Diane Sawyer wasn't the only reporter who earned accolades this year for an Appalachian story. Daniel Gilbert earned a Pulitzer Prize when he delivered the 33,000 readers of the Bristol Herald Courier a riveting series on the filching of natural gas from landowners in Southwest Virginia. A prime example is Earl Whited:
"By the time Earl Whited, of Russell County, Va., died in 2006, more than a dozen gas wells on his property had sucked up over 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas in five years. The former bus driver never saw a penny."
[caption id="attachment_934" align="alignleft" width="209"] Daniel Gilbert, Journalist[/caption]
Gilbert discovered a slew of landowners who, like Whited, hadn't been paid for methane extracted from coalbeds beneath their land. Many had endured drawn out court room battles to try to secure the funds. Others didn't even know where to start.
J. Todd Foster, editor of  the Bristol Herald Courier described the situation in plain terms, "The moms and pops who own the gas beneath their land clearly are due a portion of coalbed methane royalties, but can’t afford to battle deep-pocketed corporate armies of attorneys bent on stringing the process out over years or just flouting the court’s will."
Gilbert also unearthed an escrow account containing $24 million in natural gas royalties. These funds were tied up because landowners had never been identified or there was a dispute over their allocation. When Gilbert, approached elected officials with this figure--which had grown by more than $20 million in ten years--many were surprised.
“I was shocked to see your number, $24 million?”said Republican Delegate Terry Kilgore from Gate City, Virginia. “I don’t think it was ever the intent of the General Assembly to have that kind of escrow account.”
As it turns out, this remarkable dollar figure only represents a fraction of the funds that coal companies should have deposited into escrow. As he dug deeper, Gilbert uncovered layers of accounting errors, lax oversight, and corporate double talk.
In his editorial, Foster said, "This is a classic example of how a newspaper dedicated to a community can mine a story that no one else would have ever tackled for its sheer complexity and obscurity. We won’t let up either."
Read through the eight part series, and you'll see that Gilbert wields data like a spear. He spares no one. The coal industry and government officials alike are skewered, and his remarkable report has prodded action at the highest level. The day after the Pulitzer was announced, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed two pieces of legislation aimed at releasing the millions of dollars held in escrow.
When asked about the award, Gilbert simply told the Associated Press that it was “a hell of an honor." This understatement belies his tenaciousness, which has turned an industry on its ear. Through targeted follow-up articles--more than twenty of them so far--he continues to press energy companies toward compliance.
Someone should call Universal Studios now. A young, intrepid reporter beats big business while working for an underdog paper from Southwest Virginia--it sounds like an Appalachian version of Erin Brokovichto me.

On all things coal, it's best to defer to Jeff Biggers. He is the author of "Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland." He also blogs about mountaintop removal on The Huffington Post and Grist. He's addressed coal from every angle on every media outlet imaginable, but this Thursday may have brought him his biggest story yet. I'll let him explain:
[caption id="attachment_2127" align="alignright" width="175"] Jeff Biggers[/caption]
"The EPA administrator announced a major decision today to clamp down on Clean Water Act violations from mountaintop removal mining...Citing new EPA studies that conclusively demonstrate that 'burial of headwater streams by valley fills causes permanent loss of ecosystems,' the EPA issued new conductivity levels 'to protect 95% of aquatic life and fresh water streams in central Appalachia.'"
This is revolutionary. When coal companies fill valleys and hollers with mining waste, they block springs. That, of course, cuts off essential sources for mountain rivers. In turn, that destroys ecosystems.
What's worse, the water that does flow is tainted. As I noted last week, this process has polluted some 1,500 miles of waterways, according to Federal estimates. In recent tests, water affected by mining operations were found to have ten times more saline than un-mined watersheds.
Fresh water creatures living in these streams aren't the only ones harmed by mountaintop removal. It's hard on people too. To make room for mining and its debris, entire towns have been displaced. Add that to the 1.2+ million acres of hardwood that have been destroyed and you have a region-wide disaster.
The EPA has had enough. It is now instructing field offices to restrict access to Clean Water Act permits, essentially forcing coal companies to clean up their act. According to the EPA media release, mine operators must demonstrate "that future mining will not cause significant environmental, water quality and human health impacts."
In a Q&A with reporters following the announcement, the EPA Administrator added, "...very few valley fills...are going to be able to meet standards like this."
That's good news for Appalachia and for Biggers, whose crusade against King Coal is personal. He was raised along Eagle Creek in Southern Illinois, where nearly all of the land was purchased by a mining company. Locals were moved out and according to Biggers, the company "blasted away the old homeplace."
It's not surprising that he intrinsically understands the dual impact of mountaintop removal; it destroys ecosystems and lives. Biggers called this week's EPA announcement "a beautiful and historic moment to celebrate on behalf of human rights and environmental justice in the Appalachian coalfields."
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Yesterday, ABC News announced that it won The Peabody Award for Diane Sawyer’s report “A Hidden Camera: Children of the Mountains.” Maybe you saw it. It aired in February as a 20/20 special and followed the lives of four Kentucky children over two years.

