Reformers to Radicals

by Thomas Kiffmeyer

  All three who criticized the orientation program indicated that they had no idea what was expected of them once they were on the job. Equally important was the question of the mores of the mountaineers. Because they were operating under the assumptions inherent in the culture of poverty model, the AV staff may have ignored the rural mountaineer culture since that was what they ultimately hoped to change. In addition, very few of the AVs understood mountain culture because so few of them were Appalachians themselves.

  Located in the Appalachian Volunteer papers are biographical data sheets for twenty-seven volunteers from the Spring Break Project. These forms clearly illustrate that, by March 1965, the organization had abandoned its founding concept of local people helping each other. Of the twenty-seven, two were from Tennessee, and seven were Kentuckians. The rest—the majority of whom were University of Kentucky students—listed hometowns such as Rockville, Maryland, Bay City, Michigan, and Syracuse, New York. More interesting, only one listed an Appalachian county, Sullivan County, Tennessee, as his place of origin.37

  Compounding this demographic change was an attitudinal shift that also went against the founding principles of the Appalachian Volunteers. By this time, there were many AV members who turned the focus of the projects on themselves rather than on the mountaineers. “I would like to help the unfortunate people of Eastern Kentucky,” answered one volunteer when asked why he wished to join the AVs, “because I feel that it is part of my responsibility as a human being. . . . I will provide them with a broader education and better facilities which will make their everyday life much more enjoyable and prosperous. . . . I will be a missionary.” Echoing this statement was a native of Bay City, Michigan, who wanted to change Appalachia into a “better and happier [region] through a little understanding, friendship and hard work”: “For those of us who are rich in essentials . . . it is not foolish to say that it is our duty to share.” A third participant saw the Volunteer experience as an opportunity for selfless action. She complained that all her life she thought only of her self but that now, through the AVs, she could finally do “for others.”38

  Though many saw the AV experience as an opportunity to cleanse their souls, others, like the Pomona College group, saw it as an opportunity to learn themselves. One University of Kentucky student, for example, wanted to do anthropological research in eastern Kentucky, and she looked to the Volunteers as a means to this end. Implying that genetics explained the region’s limitations, she hoped that the AV experience would enable her to complete her tentatively titled thesis “The Consequences of Genetic Lines in Eastern Kentucky.” Still others hoped simply to bring a ray of sunshine into the bleak world of the central Appalachians: “I see myself trying to penetrate their world and trying to make them smile where before they may have had sad, dismal faces.” Finally, two participants fell back on the Appalachian Volunteers. One had been rejected by the Peace Corps and, thus, settled for the AVs, while another, possibly hoping to avoid the same fate, decided that the AVs could provide him with a quality Peace Corps training experience. Though the reasons for wanting to participate in the program varied widely, what was important was that many applicants had little connection with the mountaineers. Indeed, concepts of missionary charity and a sense of noblesse oblige began to emerge within the Appalachian Volunteer organization.39

  Their place of origin and attitudes concerning the mountaineers notwithstanding, the participants in the Spring Break Project were but a small part of the outside world that descended on eastern Kentucky. By the summer of 1965, the Appalachian Volunteers had VISTA volunteers in fifteen schools in twelve counties, and, with the Summer 1965 Project, they brought in nearly 150 additional volunteers. According to the AVs, the VISTA volunteers had the responsibility to make sure that efforts—particularly school renovation and curriculum enrichment—continued in those places where Volunteers had already started the work.40

