Unfortunately, the Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission’s ambitious proposals, like those in other states, quickly ran into a quagmire of bureaucratic and funding barriers. At first planners for the Kentucky Department of Highways, for example, were reluctant to endorse the idea of an Appalachian development highway system capable of carrying industrial and commercial traffic because state funds were inadequate to build the roads at the high standards set by federal and state engineering guidelines. As early as 1958, the Kentucky commissioner of highways informed the eastern Kentucky commission that significant federal funding would be needed to finance such a system, and when the highway department finally approved the recommendations and sent the mountain highways plan to the federal Bureau of Public Roads, the Washington agency rejected the plan as failing to comply with its standards.79
The challenge of acquiring federal funds for building a new network of mountain roads was complicated by both procedure and politics. Not only were roads in Appalachia more expensive to build, but the federal highway funding plan was unchangeable for the next three years. The federal interstate highway system that connected major urban centers all but bypassed distressed rural areas such as Appalachia, and the method of allocating funding for highway locations based on traffic count assured that Appalachia would have little likelihood of success, since the poor mountain roads thwarted high traffic volume. Increasingly Whisman and other mountain leaders recognized that if their plans for highway development were to be accomplished, they would have to find ways to circumvent federal criteria and come up with special federal aid not currently allocated to the Bureau of Public Roads.
The eastern Kentucky commission experienced similar frustration in attempting to implement its strategies in other areas. The commission found that existing federal programs in flood relief, small-business development, housing, and urban renewal were underutilized in Appalachia because local communities were unaware of the programs or lacked the technical assistance necessary to apply for them. Even when applications were forwarded to Washington and when federal officials and members of Congress sympathized with local needs, mountain communities often failed to meet the legal criteria for federal assistance. Most Appalachian counties, for example, were ineligible for assistance from federal housing and urban renewal programs because the programs were designed for urban areas. Other mountain communities were ineligible for federal aid to build water and sewer projects because they could not raise the necessary matching funds or could not meet the cost-benefit ratio for the construction of dams, flood walls, and highways.80
Whisman described the challenges facing Appalachian development efforts as a “revolving impossibility.” The greatest need in the region, he noted, was for basic facilities for development, but the lack of development prevented access to the federal resources needed to build these facilities. The dilemma, he wrote, was like a mountain roundelay: “What east Kentucky needs is one good road to join us up with the rest of the country. . . . How do we justify the building of such a road? We know there is not enough traffic count now to justify the new road. But the roads we have are so poor the people won’t drive them. Without people coming into our region, we have little commerce. Without commerce, we have no traffic on the road. Without traffic, we can’t justify the new road. But the roads we have are poor.”81
Increasingly frustrated by inadequate funding and bureaucratic barriers, Appalachian state leaders were convinced that special federal assistance was necessary to accomplish their goals for the region. Appalachia’s problems, they argued, were severe and unique, and they were beyond the capacity of local communities and state governments alone. Even the federal policies being proposed by national Democrats to aid industrial communities distressed by unemployment promised little assistance to rural areas like Appalachia. The Area Redevelopment Act, which reappeared in Congress in 1959, targeted urban industrial communities hit hard by recession and unemployment rather than chronically depressed rural areas in need of the basic infrastructure for development. “The Douglas-Payne Bill,” reported the Louisville Courier-Journal in February 1959, “would not, for an instance, make significant headway towards mitigating those all-important economic factors affecting Eastern Kentucky: lack of modern transportation networks, vulnerability to floods, and the decline of coal-mining.”82 Frustrated, Whisman and other leaders of the eastern Kentucky commission launched a campaign to change federal policies in favor of “underdeveloped areas” and to make government and industry leaders more aware of Appalachia’s plight and potential.
As the 1950s drew to a close, efforts increased throughout Appalachia to focus the attention of state and national leaders on the burgeoning crises in the hills. Rising welfare rolls and unemployment placed heavy burdens on state resources and spurred even non-Appalachian legislators, journalists, and private citizens to join the call for action. In the elections of 1960, candidates for governor in almost every Appalachian state endorsed programs to reduce poverty in the mountain counties, and in Kentucky, mountain lawyer and gubernatorial candidate Bert Combs promised to implement the recommendations of the Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission. But it would take a national rediscovery of poverty throughout affluent America and the unexpected victory of a New England senator in the 1960 presidential primary to draw the nation’s attention to the need for federal assistance to the region. Even then there would be little agreement on the sources of Appalachia’s problems or the solutions to its distress. For the post–World War II generation, confident in its ability to sustain growth and to build a better life for everyone, Appalachia remained an American enigma.
2
THE POLITICS OF POVERTY
I’ve been preachin’ the gospel for 25 years, and I’ve never seen a time so bad.
—Levi McGeorge, pastor of the Closplint Church of God, Harlan County, Kentucky, February 1959
The winters of 1959 and 1960 were unusually harsh in Appalachia, bringing additional burdens to an already hard-pressed land. The destruction of the record flood of 1957 could still be seen in many mountain communities, and a national recession only deepened the economic crisis in the hills. Throughout central Appalachia, hundreds of displaced coal miners faced the specter of expired unemployment benefits and dwindling food supplies. Heavy snows and subfreezing temperatures resulted in several deaths from starvation and exposure. Kentucky governor Happy Chandler declared an emergency in eastern Kentucky and initiated a modest relief effort, but state resources were inadequate to meet the problem.1
Conditions were equally severe in West Virginia when Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts arrived to campaign in the 1960 Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy’s subsequent victory in the West Virginia primary would mark a turning point in his drive to the presidency. Winning in the Mountain State settled the question of whether a Catholic candidate could carry a predominantly Protestant state and smoothed the senator’s path to victory in other primaries. For Appalachia, however, the 1960 primary was a watershed of another kind. Events in West Virginia drew the attention of the federal government and national media to the economic despair that had settled over the region.
When Senator Kennedy came to West Virginia, mountain villages were still digging out from heavy snows and bitter cold, the coldest March on record and the most snowfall since 1914.2 By April the campaign began to warm along with the weather, and the candidates carried their search for votes out of the urban areas and into the rural districts and coal camps of the southern part of the state. Political strategists expected that the issue of religion would dominate the campaign, as it had in other states, and Kennedy was prepared to confront religious bigotry head-on. But the crowds of unemployed coal miners who greeted the senator in places like Welch and Williamson and in dozens of other coal communities along Paint Creek, Cabin Creek, and the New River were less interested in the candidate’s religion than in his plans to relieve their economic distress.