It drew the largest 20/20 viewership since 2004, but reviews from Appalachia were mixed. A few went like this…

“I moved out of the region when I graduated High School to look for work as did many of my classmates. My family is still there. I see the drug abuse, the poverty, but mostly I see the children alone…If this documentary gets the attention of people willing to help and not criticize, Diane you have done an amazing thing.”

But most were more like this…

“Eastern Kentucky has it's problems…With that said, we are not all uneducated, tooth-decayed druggies.”

And this…

“I am from southern West Virginia. The people you have featured in this special are very extreme examples of people from Appalachia. People from this area are going through the same things that people in California and New York are facing.”

And this…

“Y’all come back now, ya hear! Why don't you plan a trip to meet some of us with Master's Degrees, Professional Degrees, or advanced certifications. There are plenty of us here who are health conscious, self-sufficicient, non-welfare drawing, non-Mountain Dew guzzling, non-addicted, intelligent, educated, and still have our natural teeth who would be willing to speak with you and show you the REST OF APPALACHIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

There’s no denying it; the feature was skewed. It covered Appalachian poverty, not Appalachian culture. The middle class, music, literature, farming, tourism, industry—all of that was omitted.

In this blog, I go for the full breadth of Appalachia, and I do it two reason. First, I believe that it all contributes to the mystique and dynamism of our region. Second, in this medium, I can feature bite-sized chunks, a topic at a time, twice a week.

That said, I don't hold the same expectation for Diane Sawyer. She was graced with an hour block of primetime television. (Such a gift!) If she had tried to fold all of Appalachia into it, the show would have looked like a disjointed infomercial…

“Hear a banjo! Eat some cornbread! See the view! Aww, sad, some poor people. Don’t forget your camera!”

Instead she leveraged TV’s greatest asset --the ability to create an emotional connection. She let millions of Americans feel the desperation of living without food, the instability of having a drug addicted mother, and the struggle to achieve security when economic distress is all that you’ve known.

Other people have done this before Diane. David Sutherland’s “Country Boys” comes to mind (For the sake of disclosure, I worked on that documentary.) But who else could attract 10.9 million viewers and help them actually care about Appalachian poverty?