  Accompanying the Volunteers that summer were “VISTA associates,” the product of an interesting combination of the Volunteer and the VISTA programs. Rather than spending a year on assignment like regular VISTA volunteers, the associates signed on for an eight-week tour of duty over the summers. Of the 150 volunteers for the Summer 1965 Project, half were out-of-state VISTA associates from thirty different states. These volunteers worked for eight weeks in forty-three eastern Kentucky communities. Despite their widely dispersed geographic origins and the fact that, technically, they were Volunteers, VISTA volunteers and VISTA associates should be considered as part of the AVs. While some VISTA volunteers worked in eastern Kentucky in other capacities, those who came to the mountains under the AV banner operated, Loyal Jones declared, “under the direction of the Council” and worked “solely on the Appalachian Volunteers Project.” In this way, the Council truly considered VISTA volunteers to be AVs. In fact, the two programs—VISTA and the Appalachian Volunteers—were so closely linked that the Volunteers distributed VISTA applications and told those interested in the Southern mountains to specify that they “want placement with the AVs and AV training” on their VISTA application. The AV staff member Tom Rhodenbaugh told one VISTA associate: “You will be, as far as we are concerned, an Appalachian Volunteer.” Equally important was the attitude of the VISTA volunteers themselves. One AV-VISTA, as they frequently labeled themselves, described himself and his fellow VISTA volunteers as “full time A.V.’s.” This individual was not unique. A careful reading of the AV correspondence reveals that those who wrote to AV headquarters, either during their tenure in the mountains or after, constantly referred to themselves as Appalachian Volunteers or “AV-VISTAs,” as opposed to just VISTA volunteers, and the Appalachian Volunteer label always came first.41

  Prior to their departure for their assigned communities, the VISTA volunteers underwent a ten-day training program under the direction of the Appalachian Volunteer staff. Utilizing such sources as Jack Weller’s Yesterday’s People, a book that embraced the culture of poverty perspective, the new recruits prepared for their mountain tasks under the direction of an “AV professor.” These professors, actually AV staff members, conducted three-hour sessions twice a day for the first four days of the week and then took the new volunteers on orientation field trips to counties such as Clay, Jackson, and Rockcastle. According to Fox, the director of AV field operations, fieldmen prepared a two-page description for each community in which volunteers were to be assigned. These descriptions included population figures, income, social structure, teacher qualifications, welfare roles, and the “extent of isolation” of each town. These reports, along with a series of hypothetical case studies called the “Library of Community Action Styles” and Weller’s book, became the basis of the training sessions. The last three days focused on the tasks of actually getting the summer volunteers to their assigned communities and settled in their “new mountain homes.” In most cases, the AV staff arranged for the summer workers to board with local mountain residents. Therefore, with about twelve hours of preparation and a brief tour of the region, the Council of the Southern Mountains released 150 summer volunteers, in teams of four to six, into forty central Appalachia communities.42

  Unfortunately, responses to the first summer project training session are not available. The Earlham College volunteers, however, did respond to a similar training experience that they had just prior to their Spring Break Project in March 1965. Because the Earlham project had a similar thrust as the Summer 1965 effort (enrichment and renovation), the preparation probably was similar. In any event, the Earlham students’ reactions to the AV orientation were decidedly negative. One student considered it “adequate but dull”—the most positive of the responses—while another claimed that it was poorly organized. “The talks of the supposed orientation were extremely superficial,” a third argued, “[and] seemed only [to] give us unrealistic ideals.” More important, the Appalachian Volunteers provided “very little about [the mountaineers’] attitudes.”43

  John Hogarty of Antioch College echoed this ne
gative response. He was in Berea that March to help with Volunteer training and to establish a permanent work-study program that would improve education in the mountains. In a letter to Milton Ogle about the spring training session, Hogarty remarked: “In short, there was a lot of verbiage, but I don’t really sense that there were too many creative and different ideas which might be used by you in the program . . . that you are planning.”44 If the summer orientation was anything like that offered the Earlham students, the training sessions taxed the whole AV program terribly, and the unprecedented number of volunteers undoubtedly made it more difficult to administer. Still, instructing volunteers for work in the field, especially those volunteers coming from outside the region, was vital to the long-term success of the AV effort.

