Reformers to Radicals

by Thomas Kiffmeyer

  29. Report of the September 1967 Pike County Grand Jury, September 11, 1967 (Mimeo), AV Papers, box 10.

  30. The Appalachian Volunteers: A Report to the Public, August 17, 1967, AV Papers, box 10. On the decision to cut funding, see Statement on Appalachian Volunteers Situation in Kentucky by Albert Whitehouse, Director of Kentucky Office of Economic Opportunity, September 11, 1967, AV Papers, box 11.

  31. Gillis Brassfield to Governor Edward T. Breathitt, August 20, 1967, AV Papers, box 9; “Do We Really Need These ‘Helpers’?”; Statement on Appalachian Volunteers, September 8, 1967 (Whitehouse comments; emphasis added), AV Papers, box 11; Appalachian Volunteers, Minutes of Board Meeting, Mingo County, West Virginia, August 26, 1967 (Ogle remarks), AV Papers, box 7. For Breathitt’s tentative decision to refuse AV funding, see Ramsey, “13 Poverty Program Heads Protest Appalachian Volunteers’ Fund Loss”; and Boyd, “Cut Off Is Illegal, AV Boss Claims.” For a collection of letters for and against the Appalachian Volunteers, see the Edward T. Breathitt Papers, Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives, Frankfort.

  32. Horton, “The Appalachian Volunteers,” 100 (quote); and Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 206.

  33. On the draft deferments, see George A. Woodring to Miss Marty Dixon, American Friends Service Committee, May 18, 1967, AV Papers, box 30; Bill Wells to Perley Ayer, March 9, 1965, AV Papers, box 30; Joel Hasslen to [Selective Service] Local Board No. 96, St. Paul, MN, May 7, 1967, AV Papers, box 24; Dan Fox to [Selective Service] Local Board No. 8, Camden, N.J., April 12, 1966, AV Papers, box 35 (for Rivel); Thomas Rhodenbaugh to Selective Service Local 113, Akron, Ohio, March 24, 1966, AV Papers, box 35; Dan Fox to [Selective Service] Local Board No. 14, New York City, April 20, 1966 (for Kramer); Douglas Yarrow to [CSM], March 30, 1965, AV Papers, box 28; Jack Rivel to Breck Fugate, October 14, 1966, AV Papers, box 23; and Walter Hays to [AVs], September 10, 1966, AV Papers, box 28. Cooper’s wishes are in Linda Cooper, [Conference Questionnaire], December 1966, AV Papers, box 7. On Mulloy, see Oral History Interview with Joe Mulloy, November 11, 1990, Huntington, WV, WOP Oral History Project.

  34. Appalachian Volunteers Fire Joe Mulloy, [Press Release], [December 1967], and Statement by Joe Mulloy, December 2, 1967, AV Papers, box 11.

  35. Walls quotes concerning Easterling are in Memorandum, David Walls to AV Staff, November 6, 1967, AV Papers, box 11. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 204.

  36. Appalachian Volunteers Fire Joe Mulloy, [Press Release], [December 1967] (first quote), AV Papers, box 11. On the question of procedural impropriety, see Tom Bethell to Milton Ogle, December 6, 1967, AV Papers, box 11; W. M. Peck to Milton Ogle, December 6, 1967 (third quote), AV Papers, box 11; and Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 205. Ogle’s quotes in Milton Ogle to Richard Cartwright Austin, December 11, 1967, AV Papers, box 11. David Walls to AV Staff, November 6, 1967 (last quote), AV Papers, box 11.

  37. On the resignations, see AV Papers, box 11. Michael Clark to Milton Ogle, December 4, 1967 (first two quotes), Steve Daugherty to Milton Ogle, December 4, 1967, and Tom Bethell to Milton Ogle, December 5, 1967, AV Papers, box 11.

  38. W. Va. AV’s to Bristol Office, December 4, 1967, Memorandum, Eric Metzner, West Virginia Volunteers, to West Virginia Appalachian Volunteers Staff, December 7, 1967, Steve Daugherty to Milton Ogle, December 4, 1967 (“moral force”), and Memorandum, Tom Bethell to Edith Easterling, David Walls, AV Staff, December 10, 1967 (last quote), AV Papers, box 11.

  39. Memorandum, Edith Easterling to Steve Daugherty, Michael Clark, et al., December 6, 1967, AV Papers, box 11.

  40. Ibid. (emphasis added).

  41. Acts of the General Assembly, 1968, chap. 237 (HR 84), p. 903 (quote); Conspiracy Exposed: City, KUAC Work Together to Cover-Up Injustices, AV Papers, Part II, box 5.