Beth Macy is one of Roanoke's most notable reporters. She is in Cambridge, Mass. right now on a fellowship at Harvard. In a recent blog post, she compared the high schools her son has attended in these two notably different cities:
"Students at Cambridge Rindge and Latin may leave campus to eat at nearby restaurants (sorry to say, it’s my teenager’s favorite thing about school this year). Whereas when the new Patrick Henry High School opened a few years back, administrators decided to literally lock the students inside the cafeteria, known by staff and students alike as 'the cage.'"
[caption id="attachment_498" align="alignleft" width="300"] Porno shop near my childhood home: Photo Credit Matt Ames[/caption]
Beth goes on to talk about economic and social disparities between the towns, a topic that enthralls me. I was raised by an unemployed single mom in Roanoke but went to Harvard for graduate school.
I had to get in on this conversation, so I posted the below comment on Beth's blog. Maybe a few readers out there will identify:
It’s overwhelming to think of the contrasts [ between Roanoke and Cambridge], but one that sticks with me is around cars. In grad school, I didn’t have one, and neither did my mother when I was growing up.
As a kid, it meant carrying groceries for a mile, walking past burnt out motels and [rough] bars on Williamson Road, and taking the bus, which is a sign of absolute depravity in Roanoke and many other Southern cities. It meant telling friends that I literally could not physically make my way to their houses to visit. It branded my family. I’d say that there are more than two Roanokes [Beth posited that there were two], because even among the down-and -out, you find strata. Without a car, we were way down low.
In Cambridge, the absence of wheels meant something very different. It was beyond common; it was a point of pride. There was no shoveling your car out and no moving it on street cleaning days. I could brag that I wasn’t filling the air with pollutants. I could hop the T or a bus without shame. I was an untethered urbanite breezing down city streets on clean-fueled public transit or my bike or the liberating power of my own two feet.
Don’t get me wrong. Cambridge is not superior to Roanoke. It’s just wildly different. I almost feel as if I should have a visa or a passport to travel between them, at least something more than four working tires and a full tank of gas.

The Crooked Road: Virginia's Heritage Music Trail lives up to its name. In February, it became the first place to to be named as a Distinctive Destination by the National Trust for Historic Preservation that wasn't a singular place. All other honorees are one municipality, but The Crooked Road is a series of them, 19 towns that exemplify the old time and bluegrass tradition of the state.
Not a month after this groundbreaking designation was announced, The Crooked Road took a turn. Now its funding is at risk. This weekend, Virginia's Senate Finance Committee recommended striping about $290,000 from the budget of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, which is a principle funder for The Crooked Road.
The initiative already operates on a modest budget -- about $350,000 annually. Losing support from the The Virginia Foundation could be a major blow to this promotional platform, which has proven to be a cultural success as well as an economic one.
The Roanoke Times cites a 2008 economic impact study that attributed gains along the length of the trail at $23 million every year. For those business majors out there that's a staggering ROI, something like a 6500%.
What's more The Crooked Road promises to be a model for the rest of the nation. Rob Nieweg, director of the southern field office for the National Trust recently told The Roanoke Times, "We want other regions in the country to look at The Crooked Road and see how to take regional character and, in effect, build sustainable economic development."
It would be a local calamity to lose this attraction but also a regional one. While picking styles and accents vary form holler to holler, we are one Appalachia. When one of us shines, we are all in the spotlight. When one light goes out, life for all of us gets a little dimmer.
Virginian or not, I hope you'll write, email or call a Virginia state representative and encourage him or her to find another way to balance the budget. Ask that they drive on by this crooked road.

Every now and then you run across something so beautiful and strange, you're not sure how to describe it. Andrew Cutraro, a Washington, DC-based videographer and photographer, has created this etherial homage to Appalachia's poor. Here's how he captions it:
"The uninsured working poor are revealed in Appalachia as they descend from the hills, out-of-body, to receive basic medical care."
Out-of-body is certainly true. These people's spirits seem to rise and hover before the camera. It's almost as if the souls themselves have ushered their corporal forms away for repair.
Where they gather is not clear -- maybe a clinic or a mission. It is a blessed yet gory scene. Glass angels glow from rearview mirrors and extracted teeth rest bloody on a dental stand. Perhaps better than this blog, the below clip in vokes the meaning of revival.

Out Yonder from Andrew Cutraro on Vimeo.

