Reformers to Radicals (5 page)

Coupled with the ideas of an “alien” culture, this identification of an invisible poor about which public officials need not concern themselves suggested certain reform strategies. Most obvious was the integration of mountain people into the fabric of American society. “[If] the problem of Appalachia is to be met,” noted the sociologist Rupert Vance in 1962, “it must be interpreted in the context of national development.” Of greatest concern to Vance was the “extent to which the Region has lagged behind in the processes of population redistribution, of economic and cultural development, and in the equalization of opportunity.” While this analysis rejected the notion of Appalachian isolation, it recognized the existence of “chronic pockets of poverty” that hindered the “development of a single, national community in which regional urban-rural and social class differences [would] become less important.”
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In short, the region could address, and possibly end, its chronic poverty if it could develop in the context of, and in relation to, the nation.

While isolation characterized the relationship—or the lack thereof—between Appalachia and the rest of the United States, urbanization was both the way in which this isolation could be overcome and the ultimate end of any reform process. Central to this reform was “pluralism,” a political theory that was at once the problem and the solution to Appalachian poverty. Popular in the postwar United States, pluralism was the process by which interest groups influenced the distribution of goods and services in a given society and “achieve[d] their various rights.” Because the theory maintained that the give-and-take between these various groups resulted in the equitable distribution of a given society's wealth, it essentially equated pluralism with democracy. Implicit in this analysis was the notion that urban space, with its ready access to markets, government services, and educational and cultural facilities—those very resources for which interest groups vied—was conducive to the formation of these interest groups. Appalachians were invisible, as Harrington suggested, because they were isolated both from the urban stage on which groups acted and from each other.
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Interestingly, the Council's first attempt to reform Appalachia happened not in the Southern mountains but in a Northern metropolis. Responding to concerns such as those outlined by Bodnar, the CSM, at the behest of the Mayor's Friendly Relations Committee of Cincinnati,
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conducted its first
“urban workshop” in 1959. Designed to acquaint city officials, social service workers, and the police with their new Appalachian neighbors, the urban workshops introduced urban professionals to a dysfunctional culture ill suited to city life. According to the historian Bruce Tucker, urban workshop speakers “described a society weak in institutional structures, lacking in political and social cohesion, deprived of material resources, and burdened by archaic family and religious customs.” Of the many criticisms offered by workshop speakers, two of the more significant were Appalachians' “environmental circumstances,” which city workers needed to understand in order to “help . . . the mountain migrant,” and the notion that their highly individualistic, family-oriented culture prevented them, as one workshop speaker claimed, from realizing that “voluntary cooperation [was] required for urban living.” In short, Appalachians had no real sense of community. Overcoming these archaic burdens to community involvement, both in the city and in the mountains, became the goal of later-twentieth-century Appalachian reform. Because the source of the trouble was Appalachia, reformers looked to the mountains, hoping to change mountaineers before their inevitable arrival in the nation's cities.
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Complementing the urban workshops, which stressed the “weak institutional structures” of mountaineers and reinforced the notion of an isolated Appalachia, were other sources, including major national newspapers and the Council itself, that reflected the belief in an urban-pluralist solution to mountain poverty. Writing in October 1963, the
New York Times
reporter Homer Bigart, in an article that reputedly motivated President Kennedy to lay the foundation of what would become the War on Poverty, exposed the poor housing, inadequate educational facilities, and, perhaps most important, the “native clannishness” that made mountaineers' “adjustment to urban life painfully difficult.” Though he recognized corruption in local government, inadequate services, and chronic unemployment, Bigart concluded that the people, more than the social, political, and economic structures, needed a transformation.
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Commonly called Ayer's “call to partnership,” the Council's strategy closely resembled the pluralist theory that dominated the thinking of so many postwar Americans. Ayer argued that, in the mountains, every action had a “social consequence.” It was the Council's job, he continued, to “bring together and relat[e] in effective cooperation all the positive interests
and efforts in the area.” In that sense, Ayer considered the Council to be a coordinating body, not an action program, ensuring that all mountain citizens—individual and corporate—operated “in such a way that the quality of living [would be] improved in the area.” Far from naive concerning the devastating effects of the extractive industries, Ayer nonetheless sought to enlist them in his reform efforts. By representing a unified front of Appalachian interests, the Council of the Southern Mountains could increase the level of knowledge about mountain issues at all levels of society and influence potential government legislation and the resultant action.
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Ayer's ideas about community development closely resembled the Council's original “Program for the Mountains” outlined in 1925 in the very first issue of the organization's official publication,
Mountain Life and Work
. Focusing on a “cooperative community development” idea, Ayer's program too called for improved educational, recreational, and health facilities as well as enhanced economic opportunity for mountaineers.
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His conception of the Council and his conviction of what form welfare should take demonstrated how the organization sought to aid needy mountaineers. At the same time, he hoped to alter, or at least limit the adverse effects of, industrialization in the coalfields. Rooted in notions of traditional communal relationships, the “call to partnership” implored those with the time and resources to act selflessly for the benefit of the entire Appalachian South. Defined in terms of economic self-sufficiency, an egalitarian social structure, and the people's “rel[iance] upon themselves and their neighbors for both the necessities and pleasures of life,” this traditional community ideal guided Ayer's Council of the Southern Mountains.
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Religious principles, moreover, were fundamental to the CSM's desire to effect positive change. These principles were, however, tempered by a strong sense of humanism and communal responsibility. The Council of the Southern Mountains, Ayer wrote to George Bidstrup, the director of the John C. Campbell Folk School, “serves the Appalachian South in a religiously motivated fellowship which has united leaders and efforts of almost every conceivable interest and diversity in one common cause.” It was essential “that the basic principles of religion and humanitarianism be kept alive and dominant in both policy and practice.” To Council members, these basic religious tenets and motivations did not imply the missionary zeal commonly attributed to them. Rather, the Council called on people—the
wealthy, business interests, local and national governments, and even ordinary mountain residents—to work for Appalachian improvement. “Education and better living,” the Council member W. Ross Baley told the
West Virginia Hillbilly
, “are not the sole province of the church.”
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This religiously influenced, communal view placed the Council of the Southern Mountains squarely in line with other reform agents of the early 1960s, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Speaking for that organization, James Lawson, a civil rights leader from Nashville, declared that the SNCC “affirm[ed] the philosophy or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of our purpose, the presupposition of our faith, and the manner of our action.” Part of the Judeo-Christian heritage, nonviolence sought “a social order of justice permeated by love. . . .
Integration of human endeavor represents the crucial first step towards such a society. . . . Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for all overthrows injustice. The redemptive community supersedes systems of gross social immorality. . . . By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities
.”
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Substitute cooperation or partnership for nonviolence, and the philosophies of SNCC and the CSM are strikingly similar.

