subsequently become hillbillies and would be seen in this negative light, in other words and light of these phenomenon. It brought the people of the southern mountains to the attention of missionaries who sought to integrate them into contemporary american life. Later in the 20th century, hillbilly culture became a way of dismissing and rationalizing the poverty of the region. All that is to say that that is the root of this negative stereotype. Specifically in the late 19th century. Again, two phenomenon, the local color that became popular in the 1870s and 1880s, and also in light of the attention brought about by industrialization and the rise of the extraction industry. But there is a positive image of appalachia that emerges at the turn of the 20th century, and lets turn to that one now. I would like to start this section by exploring the world which sharp made in america, but first, lets look at who this man is. Now cecil sharp is an interesting character. Many of you have seen the film, song catcher, which is a fictionalized account of his trip, his 19601918 trip through southern appalachia. Cecil sharp is a londoner, and he becomes wrapped up in a form of socialism after attending a lecture by a prominent english designer, socialite, and activist, william morris. He becomes convinced that one of the tragedies of industrial britain, industrial england, is the fact the poor, the working classes, the urban working classes of england have become distant from their rural past, that industrialization has torn them from the countryside and put them in these appalling situations of exploitation in the innercity. He becomes convinced that for any real reform to occur from the bottom up in england, what needs to happen is that the english working classes need to become aware of their own history and their own culture, the culture they developed over millennia in the countryside. So he becomes obsessed with reviving the culture. He founded several prominent institutions and other groups to celebrate the Rural Heritage of england. But the problem he came to realize was that as a byproduct of industrialization, so much had been lost, so much had been lost. He was only really finding the remnants of a past, of past glories in england, so he thought to himself after reading perhaps some of the local color stories and communicating with the United States, he thought where can i go in the English Speaking world where i might find evidence of that pastoral culture . It has to be a place of isolation which has been relatively untouched by industrialization, or so he thought. Over the course of the early to mid 1910s, he goes primarily embarks on a appalachian journey and goes primarily through North Carolina and also southern virginia. He spent about nine days in West Virginia. He thought it was horrible and did not find what he was looking for. He spent most of the time in eastern tennessee and North Carolina. There he finds an extraordinary repository of old ballads that he believed had been passed down from generation to generation and survived in the mountains in isolation. What i want to convey to you is that when he went to appalachia, he was searching for something. He was looking for england enshrined in amber. Preserved. He was not necessarily curious about appalachian culture. He did not care about the culture of africanamericans or italianamerican immigrants. He was looking for english culture as it was preserved in the mountains. That is what he found. He was looking for very specific reasons. He was looking to take those ballads and reimport them to the mother country as a way of reforming the working classes. It is arguable, but some believe that he had even been hoping that such a move would cause a proletarian revolution. Farfetched but nonetheless that is what he was hoping to do. The first to the fruits of his labor was a twovolume set published in 1917 called english folk songs of southern appalachia. This was a phenomenal bestseller both in america and england. It really helped to kickstart a folk revival in those countries. It was republished in 1932 and really draws National Attention to the area in a positive light. These are people who are still living with elizabethan and shakespearean ballads. The virtue of the fact he is an englishman and focusing on the english nature of appalachia, that leaves many in northern cities to reassess their image of this negative hillbilly. These are people who become invested with a certain air of grace and tradition. I would argue for the first time, it is respected on a large scale. Sharps obsession with the underlying english character of appalachian society and music led to his contemporary readers, subsequent scholarly observers and most americans today to imagine appalachia as an exclusively white place, a white ethnic space. I just want to draw your attention to this, this is another personal favorite of mine. It is the cherry tree carol. Many ethnomusicologist have argued that the ballad might go back to late medieval passion plays in england, so it is quite an ancient vintage. This is cecil sharp interviewing one of his many subjects. This is kentucky in august 1917. He went around and interviewed these people and collected ballads such as this. His work led to a resurgence in interest in the culture of the southern mountains and went a long way to challenge the popular stereotype of feuding hillbillies. Throughout his letters, sharp invests the people of the region with dignity and grace, describing them as leisurely, cheery people in their quiet way to whom the social instinct was highly developed. Far from the ruthless, inbred savages, the mountaineers possessed quote an easy bearing , and an unselfconscious manner of the well bred. Sharp had good reason to see these people in a positive light. Though he shared with their detractors a belief in the mountaineers inherent backwardness, he observed that they possessed much of the character and culture of that sort of pastoral ideal of preindustrial england. His efforts to document the culture was part of a larger interest in english folk traditions. In the hopes that in so doing the english working classes , could rekindle the dignity and self worth of their ancestors. The same dignity he observed amongst the people of appalachia along his journey. He was looking for england in the mountains, and that is what he found. Sharps image of the region as a