  Just as the training sessions failed to impress many of the volunteers, the volunteers failed to impress many eastern Kentuckians. In fact, complaints arose even before fieldwork began. Two female employees of Berea College who helped run the orientation sessions complained to Ayer about the demeanor of the potential volunteers. “I hope there is a second screening of persons before they are sent out into the area,” Minnie Macaulay wrote. “I cannot believe mountain people would welcome some of the girls . . . in the AV group. [They are] demanding, pushing, [and] most unkempt in dress.” Echoing these sentiments was Florence Brooks, who believed in the AV program but not the people it attracted. “I have observed these people on campus and in the boarding hall,” she informed Ayer. “I strongly urge that no one of the AV group be allowed to leave for the mountains without a final evaluation.”45 The gap that had opened between the AVs and those they wanted to help had widened beyond place of origin to include attitudes and community mores.

  Despite the warnings, the summer of 1965 brought an influx of VISTA volunteers, VISTA associates, and AVs into Berea and eastern Kentucky. The Appalachian Volunteer leadership and people from outside the region saw great promise in the new corps. The Harvard University faculty member and psychiatrist Robert Coles, who joined the AV consulting team in 1965, told Fox that he had never witnessed a “so well organized, sensible and tactful approach based on really sensitive appreciation of the delicate relationship between people and those that come to ‘help’ them.” Even the lawyer Harry Caudill, a vocal critic from the mountains, wrote to the Council office praising the work of the AVs. Exhibiting a belief that the region’s infrastructure contributed to its problems, Caudill declared himself “delighted with the work the Volunteers are doing in so many places in eastern Kentucky”: “Highly paid government officials have spent much time endlessly grubbing about our problems and writing expensive study reports. They have cost America enormous sums of money and have not yet laid one brick upon another.” In Caudill’s estimation, the Volunteers “have rolled up their sleeves and have come to grips with” the problems of the region. Even an OEO representative referred to the Appalachian Volunteers as “one of the more successful programs” of the War on Poverty.46

  The Appalachian Volunteers maintained that, by “reaching more people in more communities,” the student workers, coupled with the VISTA volunteers and the VISTA associates, “achieved fuller participation in community action.” In many ways, the AV program began to show signs of effecting real change in Appalachia. Focusing on the schools, the CSM reported that the combined AV-VISTA effort demonstrated to the mountain folk that “their combined power, as delegates to county officials,” has “produced improvements needed for years, ranging from replacing windows for the school house to cutting a new road.” The people of Elkhorn, Leslie County, picketed the State Highway Commission until the county graded the road to the town, and one particular one-room school in Wolfe County received its first visit from the school superintendent in twenty years. In Joshua, Knott County, unemployed fathers built a new lunchroom on the local school, while, in Breathitt County, the fathers in Quicksand constructed a bridge across the creek. Other reports indicate that the Volunteers convinced children to stay in school and that they organized community improvement associations. In its summation of AV activities through 1965, the Council argued: “In the field of what Washington Community Action Program people call ‘resident participation’ Appalachian Volunteers and VISTA workers . . . have taken the lead in Eastern Kentucky.”47

  The Council, however, may have gone too far in its claims of “resident participation.” According to the CSM report, it was the Volunteers who organized town meetings and convinced the county CAP director to attend the “up-the-holler community meeting.” The CSM’s own documentation actually downplayed the role of the people in community development, and the Volunteers, not the local people, were the “developers.”48

  Not everyone viewed the AVs’ work so positively. For example, the Knott County school superintendent attempted to discourage the addition of a lunchroom to the school in the small town of Joshua because, according to an AV report, he did not want “the added bother of delivering food, keeping accounts, etc.” As the project neared completion under the direction of a VISTA volunteer, the superintendent, “apparently alarmed at the unexpected progress,” told a community leader that “no surplus food would be available until certain unrealistic health code requirements were met.” The community vowed to fight for the lunch program, and a group of residents confronted the superintendent in his office. His response was to inform the group’s leader that, if he wanted to discuss anything, the “crowd” would have to stay home.49