At its annual conference, the CSM promoted its own conception of a “redemptive community” in the Southern mountains. It recruited new members, educated those already active, and presented a united front in the battle against Appalachian poverty. Topics discussed at these yearly gatherings centered on educational concerns, health issues, and the recreational needs of mountain children. Interestingly, the broad base of participation envisioned by the Council provided the foundation for the organization's reform efforts in the middle of the decade. Participation in the conferences was not limited to dues-paying members of the CSM; anyone believed able to contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the region received an invitation. Included in this group were governors, congressmen, and local college students, the latter because the Council had begun to attract the interest of an increasing number of young people. One young 1960 conference participant discovered: “I was not the only one interested in medicine and the nursing needs of mountain people. [The conference] helped me to really see where my people need my help the most.”
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Perhaps more significant, the conferences created a dialogue between the CSM and the federal government. Following John F. Kennedy's promise of another “New Deal” for the depressed areas of Appalachia during the West Virginia primary of 1960 and the creation of the Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA) in May 1961, the Council actively sought federal participation in its programs. Calling on Kennedy to attend the fiftieth annual conference in 1962, the governor of Kentucky, Bert T. Combs, on behalf of the CSM, urged the president to openly support an organization that lived up to the challenge in his inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” In its efforts to gain a presidential visit, the Council of the Southern Mountains won the support of many influential legislators, such as Congressman Carl Perkins of Kentucky's eastern mountain district and Senator John Sherman Cooper, as well as of William Batt, the chief executive of the ARA. Perhaps most significant, the Council established a link with the politician most responsible for the reform efforts of the 1960s—Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kennedy's vice president.
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Beyond the personal connections, finances remained a priority for the Council of the Southern Mountains, and the federal government's seemingly growing financial commitment, as illustrated by the nascent ARA, to aid depressed areas, especially Appalachia, made a relationship with Washington extremely attractive. Despite the Council's disadvantageous position, however, the mountain reformers refused to allow the national government to assume control over its efforts or to establish a simple charity approach to aid depressed areas. “I cannot bear the impression,” Ayer wrote to Assistant Secretary of State Brooks Hays, “that we are idle and helpless until saved by others.” Just because the people needed help, it did not follow that they should be seen as mere pawns by any group, including the CSM. Not the states, and not the Council, declared the CSM staff member Milton Ogle, but the people themselves “will have to assume the final responsibility of executing any program for regional betterment.” Part of that burden, again, was the coordination of all attempts to improve the lot of impoverished Appalachians. “We operate on the theory,” the executive director asserted, “that neither welfare nor education nor health interests nor economic development nor federal assumption of responsibility can . . . adequately meet the needs of this area . . . without adequate knowledge
of and voluntary coordination with all other efforts at work in the same cause.”
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In Council members' eyes, the CSM was the best-equipped vehicle to coordinate the activities of governments, churches, schools, and other mountain interests.

This open orientation, coupled with the desire to avoid a program of charity, significantly influenced Council membership, the activities of the organization, and its conception of welfare. It permitted the Council to actively solicit the support of those entities, such as extractive industries, that some believed were responsible for many of the region's problems and required the membership to push the bounds of Southern mores. Recognizing that the coal industry was the backbone of the economy in most central Appalachian counties, and in adherence to its inclusive philosophy, the Council of the Southern Mountains hoped to minimize the destructive tendencies of mining by bringing operators to the discussion table under the banner of “humanitarian concerns.” Because membership in the Council meant acceptance of its philosophy—that of acting for the good of all in the region—coal companies who joined essentially promised to aid mountain reform. It was on the basis of this conception that Ayer solicited memberships from Island Creek Coal, the Turner-Elkhorn Mining Company, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, and the American Electric Power Company of New York. At the same time, the CSM advocated measures to make mining a feasible means of making a living. His stance on strip mining, for example, highlighted the delicate balance that Ayer hoped to strike between the concerns of coal operators and the need for jobs in central Appalachia. Though he favored stronger anti-strip-mining legislation in the state, Ayer feared that, if only Kentucky, or only any one state, for that matter, passed such a law, the result would penalize that particular state and further encourage the “continu[ed] destruction of the countryside” in the others. Thus, he concluded, for strip-mining legislation to be effective, all political divisions in the central coalfields needed to be put aside and all interested parties would have to act in concert. The Council also hoped to attract the cooperation of operators by supporting the protection of jobs, reduced freight rates for and research on new uses for coal, and eminent domain for coal pipelines. Unfortunately, this drive appeared to be less successful than hoped. As late as 1964, Ayer lamented the “lack of people from private industry” participating in discussions about Appalachia's problems. The Council, nevertheless,
continued to believe throughout the decade that it could influence private interests to act on behalf of even the poorest mountaineer.
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