time capsule remains with us today. It is one of the most common tropes through which outsiders continue to view the culture and people of the southern mountains. It is important to address an important aspect of the legacy of sharps work. In the racial construction of appalachia in the american and indeed british imagination, sharp was obsessed with National Cultures and the revival of english folk tradition at home. His rendering of a static, threatened english appalachian culture continues to influence our perception of the mountain south and american rural culture more generally. His appalachia is not a place you could find on the map. You couldnt really even find it on the map in 1916. There are accounts of sharp going into isolated settlements in madison county, encountering a black man on the road and turning away because he thought the town was inhabited by africanamericans, so he would not find english ballads. He is not interested in capturing a true depiction of the region and its culture. He is there with an agenda. His nine weeks spent in the mountains were shaped by what he preconditioned himself to expect. He was after english ballads at the expense of the banjo songs. He hated the venture. He hated the banjo. Piedmont blues material that had seeped into the mountains with the railway he also ignored. He ignored italian folk songs sung by the italian immigrants brought into the region by the coal companies. He also loathed to a degree, although he said some were delightful, hymns and evangelical expressions of piety. Sharp exclaimed in his correspondence that the people of the mountains are english, by god the success of english folk songs cemented the image of a white racially homogenous region in the public imagination. Sharps appalachia was a place where he and other likeminded intellectuals could escape the harsh realities of Industrial America and england. A place where he could find the mythical depiction of england of yesteryear, alive in americas first and arguably last frontier. More than anyone, sharp is responsible for the image of the region as an isolated pastoral retreat untouched by modernity. He is also responsible for publicizing the image of the region as a racial monolith. But he would not be the last. In that spirit, i will ask you a quick question. If you were to take an image of this, if you are flipping through an inflight magazine, where would you assume this photograph was taken . Scotland . Ireland . Celtic countries . You have fallen into my trap. This was taken in western North Carolina in the 1990s. It is a slide of the grandfathered highland games begun in 1956. That brings us to another model through which people have understood appalachian cultural development, the celtic south or herder model of appalachian cultural development. The previous characteristics explored here were crafted by outsiders to explain the otherness of appalachian culture. The celtic south model examines how those positive outsider views, people like cecil sharp, s of appalachia. When those outsider views are absorbed by residents of the region, how they contributed to southern whites and appalachians sovereign himself. Saw themselves. The depictions, both negative and positive, of how the region and its people do have an effect on how people within the region start to self identify. In the 1970s and 1980s, you see an upsurge in enthusiasm in the supposed celtic roots of appalachian culture. To this end, the celtic south paradigm popularized by historians in the 1970s emerged in tandem with an upsurge with with an upsurge in Public Interest in scottish and irish roots of appalachian culture. With the differences between the north and south on the eve of the civil war mcdonald argued , that the nomadic culture and clannish Family Structure of early scottish and Northern Irish immigrants to the south allowed for the development of a distinct southern white culture. The herder cultures of north britain and ireland emerged out of the violence and uncertainty that characterized the internal british frontiers. What i mean by that, i am talking about the border between england and scotland, the border between protestant and catholic settlement in ireland. These frontiers, these meeting places between two cultures. Often violent places. Life was harsh and competitive in these internal frontier areas. It necessitated the development of social strategies and skills, including individual selfreliance and tightknit networks. These characteristics were transferred to settlers on the frontier after colonial migration intensified. This is part of that paradigm put forward by people like forest mcdonald and David Hackett fischer. The celtic southeast is built on the observation that the largest single ethnic group in the mountains and largest european immigrant group were celtic, scots irish. We look at them early on when we were talking about the earlier european migrations into the region. We will turn again to them in a second. The herders of scotland and ireland did not invest time in agricultural development, preferring to concentrate on livestock while supplementing their diets through primitive farming. Mcdonald stressed the mobility of these people in the colonies and their sense of family and personal honor. Mcdonald and macwhinnie argued that the sense of personal honor marked them out from their counterparts of northern colonies. The southern culture, they argued, differed substantially from the agricultural heartland of the midwest and new england, where more developed farming allowed for the development of large communities. At the heart, the celtic south model was an attempt to understand southern honor among poor whites committed to the cause of the confederacy. Essentially what theyre trying to understand is honor within the ranks of the confederacy. Theyre looking back to the early migrations in the colonial period to try and make sense of how people behaved in the 1860s. Appalachia, which absorbed the majority of scottish and scotch irish settlers, and who were isolated before the revolutionary war, were at the heart of these studies. Other books published in the last 25 years have a similar model for appalachian development. David hackett fischers stressed the scotch irish culture in both appalachian and southern cultured society. Fisher identified four things established that was central to the Later Development of the United States. For