Government and private programs launched during the 1960s eventually transformed the mountains, stirring both hope and resistance among mountain residents. The short-lived War on Poverty and the more lasting Appalachian Regional Commission fueled a new cultural identity in the region and spawned a multitude of new roads, schools, retail centers, and other symbols of the consumer society. Appalachia was swept up in another round of modernization that reshaped the physical landscape and permanently altered the way of life for most of the region’s residents. Even so, the transformation begun by the War on Poverty failed to eliminate the perception of Appalachian otherness, and the new Appalachia that emerged from the special development programs continued to reflect the social inequalities and environmental exploitation that had burdened the region for decades. By the turn of the twenty-first century, growth and government-sponsored initiatives to promote change had altered the outward appearance of Appalachia, but development had done little to correct the structural problems of land abuse, political corruption, economic shortsightedness, and the loss of community and culture. Despite the rise and fall of national attention and resources, no other region within the United States has presented a greater challenge to policy makers or a greater test of modern notions of development. The idea of Appalachia survives in the popular mind, and the heart of the region continues to lag behind the rest of the country as an area of persistent economic and social distress.
Appalachia endures as a paradox in American society in part because it plays a critical role in the discourse of national identity but also because the region’s struggle with modernity reflects a deeper American failure to define progress in the first place. For more than a century, Appalachia has provided a challenge to modern conceptions of the American dream. It has appeared as a place of cultural backwardness in a nation of progressive values, a region of poverty in an affluent society, and a rural landscape in an increasingly urban nation. We know Appalachia exists because we need it to exist in order to define what we are not. It is the “other America” because the very idea of Appalachia convinces us of the righteousness of our own lives. The notion of Appalachia as a separate place, a region set off from mainstream culture and history, has allowed us to distance ourselves from the uncomfortable dilemmas that the story of Appalachia raises about our own lives and about the larger society. However, Appalachia is more than just an intellectual idea. It is also a real place where public policies designed to achieve a healthy society, the objective of development itself, have played out with mixed results. As a venue for development, Appalachia provides a stage for the larger political debates over the meaning of progress, over who wins and who loses as a result of change, and over the role of government in assuring the good life.
I have spent much of the past four decades observing, participating in, and writing about the process of development in the mountains. My family has lived in the southern mountains since the 1790s, and we have witnessed many of the changes that have swept the region in the name of progress and modernization. We have survived as farmers, coal miners, mill hands, and ministers, and we have fought the nation’s wars and enriched the larger culture with our music. As a college student in West Virginia during the War on Poverty, I served as a part-time caseworker in child welfare. I was told by my professors and field supervisors that the problems of poverty in my community were the result of cultural deficiencies, antiquated values, and low expectations; my responsibility as an educated person was to serve as a role model for my less advantaged clients. Uncomfortable with those assumptions, I became a historian, teacher, and activist, determined not only to gain a better understanding of my land and my people but to translate that knowledge into the national conversation about Appalachia.
My first book, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880–1930, rejected the notion that the problems of the region were the product of a peculiar mountain culture and a different history and found instead that the region’s distress was rooted deeply in the very process of private industrial development that had created modern America. As director of the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center for sixteen years, I worked with local leaders, state policy makers, and national planners to transfer the lessons of that development history into public policy affecting the region. Too often, however, I found not only that research and experience were ignored in the drama of political decision making (a fact that should come as no surprise to historians) but that the assumptions about change that guided policy toward Appalachia were based on a limited range of alternatives and visions of the good life. Appalachia was not different from the rest of America; it was in fact a mirror of what the nation was becoming. To challenge those assumptions was in some circles almost un-American.
This book therefore examines the politics of development in Appalachia since 1945 with an eye toward exploring the idea of progress as it has evolved in modern America itself. The story of Appalachia’s struggle to overcome poverty, to live in harmony with the land, and to respect the diversity of cultures and the value of community is an American story. Since World War II, during my lifetime, Appalachia has undergone dramatic change. The long lines of unemployed men at government commodity distribution centers have given way to lines of commuters in Wal-Mart superstores acquiring the latest consumer products of a world economy. The dilapidated schools, poor housing, and inadequate health care that led my parents to briefly leave the mountains in the 1950s for a better life in northern cities have been replaced by modern facilities and services that provide access to the latest technology and knowledge within fifty miles of every mountain resident. Superhighways make it easier to get into and out of the region, and bustling suburban centers have emerged throughout the mountains, looking much like their retail-based counterparts elsewhere in America. Yet, as in the nation as a whole, these changes have come at a tremendous cost to the environment, at the displacement of millions of rural residents, and at the loss of traditional values and cultures. The diversity that is modern Appalachia belies a growing gap between the rich and the poor, and it ignores the continuing sacrifice of Appalachian resources and people for the comfort and prosperity of the rest of the nation.
Much of the change that has come to Appalachia is the result of well-intentioned government planning to promote growth and assimilation. Programs such as the War on Poverty and the Appalachian Regional Development Act reflect broadly held attitudes about progress within and outside the region, attitudes that are grounded in the received assumptions about development that have limited the dialogue and potential for alternative paths and outcomes. Too often, for example, we have mistaken growth for development, change for progress. Indeed, growth has become central to the American idea of development. Attainment of the good life, we assume, is dependent upon the continued expansion of markets, transportation and communication networks, mass culture, urban centers, and consumer demand. Economic growth may indeed generate employment opportunities, but if those jobs provide low wages and few health benefits, they can reinforce conditions of dependence and powerlessness. New highways may increase commerce and access to services for some communities, but other communities, bypassed by the transportation improvements, can suffer displacement and decline. Expansion of mining and other extractive industries may produce short-term employment but, if unregulated, can leave environmental damage that may threaten the sustainability of communities and ecosystems for generations to come. Investments in some areas of the economy can benefit a small number of individuals or places at the expense of others, and lifestyle enhancements for a few people may cause hardship and loss of meaning for other people.
Since World War II, moreover, we have assumed that the scientific management of growth could achieve progress in the mountains without requiring structural change in the distribution of wealth, the ownership and use of the land, or the control of the political system. Poverty could be eliminated by changing individual behavior and by tying people more directly to the market rather than confronting existing social and economic inequalities. This faith in the ability of technology and education to lift all boats has produced public institutions in Appalachia