From the outset the ARC proved to be controversial. By broadening the region to include more than 400 counties in thirteen states, Congress guaranteed that resources would be widely dispersed and coordinating regional programs difficult. Appropriations levels and investment strategies changed with each new administration in Washington and with each new gubernatorial term, but the political benefits of this system of multilevel patronage kept the ARC alive, even when national and presidential interest waned. Generous federal allocations and categorical grants in the 1960s provided some continuity in planning, but with the introduction of federal block grants in the Nixon administration, power to shape nonhighway investments shifted to the states. Gradually, regionwide strategic planning fell victim to inadequate funding and political whim. By the 1970s some governors had lost interest in the commission, and powerful members of Congress increasingly used ARC appropriations to earmark special projects to benefit their own districts.
The structure of the ARC itself proved to be its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The “new federalism” reflected in the ARC partnership promised to encourage creativity and bottom-up planning, but the ARC decision-making process provided few opportunities for grassroots engagement. Governors had almost complete power to fund or reject projects passed on to them by state agencies or local development districts. Critics of the ARC accused the agency of turning the future of the region over to the very people who had despoiled the mountains in the first place: the natural resource development interests and the state and local politicians who supported them. The quality of local leadership and the effectiveness of local development districts varied greatly from state to state, and often the poorest communities had the weakest civic and technical capacity for planning.
Consequently, not every part of Appalachia benefited equally from ARC resources. Larger towns at the intersection of Appalachian corridor highways and counties closer to external metropolitan centers such as Atlanta and Pittsburgh tended to receive disproportionate shares of ARC dollars. This “growth center strategy” was incorporated into ARC legislation by national economists and by the Bureau of the Budget, who feared that resources would be squandered in poor rural areas where there was little hope for economic growth. Development, they believed, began in core, urban communities and trickled out to surrounding rural places. Rural people should be encouraged to move to better housing and job opportunities in the city or should travel to new service centers or consolidated schools in nearby towns. Governors in central Appalachian states that had few large cities eventually were able to circumvent this policy by designating smaller towns and county seat communities as growth centers, but most ARC resources continued to flow to more populous and politically powerful counties. Efforts during the Carter administration to promote “balanced growth” largely ignored the most impoverished and remote rural communities. Owsley County, Kentucky, consistently one of the five poorest counties in the United States, received only $470,000 in ARC funding between 1965 and 1993.32
As the result of ARC development strategies, communities with the most political clout, strategic location, and technical capacity received the greatest benefits from federal investments. New access highways, water and sewer facilities, industrial parks, consolidated schools, and hospitals transformed mountain cities and county seat towns into modern middle-class Meccas. Improved public facilities, shopping centers, subdivisions, and chain stores attracted young professionals and tourists from outside of the region, and in some areas of Appalachia, ski resorts and second home developments heralded the arrival of the consumer culture, if not the prosperity, of the rest of America. Indeed, by 1980 a few counties on the periphery of the region had reached income parity with national averages, and some members of Congress were calling for an end to the ARC on the grounds that it had accomplished its mission.
In the shadows of this “New Appalachia,” however, were rural communities that were only marginally touched by the ARC highways and new public facilities. In the more remote areas of the mountains, traditional values and rural culture survived, despite the arrival of television and mass marketing. At the heart of the region remained a cluster of persistently poor counties whose education levels and per capita income still lagged far behind the rest of the country. When President Reagan attempted to abolish the ARC in 1981, these distressed counties became the focus of a finish-up program designed to extend the life of the ARC temporarily. The agency survived, but Congress reduced ARC funding to less than half of previous levels. With fewer resources, the ARC decided to set aside only 20 percent of its nonhighway allocations for the Distressed Counties Program and limited that funding to primarily water and sewer projects.
Therefore, in the 1980s the economic gap between distressed rural places and new service center communities in Appalachia actually increased as the nation shifted from an industrial to an information-based economy. Technological changes in the coal industry and the migration of low-wage manufacturing jobs to undeveloped countries left many rural communities in central Appalachia with neither the physical infrastructure nor the human skills to weather the transition. More than one-fourth of Appalachian coalminers lost their jobs during the decade, and poverty rates in the region rose in comparison to the national average. Although the number of distressed counties in Appalachia declined dramatically between 1960 and 1980, that pattern reversed between 1980 and 1990 as out-migration, unemployment, and low incomes continued to plague rural areas. By the end of the century, more than one-quarter of the Appalachian counties that were listed as distressed in 1960 were still distressed four decades later.33
The expansion of the national economy in the 1990s spurred new energy in communities across Appalachia. With the support of President Clinton, who hoped to establish a similar regional development agency in the Delta South, the ARC drafted a new strategic plan for Appalachia that included an emphasis on building civic capacity, technology, and entrepreneurship rather than just industrial recruitment. The president personally toured the region in 1999 in an effort to draw national attention to the plight of distressed communities, but although it provided steady support, Congress did not significantly increase the agency’s area development budget. Except in Kentucky and West Virginia, which contained the bulk of distressed counties, there appeared to be little interest from other Appalachian states for addressing the problems of poverty that had created the agency. As the twentieth century came to a close, the ARC’s original goal of bringing all of Appalachia into the economic mainstream remained unfinished.