our purposes we will focus on one, the herder that predominated the appalachian south. This was a culture established by the north british as they were dubbed by hackett fischer. Settlers from northumbria and the Scottish Borders and ulster. Fishers argument shares many with the celtic south model but is nuanced in several points. He avoids highland romanticism and gives credit to northern english migrants. The celtic south is a historical construct, a sort of usable past for those who embrace the model. It enables those of scottish or south irish ancestry again look at the surnames of the two people who were instrumental in bringing into the forefront it enables those of scotch and scotch irish ancestry to make sense of their connection to the land and the national story. It is akin to a form of denied the nine benign ethnic nationalism. That leads us perhaps to our last loosely defined positive the diction of appalachian culture and identity. Some of you may know senator jim webb. He is responsible in the last 20 years for bringing about and helping to revive this sense of scots irish identity among contemporary appalachians. Another variation on the celtic south herder thesis is the Development Found in senator webbs book, born fighting how the scotsirish shaped america. You may remember senator webb from his shortlived primary candidacy in the democratic primary in 2016. He was the senator from virginia before that, elected in 2007. He is a prolific author. One of his best known works is this book. It was a national bestseller. In Northern Island it gained a lot of currency and was popular there as well. In a nutshell, senator webbs book claimed the warrior ethic and individualistic impulse of early scots irish shaped workingclass culture and military politics in america. The book, while largely lambasted by scholars, did find a sizable audience and insured that he secured the support of voters in the Southern District of virginia in 2007. If you are asking yourself, this all seems abstract. Some are trying to claim the scots irish identity. This news article is proof that senator webb was able to secure support in areas that had long since ceased to be democratic in West Virginia. He partly did so because his stump speech was littered with references to the scots irish. The term scots irish, though used periodically during the 18th century to describe irish protestants and those who migrated in the thousands to appalachia, achieved widespread usage in the United States only in the early decade of the 19th century. I know it wasnt that long ago we had our lecture on the scots irish. I just put this up as a reminder of the volume of the migrations. Again, the term scots irish is a 19thcentury concept. Descendents of the 18th century immigrants founded a useful designation in their attempts to differentiate themselves from the poor Catholic Irish immigrants then crowding into American Cities in the 1840s and 1850s primarily as a result of the irish potato famine. The 18th century irish migration to the United States was largely protestant and character. Protestant in character. The descendents of those irish immigrants notice in the 1840s and 1850s, to be labeled irish was a negative thing. This was an era that infamously used the signs in places like new york city, boston and chicago, you saw signs that said irish need not apply. In Polite Society, irishness was a dirty word. They were loathed because many of them did not speak english, the volume of the migrations was large and they were Roman Catholic at a point where that was not an accepted aspect of Polite Society in america. The second and Third Generation scots irish, what they do to differentiate themselves from the other irish arriving, is to say look, we are irish, but we are scots irish. We are not irish like these Catholic Irish. We are a different type of irish. In so doing, what they attempted to do was say to other white protestants, we are like you. We were here at the nations founding, our ancestors fought in the founding of washington. The army of washington. Were not like these new immigrants. They also made the argument that we are protestant and therefore we are like you in that regard. It was a way of trying to ascend to the table of whiteness in the 19th century. It was a way of saying we are as american as these other white protestant groups, in light of this new catholic migration. It was a way of trying break into a white club. It was a way for a previously maligned group to claim respectability by association. These advocates of the new term scots irish would claim they were white, protestant, and like other new englanders, their ancestors were instrumental in the founding of the nation. They deserved a seat at the table. In recent decades, the scots irish identity has become an ethnic marker used by appalachians as a way of distinguishing themselves from an overarching White American identity. Jd vance, who i alluded to in the introduction the author of , hillbilly elegy claimed that i may be white, but i do not identify with the wasps of the northeast. Instead, i identify with the millions of white workingclass americans of scots irish descent who have no college degree. To understand me, you must understand i am a scots irish hillbilly at heart. He is taking that derogatory term of hillbilly and making it a statement of his own identity. Similarly, jim webb in a section of born fighting, dedicated to the emerging phenomena of white guilt after the vietnam war, bemoans the fact that appalachian whites, many of whom fought in the vietnam war, should be held as accountable for its execution as those who designed it. All wasps were considered to be the same in this environment. As if they had landed together on the same ship at Plymouth Rock and the smart ones had gone to boston while the dumbest had somehow made their way to West Virginia. Essentially what is happening is what vance and webb are doing is claiming their whiteness apart. Theyre saying were just as white as the anglosaxon protestants. But in our time, and the 21st century, to claim scots irish ancestry is to say i may be white, but im not like those north easterners. I am not like the elites on the coast. How did claiming scots irish identity evolve from an attempt to have an expanded definition of whiteness to a regional different whiteness apart in the 21st century . It is clear the transformation occurred