{"id":72676,"date":"2019-02-20T15:46:28","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T20:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72676"},"modified":"2019-02-20T15:48:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T20:48:35","slug":"hidden-black-history-in-appalachia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2019\/02\/20\/hidden-black-history-in-appalachia\/","title":{"rendered":"Hidden Black History in Appalachia"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February of 1926, Carter G. Woodson<\/span><\/a> helped establish \u201cNegro History Week\u201d to educate teachers, students, and community members about the accomplishments and experiences of Blacks in the United States. A native of Virginia, and the son of formerly enslaved parents, Woodson earned a PhD<\/span><\/a> in history from Harvard University, and dedicated much of his life to writing and teaching about information largely omitted from textbooks and other historical accounts. Although Woodson died in 1950, his legacy continues, as \u201cNegro History Week\u201d eventually became \u201cBlack History Month<\/span><\/a>\u201d in 1976. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nearly a century later, Black History is still at risk of erasure, especially in (once) geographically isolated areas, like Appalachia. The standard narrative that Scots-Irish \u201csettled\u201d Appalachia starting in the 18<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> century hides the fact that there were often violent interactions between European immigrants and indigenous people in the region. Even in the 1960s when authors like Michael Harrington<\/span><\/a> and Harry Caudill<\/span><\/a> reported on Appalachian mountain folk, the people were depicted as Scots-Irish descendants, known for being poor, lazy, and backward, representations that are reinforced<\/span><\/a> in contemporary accounts of the region, such as J. D. Vance\u2019s wildly popular memoir Hillbilly Elegy<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
<\/a>
Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Accounts like these offer stereotypical understandings of poor Appalachian whites, and at the same time, they ignore the presence and experiences of Blacks in the region. Work by social scientists William Turner and Edward Cabell<\/span><\/a>, as well as \u201cAffrilachia\u201d poet Frank X. Walker<\/span><\/a>, and historian Elizabeth Catte<\/span><\/a> attempts to remedy this problem, but the dominant narrative of the region centers still on poor whites and their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Work I have been doing documenting the life experiences of Leslie [\u201cLes\u201d] Whittington, a native of Western North Carolina and a descendent of a formerly enslaved people, has opened my eyes to a historical narrative I never fully knew.<\/span> African Americans, for instance, accounted for approximately 10% of the Appalachian region\u2019s population<\/span><\/a> by 1860, and many were enslaved, including Les\u2019 grandfather, John Myra Stepp. Yet, their stories are glaringly missing from the dominant narrative of the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Source: Appalachian Regional Commission Census Data Overview<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So too are the stories of Blacks living in Appalachia today. Even though the number of African American residents has increased in some parts of\u00a0 <\/span>Appalachia<\/span><\/a>, while the white population has decreased, little is formally documented about their lives. That absence has led scholar William Turner, to refer to Blacks in Appalachia as a \u201cracial minority within a cultural minority<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span> Not only does er<\/span>asing African Americans from the past and present of Appalachia provide an inaccurate view of the region, but it also minimizes the suffering of poor Blacks, who relative to their white counterparts, are and have been the <\/span>poorest of an impoverished population<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Woodson established \u201cNegro History Week\u201d to document and share the history of Blacks in the United States, recognizing that, \u201cIf a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.\u201d The history of African Americans in the Appalachian region is largely absent from the area\u2019s official record, and without making it part of the dominant narrative, we risk losing that history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacqueline Clark, PhD<\/a> is a professor of sociology at Ripon College. Her teaching and research interests include social inequalities, the sociology of health and illness, and the sociology of jobs and work.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In February of 1926, Carter G. Woodson helped establish \u201cNegro History Week\u201d to educate teachers, students, and community members about the accomplishments and experiences of Blacks in the United States. A native of Virginia, and the son of formerly enslaved parents, Woodson earned a PhD in history from Harvard University, and dedicated much of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1851,"featured_media":72679,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,1826,253,23699,119,285,23665],"class_list":["post-72676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-geographymaps","tag-history","tag-intersectionality-race-x-class","tag-poverty","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2019\/02\/AppMap-e1550695634443.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1851"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72676"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72678,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72676\/revisions\/72678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}