  42. “KUAC Investigating in the Mountains.” According to the AVs, the request for the hearings originated with Tom Ratliff, the commonwealth’s attorney in Pike County who prosecuted the sedition case of 1967. See Horton, “The Appalachian Volunteers,” 108; The Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Held at Pikeville, Kentucky, October 15 and 16, 1968, AV Papers, Part II, box 5.

  43. Statement by David Walls, AV Acting Director, October 7, 1968 (quote), AV Papers, Part II, box 5. Not surprisingly, the argument that Communists will deny they are Communists was used in Carl Braden’s first sedition conviction in 1954. See Ross, “The Domestic Anti-Communist Movement and Carl Braden.” For an example of how this clever political trick worked in Louisiana politics in the 1950s, see Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 30.

  In a January 24, 2008, e-mail to the author, David Walls explained the AVs’ position vis-à-vis KUAC: “As I remember the times, the thought that we would voluntarily appear [before the committee] was entirely out of the question. It would have betrayed our own, and our liberal allies’ (including foundation, etc.), notions of the necessary civil libertarian response to an Un-American Activities committee. We were stretching our principles to talk with them informally in our Prestonsburg office. We had hoped that we’d be subpoenaed, and could challenge KUAC’s authority and constitutionality in court. They were smart not to get to that point.”

  44. Horton, “The Appalachian Volunteers,” 109 (quotes). Though KUAC used its subpoena power, the vast majority of witnesses required to testify were hostile to the AV position. These included the director and associate director of the Big Sandy Community Action Program, an organization that had been hostile toward the AVs for many years, an employee of that organization, a Pike County deputy sheriff, a prominent Pikeville lawyer who represented the water district the Volunteers were battling, the director of that water district, the county magistrate of the Marrowbone District, and the jailor for Pike County. Only one member of the Pike County Citizens Association, an organization sympathetic to the AVs, was subpoenaed, and even he disassociated his organization from the Volunteers. Remember, no AVs were subpoenaed. They were merely “invited” to attend. Surely, given their protests and avowals not to cooperate, those conducting the hearings knew that the Appalachian Volunteers would refuse to appear before KUAC. This essentially gave the committee a free hand in condemning the organization. See Walls’s explanation in previous note.

  45. The Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Held at Pikeville, Kentucky, October 15 and 16, 1968, pp. 6, 141, 71, 95, 92, AV Papers, Part II, box 5. The transcript is replete with attacks on the AVs.

  46. Ibid., 175, 95, 245, 95, 246.

  47. Not only did witnesses claim that the AVs threatened to destroy the chances for the establishment of the much-needed water system if their plan was not followed, but one witness, the county magistrate, claimed that his job was threatened, an AV telling him: “You have been very popular in this vicinity but when we get through, you ain’t gonna be.” See The Joint Legislative Committee On Un-American Activities, Hearings Held at Pikeville, Kentucky, October 15 and 16, 1968, p. 42, AV Papers, Part II, box 5.

  48. Ibid., 86–87.

  49. Ibid., 89. For an excellent discussion of the history of the Highlander Folk School, see Glen, Highlander,

  50. The Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Held at Pikeville, Kentucky, October 15 and 16, 1968, pp. 168, 173, 171, 172, 28, 227, 228, AV Papers, Part II, box 5. In another statement, a certain witness believed “that these programs can only be conducted by the State organization, set up by the State, by local people and local administration, whereby the County Judge or his subordinates can see that the people working in the program are legitimate.” See ibid., 27.

  51. Ibid., 187, 149, 28.

  52. Kentucky Un-American Activities Committee Interim Report quoted in Horton, “The Appalachian Volunteers,” 110. The report is also reprinted in Appalachian Lookout 1 (January–February 1969): 11–13. Given that KUAC began its hearings with no preconceptions and that the hearings were one-sided for only two days, this was a very interesting conclusion.

  53. H
ulett C. Smith’s letter is reprinted in full in “Speech by Senator Robert Byrd (W.VA),” 27620.

  While I concentrate primarily on the AV experience in eastern Kentucky, the organization did make a notable presence in the Mountain State. It attained, in the short term, a degree of success organizing poor rural West Virginians, especially in Raleigh County. Nevertheless, the Raleigh County Community Action Program, which the AVs managed to control in the summer of 1966, remained small and minimally funded. Moreover, by August 1967, as Governor Smith’s statements illustrate, the AVs’ days in West Virginia were numbered. On the funding in West Virginia and the Volunteers, see Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 193–94, 200, 206. For an examination of the War on Poverty in West Virginia’s Mingo County, see Perry, “They’ll Cut off Your Project”; and Barnes, “A Case Study of the Mingo County Economic Opportunity Commission.” For Byrd’s remarks, see “Speech by Senator Robert Byrd (W.VA),” 27621.