Like the War on Poverty, the ARC failed to address many of the rooted and complex problems that burdened mountain communities, but the commission and its staff in Washington did help to sustain a level of national visibility for Appalachia and to foster a sense of regionalism that other sections of the country could not match. Increasingly, communities from Pennsylvania to Alabama came to recognize the similarities of their problems and heritage, and they began to share a new regional identity that bridged old political boundaries. Even the term Appalachia, which was rarely used in the region before the 1960s, took on new pride and began to appear on everything from professional organizations to small businesses. A renaissance of Appalachian studies programs blossomed in mountain colleges and universities as scholars began to examine the region’s problems and to teach Appalachian literature and history. In communities up and down the ridge, a spate of local festivals and museums mushroomed to celebrate mountain food, art, and traditional music. Just as the old Appalachia appeared to be slipping irretrievably into the mainstream, efforts to cling to a regional identity appeared to be growing.
Despite this new regionalism, Appalachia at the turn of the twenty-first century looked much more like the rest of America than it had in 1940. Just as the arrival of railroads, textile mills, and coal camps had transformed rural mountain communities in the first half of the century, new highways, government programs, and telecommunications after World War II linked those communi
ties even more closely to the national economy and culture. Some communities benefited more than others from the transformation, but the mountain economy and population were more diverse, and a new sense of regional identity encouraged pride in place and community. Although Appalachia continued to lag behind the rest of the nation in many socioeconomic measures, housing, health care, and educational opportunities had improved for most mountain families.
The transformation of mountain life did not come easily or without resistance. Nor did it alter the region completely, for many of the qualities and challenges that had shaped the Appalachian experience throughout the twentieth century survived to define its identity at the outset of the twenty-first. Absentee land ownership, sustainable land use, environmental quality, economic and racial justice, civic leadership, and smart growth continued to shape the public dialogue and to link Appalachia to the rest of the nation and the world. Modernization had swept over the mountains, leaving a residue of problems and promise. No strangers to change, mountain people faced a familiar dilemma: how to seize the best of the new age and yet retain the things that gave meaning to life on uneven ground.
NOTES
1. “National Defense and Mountain Communities,” Mountain Life and Work 18:4 (Winter 1942): 1–15.
2. See Olaf F. Larson, “Wartime Migration and the Manpower Reserve on Farms in Eastern Kentucky,” Rural Sociology 8:2 (June 1943): 148–61.
3. See Jerry Wayne Napier, “Mines, Miners, and Machines: Coal Mine Mechanization and the Eastern Kentucky Coal Fields, 1890–1990” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1997) and Curtis Seltzer, Fire in the Hole: Miners and Managers in the American Coal Industry (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985).
4. George S. Mitchell, “Let’s Unite the Pie,” Mountain Life and Work 27:2 (1951): 19–20.
5. See Glen Edward Taul, “Poverty, Development, and Government in Appalachia: Origins of the Appalachian Regional Commission” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 2001), 42–89.
6. Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission, Program 60; John D. Whisman to Appalachian Commission Members, “Origin and Development of the Program, 1955–1975” (memo, 1976; copy in the author’s possession).
7. See, for example, Louisville Courier-Journal, Feb. 7, Feb. 15, Feb. 19, Mar. 10, and Mar. 12, 1960.
8. The best accounts of the 1960 West Virginia primary are by Harry W. Ernst, The Primary That Made a President (New York: Rutgers University Press, 1960), and Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (New York: Atheneum House, 1961).
9. “Philosophy Conflict Blocks 7-State Pact,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 21, 1960, p. 1.
10. Council of State Governments, Summary: Conference of Appalachian Governors (Atlanta, 1960); Hugh Morris, “States Differ on Need for U.S. Aid to Area,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 18, 1960, sec. 1, p. 1; Conference of Appalachian Governors, “A Resolution Subscribing to and Supporting a Declaration for Action Regarding the Appalachian Region,” in Council of State Governments, Summary, n.p.
11. “Kennedy Names 11 to Draft Aid Plan for Depressed Areas,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Dec. 5, 1960, sec. 1, p. 1; Fred W. Luigart Jr., “Kentuckian Is Joining Depressed-Area Group,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Dec. 7, 1960, sec. 2, p. 1.
12. “Kennedy Names 11,” p. 1; Luigart, “Kentuckian Is Joining Depressed-Area Group,” p. 1.
