Hauntings are everywhere in the Appalachian Mountains. Whether one believes in such things or not, a person cannot deny the shivers in the darkness when an owl hoots a soothing sound of wisdom, or the early morning sounds of a house “settling” as it pops and cracks at one endContinue Reading
Welcome to the second and final posting of Appalachian slave narratives capturing individual responses regarding freedom. You’ll find part one here. Visit the following sources for more extensive and wide ranging interviews: Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1938 – Library of Congress Slave narratives – Project GutenbergContinue Reading
How many of us in Appalachia have heard: “Appalachia didn’t have any slaves.” “Slavery wasn’t popular here in the mountains.” “They couldn’t have any slaves here because the land wasn’t conducive for farming.” “If we had slaves, there weren’t very many.” But Appalachia did indeed have slaves. Jacqueline Clark’s articleContinue Reading
White trash have been with us since colonial times – though they often went by other names. That’s the contention of historian Nancy Isenberg in White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. Isenberg also destroys assumptions about America’s allegedly class-free society in which all one needed wereContinue Reading
I’ve seen the painting above, The Thankful Poor, for most of my life in various places and circles. Lately, I was curious to find the artist of such a stirring, spiritual piece, so, I googled it. The artist is Appalachia’s own Henry Ossawa Tanner, born in Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,Continue Reading