  Then there were those county officials who, instead of trying to obstruct the AV effort, attempted to control it. This was, most likely, a reaction to what had become the continued AV presence—in the form of the resident VISTA volunteers—in the region. That is, a contest had developed between county-administered CAPs and the Appalachian Volunteers over who would control the funding supplied by the federal government for the War on Poverty. For example, in Morgan County, the AV fieldman, William Wells, discovered that the county superintendent removed encyclopedias donated by the Volunteers to the White Oak Branch and Peddlers Gap schools and transferred them to the county seat of West Liberty. Neighboring Elliott County also became a trouble spot for Wells. The local superintendent refused to give his consent to a proposed AV project and denied the AVs access to any school property in the county. Perhaps he did not want the Volunteers using his schools for community organizing centers as they had done in Joshua. Flem Messer also complained about the way in which county school systems spent OEO and Elementary and Secondary Education Act funds. This money, he contended, was supposed to provide for an improved remedial education program in the mountains, but teachers requested “such items as stoves and refrigerators” rather than educational materials.50

  These incidents were not limited to Morgan and Estill counties. When the Appalachian Volunteers again tried to evaluate their educational programs, the testing administrator, Charles Shedd, reported that local superintendents discouraged visits to rural schools. According to Wells, local superintendents in his area told Shedd that the poor attendance in those schools would make the trip and the test less than profitable. Shedd, Wells maintained, discounted the officials’ assertions and claimed that the superintendents “attempted to delay testing because . . . they [felt] threatened.” Curt Davis of Elliott County, another school official in Wells’s area of responsibility, expressed concern over the attention being paid to these one-room schools since they were slated for consolidation. More significant for the Volunteers, however, was Davis’s attitude toward the AV effort. Wells reported that the superintendent saw little good in the work performed by the Volunteers and referred to the plight of the poor in his county as “a disease.” This so-called disease, Davis further informed Wells, was just “plain laziness.”51

  City officials and local CAP administrators also objected to AV plans and projects. In late May 1965, for example, the mayor of Pikeville met with the Volunteer staff member Flem Messer. Messer concluded that, while the mayor had given him “three hours of his philosophy and
said he was interested in our program,” his “main interest [was] centered on the physical needs of Pikeville and the surrounding area rather than human resources.” In Rockcastle County, an AV-VISTA spoke frequently with public officials who always asked how they could help her. “I tell them to help,” she reported to the Volunteer leaders, “by not condemning the OEO program.” The director of the Knox County CAP, James Kendrick, reprimanded the Volunteers because he had not been informed that a VISTA volunteer was being sent to his county. The volunteer had been at work for three weeks, he claimed, before he discovered her presence. “It seems appropriate,” Kendrick wrote, “for VISTA volunteers to be introduced to the local Community Action Agency.”52

  In 1965 and early 1966, Volunteer reactions to these problems ranged from counterattacks on those now seen as obstacles to declarations of frustration and resignation from the AV ranks. “I did my best in Kentucky,” Sue Leek, an Oregon native, wrote to Milton Ogle and Dan Fox after she quit the Volunteers and returned home. “I was so tired of having [the community people] say ‘show us where to go from here’ and then having my gov[ernment] and theirs say ‘sorry can’t help you.’ I was tired of having to fight dirty people with clean hands.” Leek was clear just who those “dirty people” were. “I wanted to fight the school board like they fight, but the AV name had to be held up high [and] the bad publicity it would have got would have hurt. So I [and] the other VISTAs [and] AV’s are to be in a community to look good for Shriver.”53

  Unfortunately, Leek failed to illuminate just how the school board fought “dirty.” Other AV workers, however, suggested that local public officials were more concerned with perpetuating conditions in eastern Kentucky than with changing them. “I still say,” Loren Kramer, an AV “teacher” stationed in Ary, Kentucky, wrote, “that we have much to learn and preserve in Appalachia that is great and beautiful, while at the same time changing, gung-ho, the status quo.” Echoing the theme that the AVs were the sole change agents funded by the OEO, Kim Hashizumi, an Appalachian Volunteer operating in Glade, Kentucky, commented that the Volunteers worked hard, “unlike a certain CAP Dir[ector] I know who [spent] more time [and] energy trying to convince certain feds that he’s concerned about poverty—(he is—his own).”54