13. See Taul, “Poverty, Development, and Government in Appalachia,” 184–226.
14. David E. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer: People, Power, and Planning in Appalachia (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1980), 71–72; James E. Anderson, “Poverty, Unemployment, and Economic Development: The Search for a National Antipoverty Policy,” Journal of Politics 29 (Feb. 1967): 78–79; James Branscome, The Federal Government in Appalachia (New York: The Field Foundation, 1977), 23–24.
15. Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), 390.
16. Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission, Program 60: Report (Frankfort, Ky.: Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission, June 30, 1962), 8.
17. See Sar A. Levitan, The Design of Federal Antipoverty Strategy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967); Michael L. Gillette, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996); Irwin Unger, The Best of Intentions: The Triumph and Failure of the Great Society under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon (New York: Doubleday, 1996).
18. “One Dead, Thousands Homeless,” Lexington Herald, Mar. 18, 1963, p. 1; “Back to Beginnings in Eastern Kentucky,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Mar. 19, 1963, p. 6; “Editorial,” Whitesburg Mountain Eagle, Mar. 20, 1963, p. 2.
19. Whisman to Appalachian Commission Members (memo), pp. 23–24; transcript of the Joint Meeting of the Advisory Policy Board to Area Redevelopment Administration and Conference of Appalachian Governors, Washington, D.C., April 9, 1963, pp. 1–4,Papers of John D. Whisman, Conference of Appalachian Governors Series, Margaret I. King Library, Special Collections and Archives, University of Kentucky, Lexington (hereafter cited as Whisman Papers).
20. President’s Appalachian Regional Commission, Appalachia: A Report by the President’s Appalachian Regional Commission (Washington, D.C., 1964).
21. Fred Luigart, “Mountains Get Aid from JFK Order,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Dec. 24, 1963, p. 1.
22. Glen Taul, interview with John L. Sweeney (executive director, President’s Appalachian Regional Commission), May 13 and 20, 1997 (copy in the author’s possession); Taul, “Poverty, Development, and Government in Appalachia,” 288–302.
23. Richard Harwood, “LBJ, Moved by Plight of the Poor, Asks Domestic Marshall Plan,” Louisville Courier-Journal, Apr. 25, 1964, p. 7.
24. For details, see Taul, “Poverty, Development, and Government in Appalachia,” 373–86.
25. “Remarks of the President at the Signing Ceremony on the Appalachia Bill in the Rose Garden,” Mar. 9, 1965, The White House, in the Whisman Papers.
26. See Unger, Best of Intentions, 29–32; Nicholas Lemann, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 149–51; Gillette, Launching the War on Poverty, 1–19.
27. See Jack Weller, Yesterday’s People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1965).
28. See Thomas J. Kiffmeyer, “From Self-Help to Sedition: The Appalachian Volunteers in Eastern Kentucky, 1964–1970,” Journal of Southern History 64:1 (Feb. 1998): 65–94.
29. See Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer; John M. Glen, “The War on Poverty in Appalachia: A Preliminary Report,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 87 (Winter 1989): 40–57.
30. Ken Hechler, “TVA Ravages the Land,” The Environmental Journal: National Parks and Conservation Magazine, July 1971, p. 16.
31. See Chad Montrie, To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Coal Surface Mining in Appalachia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
32. Ronald D Eller, Kentucky’s Distressed Communities: A Report on Poverty in Appalachian Kentucky (Lexington: Appalachian Center, University of Kentucky, 1994).
33. See ibid.; Lawrence E. Wood and Gregory A. Bischak, Progress and Challenges in Reducing Economic Distress in Appalachia: An Analysis of National and Regional Trends since 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Appalachian Regional Commission, 2000); “Appalachia: Hollow Promises,” Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 26–30, 1999; Richard Couto, An American Challenge: A Report on Economic Trends and Social Issues in Appalachia (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1994).
SUGGESTED READINGS
Abell, Troy D. Better Felt Than Said: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in Southern Appalachia. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 1998.
Abrams, Douglas Carl. Conservative Constraints: North Carolina and the New Deal. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
Albanese, Catherine L. America: Religions and Religion. 3d ed. Belmont,
Calif.: Wadsworth, 1998.
Alexander, J. Trent. “Great Migrations: Race and Community in the Southern Exodus, 1917–1970.” Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2001.
Anderson, William L., ed. Cherokee Removal: Before and After. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
Ardrey, Julia S., ed. Welcome the Traveler Home: Jim Garland’s Story of the Kentucky Mountains. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.
Balling, Kevin M., and Howard Dorgan, producers and directors. While the Ages Roll On . . . : A Memorial. White Light Video, 1990.
Becker, Jane S. Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Berry, Chad. Southern Migrants and Northern Exiles. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Billings, Dwight B., and Kathleen M. Blee. The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Billings, Dwight B., Gurney Norman, and Katherine Ledford, eds. Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes: Back Talk from an American Region. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
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