In third grade, when we toured Fire Station Number 1 and visited the Mill Mountain Star, when we spent weeks studying Roanoke's river and rail yard, the entire town's history, our teachers mentioned nothing about the Smith lynching. How could they miss it?
[caption id="attachment_389" align="alignleft" width="248"] Crowd at Smith lynching[/caption]
It was a media event covered as far away as New York and a local horror that had as many as 5,000 witnesses, nearly a third of the town's population at the time. While accounts vary, most agree that it began when an African American man bought wild grapes from a farmer's wife, Sallie A. Bishop. Bishop later said that the man asked her to accompany him to a nearby cellar to get his money. Then, according to Bishop, he tied her up, robbed her at knife point, bashed her head with a brick and left the elderly woman for dead.
Bishop claimed to have laid in her own blood for half an hour. She was dazed but alive. Minutes after providing a vague description to authorities, a suspect was apprehended. Media outlets reported multiple locations for Thomas Smith. He was said to have been in the woods, on the banks of the Roanoke River and also on board an outbound train, trying to skip town. Wherever he was, Smith was immediately taken to Sallie Bishop for identification. According to a dramatized and slanted article in the Roanoke Daily Record, she said...
"'He looks like him; I think he is the man; if I could see his hat I could tell.' Smith hastily took his hat from his head and threw it behind him, but the detective quickly picked it up and handed it to Mrs. Bishop, who, after examining it said: 'He is the man.'"
Roanoke was a powder keg in 1893. An economic depression was on the rise, causing layoffs and closing local banks. The town was rife with prostitution and crime, for which African Americans were too often blamed; and perhaps most importantly, in a racially divided contest, the town had just voted to prohibit alcohol. According to "Roanoke, Virginia, 1882-1912: Magic City of the New South" by Rand Dotson, white laborers had opposed the ordinance. They were narrowly defeated by an unlikely alliance between well off whites and large segments of the black community.
It took nothing -- just an accused black assailant identified only by his hat -- to ignite the ire of Roanoke's white workers. Before Smith was even at the jail, town folk were already throwing rocks and calling for his hanging. By dusk, a mob had formed outside the jailhouse. Roanoke's mayor, Henry Trout was popular with the townsfolk, but even his calls for order did no good. He summoned the Roanoke Light Infantry. This ragtag band of clerks were as much a social club as a brigade. They had never seen armed conflict, and at points, joked with the rioters outside the jail. Undeterred, the mob was passing whiskey bottles by 8:00 PM and emboldened by the arrival of men from Sallie Bishop's county of Botetourt who reportedly declared, "Rally men, Botetourt is here!"
The crowd rushed the side door of the jail. An unidentified shot was fired and the infantry let lose. People ran mad. The rioters returned fire. Bullets hit the doors of Greene Memorial Church, sending parishioners under their pews for shelter. At least one leg was blown clean off. Stomachs, groins, and heads were punctured. According to one witness, "The streets before the jail looked ashambles, bloody in forty places, the street car rails slippery with it."
In total, eight men were killed and thirty four wounded. In the melee, Mayor Trout and Smith were spirited away. Trout was taken to the nearby Ponce De Leon Hotel. Smith was taken by police to a secret spot on the opposite side of the Roanoke River.
When the mob realized that the jail was empty, it proceeded to divide into small groups and ransack local officials homes, searching for the mayor and the prisoner. At this point, The New York Times concluded its coverage of the day and lauded Trout's adherence to the law. It's article was entitled "This Mob Did No Lynching."
What The Times did not know was that a Chief Terry had pleaded with the mayor at the jailhouse to turn Smith over to the mob. While the mayor refused, Terry did not give up. Around 2:00 AM, he convinced his sergeant to return Smith to the Roanoke jail, and he informed at least one member of the mob. Their men would be waiting.
According to Dotson, "Smith spotted the posse first and took off running but made it only a few dozen yards before he was knocked down...The men proceeded only a short distance before they stopped beneath an electric light at the corner of Franklin Road and Mountain Avenue."
There they stopped, and there they stayed. By morning Smith was hanging from a nearby hickory tree. His eyed bulged. His tongue dangled from his mouth. His body was riddled with bullets, and a growing crowd was pulling away bits of his clothing, threads of the rope, and bark from the tree. They clamored for mementos like candy at a parade.
Thousands gathered, posed for photos, and laughed at the card mounted to Smith's bloody back; it read "Mayor Trout's Friends." The mob later dragged Smith's body toward the mayor's house where they intended to bury him in Trout's yard. A local minister intervened, convincing them instead to burn the corpse on the banks of the Roanoke River.
"A crowd of hundreds then followed the wagon that bore Smith's body," says Dotson, "cheering and tearing down fences on the way. When they reached a spot near the narrow gauge railroad bridge, several men gathered brush and tree limbs to build a pyre, doused Smith with coal oil, and set him afire. 'The flames roared and cracked, leaping high in the air,' according to a reporter at the scene, 'while all around stood 4,000 people, men, women, boys and children on foot, in buggies and on horseback, and numbers of them shouting over the pitiful scene.' Hundreds of onlookers fed the flames by tossing braches [sic] and twigs into the fire, and by noon, according to another correspondent, all that remained of Smith 'was a few ashes and here and there a bone.'"
Maybe this isn't a story for third graders, but it is a story that we all should know. As fulfilling as it is to revel in the natural beauty and cultural quirks of our region, we should not overlook this horrific piece of our history. Learn more through the online exhibit "The Roanoke Riot" hosted by The Blue Ridge Institute and Museum.