  54. On the move to Prestonsburg, see Horton, “The Appalachian Volunteers,” 100; and Suggested Agenda, AV Board of Directors Meeting, February 8, 1969, AV Papers, box 7. Evaluation Report of the Appalachian Volunteers, June 24 to July 3, 1968, Mid Atlantic Region (II), OEO, August 1, 1968, AV Papers, box 13; Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Title V (quote).

  55. Cloward, “The War on Poverty,” 55; AV Background Information, Section I: Men and Jobs, n.d. (second quote), AV Papers, box 8.

  56. Ibid.; AV Background Information, Section I: Men and Jobs, n.d. (first quote), AV Papers, box 8; Horton, “The Appalachian Volunteers,” 101 (last quote). On the Floyd County AGSLP chapter, see Suggested Agenda, AV Board of Directors Meeting, February 8, 1969, AV Papers, box 7.

  57. West Virginia Report, David Biesmeyer, February 5, 1968, and [Attachment] Quarterly Report, October 31, 1968, AV Papers, box 9.

  58. Bertrand Harding, Acting Director, OEO, to David Biesmeyer, President, Designs for Rural Action, May 21, 1969 (first quote), and Neal Kingsolving to Richard Nixon, June 16, 1969 (second quote), OEO Papers, NN 3-381-92-19, box 20.

  59. Suggested Agenda, AV Board of Directors Meeting, February 8, 1969, [Section] V (first quote), and Suggested Agenda, AV Board of Directors Meeting, February 8, 1969, [Section] III: Goals, Priorities and Problems (second quote), AV Papers, box 7.

  60. The Program of the Appalachian Volunteers, Inc., April, 1969, AV Papers, box 9.

  61. Howard Thorkelson to Robert Coles, September 30, 1968, AV Papers, box 21; Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 208. On the PCCA, see Contract between the Appalachian Volunteers and the Pike County Citizens Association, [1969], AV Papers, box 7.

  62. 4 Months Report on Roy J. Cantrell, May 14, 1968, Three Months Report, Truman Jent, November 15, 1968 (quote), Economic Consultation, August 22–23, 1968, Summary Statement, Bennett Poage, Three Month Report, February 15, 1969, Clifford Atchley [Logan County], and Report for Last Three Months, Josephine Combs, February 13, 1969, AV Papers, box 9.

  63. Memorandum, Douglas G. Robinson to Appalachian Volunteers Files, January 7, 1970 (quotes), AV Papers, box 11; The Program of the Appalachian Volunteers, Inc., April, 1969, AV Papers, box 9.

  64. Prior to 1968, OEO grants to the AVs exceeded $500,000 per year. See Memorandum, Douglas G. Robinson to Appalachian Volunteers Files, January 7, 1970 (quotes), and Complaint, In the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, February 28, 1970, AV Papers, box 11.

  65. Memorandum, Douglas G. Robinson to Appalachian Volunteers Files, January 1, 1970, AV Papers, box 11; Memorandum, David Walls to AV Board and Staff, June 3, 1969, AV Papers, box 7.

  66. Appalachian Volunteers Board Meeting Minutes, June 6, 1970, and Complaint, In the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, February 28, 1970, AV Papers, box 11; Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 208.

  67. “Council of the Southern Mountains Seek New Paths”; Business Meeting [Minutes] 57th Annual Conference, Council of the Southern Mountains, Fontana Village, NC, April 10, 1969, CSM Papers, box 173; Glen, “The War on Poverty in Appalachia,” 53–54.

  68. The Council of the Southern Mountains in Transition, July 1970, and Business Meeting [Minutes] 58th Annual Conference, Council of the Southern Mountains, Lake Junaluska, NC, April 25–26, 1970, CSM Papers, box 173; Loyal Jones to Council Members and Friends, September 24, 1969, CSM Papers, box 159; Glen, “The War on Poverty in Appalachia,” 54–55.

  69. “Council of the Southern Mountains Seek New Paths”; Glen, “The War on Poverty in Appalachia,” 53–57.

