Reformers to Radicals

by Thomas Kiffmeyer

  While the Council of the Southern Mountains tried to recover from the loss of its most visible and successful program, the board member Harry Caudill found the new Volunteer organization a blessing for the Southern mountains. “The Appalachian Volunteers,” he declared, “are young people and understandably should take a more militant stand on public issues than has the Council in past years.” According to Caudill, the Volunteers needed to “impress upon the electorate the fact that they are living on a rich land whose inhabitants are poor because of mismanagement of the land base and the almost endless exploitation of soil, minerals, and timber by both local residents and giant absentee corporations.” “The Volunteers,” he concluded, “can carry this message to the people and, with good fortune, could set in motion a revolutionary change of thought.”6

  The Appalachian Volunteers’ first attempt at setting in motion a “revolutionary change of thought” came during the summer program of 1966. Coming so close on the heels of the split, the program reflected both the influence of earlier CSM-AV school-based projects and the new direction plotted by the Appalachian Volunteers, Inc. In terms of demographics, the 1966 project closely resembled that of the previous year—half the participants came from outside the Appalachian region. This second summer endeavor, however, employed over twice the number of volunteers as had the previous year’s, a total of five hundred. According to Milton Ogle, 90 percent of those who entered the AVs’ ranks that summer were college students from two hundred institutions across the United States. While some of these students were returning volunteers, others came to the program because they had learned about it through media exposure and through the AVs’ own recruiting efforts. Additionally, the Volunteers drew from regional colleges (which did not necessarily guarantee that these students were from the area) and from among community residents. This latter group represented a new initiative for the Volunteer program. Through these paid “community interns,” the Volunteers hoped to cultivate local leaders who would, under the direction of AV supervisors, organize their own communities for the sake of local improvement. Through this program, the Volunteers adopted at least the appearance of allowing local people to help each other.7

  VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) associates participated in the summer project as well. Just as in the first summer program, they spent only the summer, not the entire year, in the mountains. The AVs controlled their recruitment and selection, and the relationship between the AVs and the federal government seemed inverted. Although the OEO wanted someone representing VISTA to “make the final determination concerning the selection of Volunteers for service,” the AVs wanted only a VISTA liaison officer—“a person agreeable to the Appalachian Volunteers”—to aid in the selection process. Reflecting that same self-confidence that characterized early AV reform efforts and the new militant attitude, the actual projects undertaken during the summer would be “developed by local community councils, AV’s and AV field staff.” While the AVs recognized that most efforts would be centered around the schools and would include renovation and enrichment, their desire to develop programs independent of any school connection was reflected in their insistence on letting “community councils” design programs. This was different from what the federal government wanted. The OEO believed that renovation and enrichment were the best paths toward community development and wanted the entire summer project to be “organized around local school houses.”8

  The AVs anticipated a successful summer. Writing to Manuel Strong, the assistant director of the Middle Kentucky River Development Council in Breathitt County, the Volunteer staff member Mike Kline urged both Strong and the county school superintendent, Marie Turner, to meet with the volunteers assigned to their county, stating: “I think it will be a good, friendly summer.” Many accounts indicate that it was just that. At Jones Creek, for example, volunteers swam in the local creek and, reflecting preconceived gender roles, held knitting classes for the girls and hiked with the boys. Verda, in Harlan County, enjoyed a literary program coupled with crafts lessons. The scenario was similar at nearby Evarts. Here, the volunteers conducted a tutoring program and a charm school for the community’s girls. Still other communities in eastern Kentucky played host to these same types of projects, such as the tutoring program at Goose Creek and the softball tournament at Bear Creek. In the reports that followed the summer project, every community listed had a school-based project.9

  While these few reports reflect the activities at only a handful of the counties that the Appalachian Volunteers entered that summer, they clearly illustrate that the AVs’ approach remained in line with the Council’s earlier methods. Nevertheless, this first independent AV program did institute a number of changes. First, it marked the expansion of the overall Volunteer program into the states of Virginia and West Virginia. Though the majority of Volunteer activity remained in twenty-one eastern Kentucky counties, nine additional counties—Boone, Clay, McDowell, Mercer, Mingo, Raleigh, and Wyoming in West Virginia and Wise and Scott in Virginia—came under the Volunteers’ umbrella.10

  Second, the Appalachian Volunteers placed considerable emphasis on their community interns and community councils. Contrary to the Council of the Southern Mountains’ conception of reform, which involved community representatives working in cooperation with existing local authorities, the AVs’ community interns and councils operated independently of county officials and community action programs (CAPs). Once they organized their communities, the Volunteers reasoned, they could then influence OEO-funded county programs. “Perhaps the greatest weakness of the typical Community Action Program in the Appalachian area,” the AVs contended, “is its failure to involve the poor in the planning, conduct, and review of programs.” The CAP director, along with certain members of his board, devised local community action efforts, and the poor were permitted only “to ratify a ‘pre-planned’ program.” The Volunteers claimed that target-group representation on the governing board was “limited to a few ‘Toms’ selected by the dominant figures”: “Even in the best situations the elected representatives of the poor constitute a small, silent minority.” This failure to involve the poor stemmed from a number of issues, including the desire of local officials to get federal funds as quickly as possible and a lack of faith in the ability of the poor to make informed decisions. Equally important, as the Appalachian Volunteers argued, the local county governments exhibited an “unwillingness to allow a dilution of centralized political power” in each jurisdiction and a belief in the absence of an organization and leadership among the poor themselves. For the Appalachian Volunteers, the remedy was the intern and community council approach.11