because of the cultural wars of the 20th century. Some would argue it is a rejection of language of right and privilege that White Privilege by some who saw their wellbeing retreat dramatically because of industrialization and globalization. That is pretty bleak. Lets turn to a more positive , possibly the most positive image of appalachian culture. I would like to end todays lecture by briefly illustrating, and i mean briefly, a third paradigm through which we might interpret the culture of appalachia. That is the one championed by folklorist alan lomax. It is in his introduction to the american patchwork series on appalachia that he produced for pbs in the early 1990s. He explained the culture of the mountains was a synthesis between a number of different cultures who came together to form something distinctly american. Lets just give you a background. Al lomaxs father was the first director of the folk library in the library of congress. As a young boy, lomax was taken around to record old piedmont blues songs. His father john had discovered the influential performer leadbelly during the depression. Al lomax is steeped in this culture of collecting. He has thought in sophisticated ways about American Culture and regional culture. Toward the end of his life, he went with a tv crew throughout much of america, recording regional cultures and folklore and stories. These eventually made their way to pbs in five hourlong specials called the american patchwork series. The fourth is called the appalachian journey. According to lomax, far from being a european white refuge like cecil sharp had imagined, appalachia is a dynamic place, a Truly American region, a culture that over the course of millennia has produced a uniquely American Culture. He argued that when he looked at the cherokee, who he argued had historically worked its way into had a storytelling tradition that worked its way into the mountain psyche, he said they also left agricultural practices and instruments like the mouth harp, which became instrumental to appalachian culture in the 19th century. He focused his attention on the scots irish, specifically the ballad tradition. Finally, he looked at africanamerican contributions to appalachian culture. He focused on one aspect that is undeniably african in nature. That is the one instrument we most associate today with appalachia. That is the banjo. It is the most appalachian of instruments. Lomax points out the way it is played in the mountains betrays its african heritage. In instrument only brought into many districts on the railroads in the tail end of the 19th century. Ive been arguing with myself whether or not i would demonstrate the african elements to banjo playing that dominate in appalachia or not. I will leave it to you. What do you think . Yes . In that case. [laughter] benjamin this is an english banjo. We are familiar, for instance, with the bluegrass style of playing. The picking style. Alan lomax noted the way many traditional players in the mountains play their instrument is through a down picking motion similar to the way west african players on instruments now largely seen to be the predecessor of the banjo. The way appalachians play is similar to that tradition. I will show you what i mean by that. Very briefly. This is on national television. [laughter] [banjo plucking] that is an old english song called cuckold hen played in an african manner. He noticed the peculiar fifth string is something you find on many african instruments as a sort of rhythmic quality to the way it is played. In his estimation, appalachian culture is unique because it betrays that multiethnic and multicultural enhancement of a truly appalachian culture. Just some information. And i will quickly sum up here. This is a model of syncretic oneure, proposed by lomax, that places equal contributions to all people of the mountains. We have explored the multicultural elements of this from the arrival of black miners in the 1890s and 1910s through 1920s to the development of the fault works. Mountain culture i would argue is now a standin for rural culture in america. Rural partial rural culture is racialized in much public discourse. Indeed the appalachian traditions have been adapted to suit the needs of americans looking for roots or authenticity as a means of escaping what they view as superficiality and consumerism of modern american society. Many of us who turn to bands like mumford and sons and people like that, acting in the spirit of cecil sharp, if you want to mythologize the experience of a rural. African American Culture in the age of hiphop as opposed to the lily white appalachian americana is seen as a largely urban phenomenon. This artificial dichotomy which finds its roots in the pastoral fantasies of cecil sharp is of course historically inaccurate. The kentucky poet laureate and leader of the appalachian moment has bemoaned the fact that africanamericans have lost increasingly their connection to the american countryside and with it, a sense of connection to American History. It is also led many whites to confuse rural and national identities. The rural by estimation is american and white. The city to those same people is largely an immigrant world and black. The power of sharp and the celtic south model endures. We live in an era of demographic anxiety. They have given rise to isolationism and insurgent political movements on the right and the left. The concerns have led many to retreat into the celtic interpretations of america and appalachians past. For some, history and traditions are exclusive and the american past is primarily the domain of White Americans. Is a dynamic region that gives us another way to look at appalachia and its place in the american story. The reality of social and cultural formation is far more complex than the anglo centric model first constructed by sharp and emulated by subsequent scholars. This offers an inclusive way through which we can understand and enjoy the richness of all of our appalachian heritage. Again, these are bands that emerged in the wake of the black banjo conference in boone, North Carolina. It was designed as a way to reconnect africanamericans to their rural past. I think i will end with that. Thank you all, and goodbye. You are watching American History tv. All weekend, every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Tonight on cuba
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