  Conclusion

  1. Ross, “A Kentucky Mine Town Speaks Its Mind” (quote). See also Ross, Machine Age in the Hills, On Reconstruction, see Foner, Reconstruction, Waller’s Feud illustrates how “modernizers” from outside the region used a negative image of Appalachians to justify their exploitation of the region. Two additional important works that investigate the creation of an Appalachian “otherness” are Shapiro’s Appalachia on Our Mind and Batteau’s The Invention of Appalachia,

  2. In Poverty Knowledge, O’Connor argues that this version of liberalism still dominates American ideology today.

  3. Glen (“The War on Poverty in Appalachia,” esp. 56) suggested this fault in the OEO strategy in the mountains. For an in-depth discussion of the history of community action, see Matusow, The Unraveling of America, 122–26, 243–71; and Kravitz, “The Community Action Program.” Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, Public Law 88–46, Title II, Sec. 2 (quote).

  Most former AVs interviewed claimed that the “maximum feasible participation” clause was paramount in their strategizing. See Oral History Interviews with Flem Messer, February 26, 1990, Danville, KY, Joe Mulloy, November 10, 1990, Huntington, WV, Milton Ogle, April 5, 1991, Charlestown, WV, and Jack Rivel, February 12, 1991, Berea, KY, WOP Oral History Project. For an excellent discussion of the roles that political resources play in a pluralist democracy, see Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, On the fact that, in eastern Kentucky, the coal companies controlled both politics and economics, including welfare systems, see Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer, 105 and chap. 9; and Caudill, “Corporate Fiefdom,” and “The Permanent Poor.”

  4. Harold Kwalwasser to Tom, March 14, 1967, AV Papers, box 25 (emphasis added). The recipient was either Tom Bethell or Tom Rhodenbaugh.

  5. Memorandum, David Walls to AV Staff, November 6, 1967, AV Papers, box 11. See chapter 7 above. See also Dittmer, Local People,

  6. “A Tax Paying Citizen” to Blanche Dreyfuss, January 10, 1967, AV Papers, box 22. In a report to the AV staff, the same Volunteer who established the Blue Springs PTA commented: “The main work I have done in Rockcastle County it seems, for the past 6 months is convincing people I am not a communist.” See Rockcastle County [Report], n.d., AV Papers, box 9.

  7. Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, 134 (first quote), 135–36 (second quote).

  8. Statement on Appalachian Volunteers, September 8, 1967, AV Papers, box 11 (first two quotes); Statement on Appalachian Volunteers Situation in Kentucky, September 11, 1967, AV Papers, box 13 (last two quotes). In a letter to the OEO director, Sargent Shriver, that same month, Governor Breathitt himself expressed “concern over ‘mounting damage to the entire anti-poverty program stemming from the actions of . . . the Volunteers stationed in Kentucky.’” See A Special Report to Governor Edward T. Breathitt, [1967], AV Papers, box 8.

  9. Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, 110. For an examination of how civil rights activists experienced similar attacks, see esp. Carson, In Struggle,

  10. The Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Held at Pikeville, Kentucky, October 15 and 16, 1968, pp. 71–72, AV Papers, Part II, box 5, discusses the possibility that the AVs and McSurely hoped to distribute Communist literature in the county.

  11. Ibid., 84–85.

  12. See Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness, 254 (quote); and Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy, 43–45.

  13. “Speech by Senator Robert Byrd (W.VA),” 27621 (Byrd’s remarks); Matusow,
Unraveling of America, 395 (last quote).

  14. Introduction: History and Description of CSM and Mountain Life and Work, [ca. 1983] (first quote), Council of the Southern Mountains Papers, 1970–1989, and [Notes], [ca. 1980] (second and third quotes), box 1, Special Collections, Hutchins Library, Berea College, Berea, KY. In early 2007, Berea College opened to researchers the “Second Part” of the Council of the Southern Mountains Papers. Covering the years 1970–1989, this collection contains the various commission records and, of course, documents the activities of the CSM after the reorganization of 1969–1970.

  Bibliography

  Archival Sources

  Appalachian Volunteers Papers, Hutchins Library, Berea College, Berea, KY.

  Appalachian Volunteers Papers, Part II, Hutchins Library, Berea College, Berea, KY.

  Council of the Southern Mountains Papers, 1913–1970, Hutchins Library, Berea College, Berea, KY.

  Council of the Southern Mountains Papers, 1970–1989, Hutchins Library, Berea College, Berea, KY.

  Edward T. Breathitt Papers, Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives, Frankfort, KY.

  Ford Foundation Grants Files, Ford Foundation Archives, Ford Foundation, New York.

  John D. Whisman Papers, Margaret I. King Library, University of Kentucky, Lexington.

  Office of Economic Opportunity Papers, National Archives II, College Park, MD.

  War on Poverty in Appalachian Kentucky Oral History Project, Margaret I. King Library, University of Kentucky, Lexington.