  In their search for community interns, AV staff looked to hire people from poor local communities who exhibited “leadership potential” and a commitment “to the ideals of the Economic Opportunity Act.” They hoped through training to instill in the interns “a sense of identification with the interests and aspirations of the poor and a belief in the right and the ability of the poor people to make their own decisions.” Working in conjunction with the community councils, each mountain neighborhood could then determine its own plans and goals for the AV summer project. Utilizing this strategy, the community became the Volunteers’ advisory board. Its responsibility was to ensure resident participation in the summer efforts, to administer the funding (each participating community received $300 from the Appalachian Volunteers to help pay for its activities), and to find acceptable room and board for the Volunteers. In short, community organizing at the grassroots level was the AVs’ ultimate goal in the summer of 1966.12

  This desire to organize communities by creating community councils explains, in part, why the summer affair so closely resembled the CSM-sponsored activities. As the Volunteers themselves recognized, schools were the closest most mountain neighborhoods came to a local organization, and the AVs hoped that their new tactics would help them avoid the pitfalls of the previous summer. Interestingly, this new Volunteer outlook reject
ed the optimism that tinged most AV workers’ perceptions of the first summer project. Despite reports to the contrary, the Volunteers now argued that in almost no community that took part in the 1965 effort did the activities “involve the parents and other interested citizens actively”: “In many cases the . . . program seemed to belong to the Volunteers rather than the community.” In 1966, the AVs decided that the community council would have to run the program. The Appalachian Volunteers would not act unilaterally.13

  Though the Appalachian Volunteers did conduct a summer school for impoverished mountain residents of any age, the real beneficiary of the summer program was the Appalachian Volunteers as an organization. The summer project ultimately resulted in yet another transformation of the AVs. So many soldiers in the field strained the organization’s supervisory resources tremendously. Their activities were fairly simple—renovation, tutoring, and enrichment in most cases—and the Volunteer staff supervised their workers casually, if they did so at all. Quoting AV fieldmen who were responsible for fifty to sixty volunteers each, David Whisnant described the summer project as “‘ridiculous,’ ‘a circus’ and ‘a disaster.’” By the end of the program, Whisnant concluded, the AV leaders realized “that as a tactic for bringing about change in the region, invasion by battalions of summer volunteers was not very useful.” The AV consultant Dr. Robert Coles made a similar observation. In his evaluation of the summer effort, he noted that the AV staff “was not only overworked but simply could not . . . cope with the problem of dealing with five hundred students.” Following this program, the Volunteers placed increasing emphasis on the community interns and councils.14

  In other ways, the summer project was a catalyst for change within the Volunteer organization. Bringing a large number of people into the region and training them with a limited staff resulted in more than one personnel problem. One volunteer from New York City, for example, had trouble adjusting to her new surroundings. In reviewing her performance, the fieldman Flem Messer observed: “She was placed in a community that was extremely conservative socially and very far removed from the type of environment she was used to coping with.” Though Messer believed her to be dependable, she “did have considerable problems and conflicts adjusting to the very strict social situation.” In his evaluation of the Volunteers, Coles noted a “continual outpouring of all the anxieties, fears, depression, anger, and everything else that goes along with being transplanted from one world into another and having to come to terms with it intellectually and emotionally.” Another volunteer caused problems when he failed to pay his “host family” for his room and board. (Each mountain family that housed a volunteer was supposed to receive an allowance of $12.50 per week to help defray expenses.) Over four months after the close of the summer project, this volunteer still owed his hosts over a month’s rent. This situation reflected poorly on the entire Volunteer program and exposed the quantitative reasons why some local people, at least in part, accepted the Appalachian Volunteer program.15

  While the summer program definitely exacted a toll on the Volunteers themselves, those who did come to terms with their situation seemed committed to substantial change in the mountains. A survey of both VISTA volunteers and VISTA associates conducted by the Volunteer staff revealed the typical individual the AV program attracted, the methods he or she hoped to use to initiate change, and weaknesses in the program. When asked whether a conference among AVs and VISTA volunteers would prove beneficial, nineteen of twenty-two VISTA volunteers responded favorably. Of these affirmative responses, many expressed a concern over fragmentation in the overall program. One hoped to decide “how to . . . coordinate our activities toward . . . common goals.” Another sought ways to facilitate the integration of the Volunteers’ “organization efforts across county and state lines.” Still others wanted a conference that focused on Appalachia’s problems and how the “cooperative efforts of AV-VISTAs [could] combat them.” Finally, Volunteers sought better communication between the field personnel and AV headquarters. Of the nineteen, thirteen commented on how the Appalachian Volunteers needed to improve their organizational structure for their efforts to be fully effective.16

