Welcome to class. Over the course of this semester so far we have seen how appalachia perhaps to a greater degree than any other region is defined to the world and in the minds of its residents by outsiders. We have seen for example how industrialists employed the negative stereotypes of violent hillbillies to rationalize the seizure of thousands of acres of land on the boundary between kentucky and West Virginia. The image of appalachia as an impoverished and backwards area continues to haunt the region to this day. Indeed, many residents have absorbed and inverted a negative stereotype and constructed new identities for themselves based upon how they think they are perceived. A classic example is the recent bestselling book, hillbilly elegy, a book we will turn to in this lecture. For these reasons, it is beholden on us i think to understand how appalachian stereotypes have evolved over time and have been mobilized in different circumstances 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 image 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, supposedly. Edgar allan poe said in one of his early short stories First Published in 1844 in a fictional location situated to the south and west of charlottesville, virginia. He titled the short story the ragged mountains. It is an interesting story because it is the only short story that Edgar Allen Poe set in virginia. Those hills, those ragged mountains, according to the main character of the story were a place of dreary isolation and steeped in a solitude that seemed absolutely virgin. The narrator feared the area because of local tales regarding the uncouth and fierce race 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 shelter the people of the mountains from modernity. Premodern traditions according to those who subscribe to this image, survive in isolation in appalachia. The southern mountains in the words of one observer who we will turn to in greater detail later on, are populated by our contemporary ancestors. 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 mundane andnd 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. Ideal this made it an locale for local color scouts who contrast its picturesque landscapes and people with the new America Emerging in cities of the north. 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 who are in progress while the people in the region are impoverished while those other people in upstate new york or 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 impoverishment that the 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 a desk on a pedestal. , then you do or this 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 leading 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. 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 tendency fory 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. 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 . 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. That continuesem wh 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. 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 additions 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 has 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 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. Fromof you here 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 dispora when many will leave the appalachia for other areas. I feel that if i was in a war ork 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, highly unedcuated or something along these 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 and 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 industr