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For more stories on the African American experience in Appalachia check out the "Black in Appalachia" series on the right.

Let's get this out of the way. I'm as white as a bleached bath towel. Yes, I went to a predominantly black high school; and I worked in black led communities for years; and I have lifelong black friends; and I'm pretty sure that I have black cousins (though it's tough to confirm a 150 year old extramarital affair), but I'm no fool. I can't represent the black experience, not in Appalachia or anywhere else.
This series is about black people, but it will be framed by a white man's perspective. There's no getting around that. While I write "white," I hope that doesn't mean that I shouldn't write.
In my view, black Appalachians are overlooked in the annals of our culture, their contributions upstaged by the Scots-Irish, the Germans and even the Cherokee. The historic exceptions -- Booker T. Washington or the slaves who rebelled in Harper's Ferry -- receive mainstream notice, but the rest of black mountain culture is as obscure as the Smokies on a foggy day.
Like other groups, black Appalachians have their soundtrack. Today, it’s probably similar to black music elsewhere – maybe with a touch more gospel or twang. At one point, though, it was a distinct mesh of mountain tones and early black dialects. The folks at Rounder Records have assembled a collection of these songs – Deep River of Song: Black Appalachia.
Some, like "Cripple Creek," are common old-time tunes done in a signature style; others seem to be unique to black mountain people. "Poontang Little, Poontang Small" is a great example. I can find just one recording of this song. It appears on this album and also a collection of Virginia field songs, perhaps suggesting something about its origin.
Jimmie Smothers, the artist performing it, either natively has a deep, old accent, or he beautifully replicates one. It makes the song's lyrics nearly incomprehensible to my ear. Still, I cant resist humming along. It's a spirited, infectious tune and a shining example of black heritage in our mountain region.
Share Poontang Little, Poontang Small by Jimmie Smothers

[caption id="attachment_230" align="alignright" width="270"] Photo Credit: John Hamill[/caption]
The Blue Ridge Parkway turns 75 year. For those raised near this canopied roadway, it's hard to imagine life before it. Where did you take Sunday drives? Hike? Make out?
Originally a public works project during the Great Depression, the 355 mile Parkway has become the gateway to the Blue Ridge for millions of visitors and an easy retreat for locals.
I have a few favorite Parkway memories. I bet you do too. Please post a comment telling us all about them.

In Appalachia, we cherish our national parks -- Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah -- but they came at a cost. Families were moved, homesteads taken, and communities broken when the parks were created. The Knoxville News Sentinel shares the perspective of two elderly cousins on all of this -- Alie Newman Maples, 89, and Cleo Newman, 91:
"'They always talk about the little children who gave their nickels and dimes to build the park. What about the little children who cried because they left? I cried,' says Maples."

I just discovered two great clips from the North Carolina Language and Life Project. One illustrates Cherokee language; the other focuses on the dialect of neighboring whites.
The differences are interesting, but watch for similarities -- the accents, the clothes, a passion for home, and, in both clips, an express preference to be with their own people.
Also, there's a thrilling occurrence of "peckerwood," which may be the funniest word in all of English.
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