  Other VISTA volunteers warned about spreading the Volunteers too thinly across the central Appalachian highlands. The Volunteers, believed David Thoenen, should concentrate their “resources within [a] small geographic area to achieve max [sic] effectiveness . . . and results.” Cathy Lochner echoed this sentiment by commenting that the Volunteers needed to work on a countywide basis but not let themselves get so diluted that they would cease to be productive. Issues, however, were not limited to geographic distribution and organization. Some AV members wanted to hold a conference that addressed what Carol Wolfenden called the “specific problems that have confronted us” over the past summer. These problems included local CAPs and county judges. The Volunteers needed to either find a way “to work around them, or get them on [our] side.” Candy Colin, who spent the summer in Mendota, Virginia, wanted to see the phrase “m[aximum] f[easible] p[articipation]” of the poor included in all CAP bylaws.17

  Both VISTA volunteers and VISTA associates recognized similar problems during their brief stays. Responses to a questionnaire about their experiences during the summer of 1966 revealed a desire to go beyond the enrichment and renovation exercises of the past and cited the problems that came with such a huge influx of volunteers. While David Altschul of Amherst, Massachusetts, questioned the relevancy of OEO programs for Appalachia’s poor, Robin Buckner of Georgetown, Kentucky, and Carol Wolfenden, a VISTA volunteer working in Frakes, Kentucky, expressed a desire for more stringent restrictions on strip-mining practices in the region. “Is there anything we can do to these m[oun]t[ain]s,” Wolfenden asked, “that have been ruined by strip mining?”18

  Other AV workers experienced frustration in dealing with local CAPs and county officials. Though one activist from Indiana asked for “information on all local CAP boards—structure—function, what we should know about them as AVs working with them,” Jerry Knoll, stationed in Clospoint, Kentucky, hoped the Volunteers could meet with Edward Breathitt, the governor of Kentucky, “and other official types that can pressure out AVs’ from their states.” Joining Knoll were Karyn Palmer, who worked in Inez, and Patricia Dicky, who worked in Bethany, Kentucky. Palmer looked for ways to get “thru the ‘structure,’” whereas Dicky wanted the AVs to “try to get [congressmen] to represent thier place of office like the people expected them to when they elected them in.”19

  Coupled with this concern over the AVs’ ability to operate within the confines of eastern Kentucky’s political system were issues that posed serious questions to the Appalachian Volunteers as an organization. Judith Jacobs, a native of Great Neck, New York, for example, complained of the lack of follow-up projects in certain communities where the Volunteers had worked. She also called into question the training, selection, and assignments of those who participated in the AV program. In a question that resonated throughout the entire Volunteer camp, she wondered why the AVs had experienced minimal success in community development. Her fellow Volunteers made similar statements, especially about training. Ed Turner, who came to the mountains from Atlanta, thought that the Volunteers should have had a better understanding of their communities’ problems before actually arriving in them. While this might have been a monumental task for the trainers, another AV member from Pennsylvania suggested that each community expressing a desire to host volunteers form a committee that could “determine how to best use the A.V.’s instead of letting them over-run the community.” Harvard University’s John Zysman added that the Volunteers themselves needed to set goals and priorities—“something left generally undiscussed with Volunteers”—for the program’s participants. A forth summer volunteer, also from Pennsylvania, vocalized a sense of frustration that the antipoverty organization had failed so far to get “something done about the problems we went looking for.”20

  This sense of frustration permeated the th
oughts of many AV workers after the summer project. Sheila Musselman of Newton, Iowa, resented the fact that the community in which she worked “was expecting cheap laborers!” While it is clear that she did not expect to exert herself physically, Musselman did not explicitly state what she thought she was supposed to do while a volunteer. It is possible, nevertheless, that she was not sure of her role in the mountain community. Another respondent from Hartford, Connecticut, wondered about the Volunteers’ conception of the “poor” and “how social change came about.” “What I am trying to avoid,” she continued, “is the AV’s feeling of distress when confronted w[ith] a situation he cannot verbalize to himself except to fall back on his middle class understanding of the ‘poor.’” John Campbell of Chester, Pennsylvania, agonized over the “power of the poor.” “Is it realistic,” he pondered, “to think in grass roots terms in the 20th century bureaucratic society?”21

  As these responses show, the Appalachian Volunteers’ summer 1966 project offered more questions about than solutions to the region’s problems. More important, however, those taking part in the project exhibited a growing willingness to take an increasingly combative stance, prompting an organizational change in the Appalachian Volunteers. Issues concerning communications between the field and the office and among volunteers themselves, fears of overextending the program, difficulties with local politicians and CAPs, and community obstacles to organizing caused Ogle and Fox to reevaluate their efforts. A more politically aggressive Appalachian Volunteers was the result.