Photographer Roger May is taller than I expected. I met him for the first time at this year's Appalachian Studies Association conference and was struck, first, by his six-foot-and-four-inches of height and, second, by his sincerity. I'd known him online for years, but as soon as he spoke, I could tell he was the kind of fella you'd trust with anything. Maybe it was because, after a firm hand shake, he opened up and told me about his transformative move home to West Virginia.
Like many Mountain State natives, Roger's family left looking for an easier life. They landed in North Carolina, where he studied at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies and later started his own family in Raleigh. He raised two children while working in IT, and the years added up. Before he knew it, Roger had lived in North Carolina for more than twenty of them, but he never stopped thinking about West Virginia or visiting.
With each trip back, he took cameras and shot beautiful vistas, religious signs, relatives' houses inside and out, and trucks belonging to coal miners. What resulted were more than photos. The views that caught Roger's eye deepened his relationship with the mountains and, in time, inspired him to launch Looking at Appalachia, a project that engages photographers from all across the region to try and represent Appalachia's true complexity. Since its 2014 start, the project has been featured in major news outlets like the The New York Times and has made Roger one the region's most recognizable faces.
That new notoriety led to a job offer, and that's really where the below story starts. It's written by Roger himself, a man who proves you can go home again, a man who has transformed his own life to fight for the mountains we all love.
It was a tumultuous time in my personal life, never mind the charged political landscape of both the nation and state. My last day of work in North Carolina was a Friday, and I had my car loaded so I could leave and drive straight to West Virginia. Monday morning, I was first in line at the DMV in Princeton to get my driver’s license. (The town sits just an hour east from Welch, West Virginia, a town where national journalists often descend upon to tell stories of opioid addiction, a decline in coal, health care struggles — all related to poverty.)
I was coming to get more than just a driver’s license. I was there to get a West Virginia driver’s license. The woman at the desk told me she’d never seen anyone as excited as me to stand in line at the DMV.
Over the course of my first few weeks, I watched the president sign executive orders that repealed regulations designed to protect the coalfields of central Appalachia. I attended an ill-publicized town hall meeting with Senator Joe Manchin (who refers to West Virginia as the Extraction State rather than the Mountain State) in Peterstown.
When it was time for questions, I raised my hand first and asked him to look me in the eye and tell me, as a West Virginian, how he could vote to confirm Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA. Although he did look me in the eye, the next seven minutes were dedicated to everything but answering my question.
So why come home now? I believe in West Virginia.
A person close to me once told me West Virginia was in my DNA. I know I’m not alone when it comes to this place being woven into the very fiber of my existence, of who I am. I have never encountered prouder people in all the places I’ve traveled in the world. And I mean the kind of pride a mother has for a son, not the kind of pride The Bible warns us about.
I believe in West Virginia despite being told at an early age that if I wanted to make something of myself I had to move away. I believe in West Virginia because we are more than an extraction state. I believe in West Virginia because I owe to it my forebearers and my children. I believe in West Virginia because my inheritance, our inheritance, is more than surface-mined mountains, valley fills, polluted streams, and being ranked at the bottom of too many lists. I came home to West Virginia to fight for the future.
Our young folk are tired of not being heard. They’re tired of being told what’s best for them, where they should go, why they should stay, and they’re tired of not having a place at the table. They’re tired of being talked at. My granddad, Richard Watson of Chattaroy, once told me that I have two ears and one mouth and that meant I should listen twice as much as I speak. I came home to West Virginia to listen to young folk.
Our forebearers, whether they marched and organized or wrote songs and taught school and stood for what’s right, showed us a way forward. They created hope in times that were dark and sometimes bloody. I came home to West Virginia to honor my forebearers.
In 2014, I photographed the aftermath of the Freedom Industries chemical spill in the Elk River for The Guardian. After working for three days, I got in my car and drove 300 miles back to North Carolina, to clean water, and to a place where hardly anyone knew about the spill. I struggled with leaving and with not doing more. I came home to West Virginia to do more.
I came home to West Virginia because I couldn't not come back. Kentucky writer bell hooks wrote in her beautiful essay To Be Whole and Holy, “Hence we return to the unforgettable home places of our past with a vital sense of covenant and commitment.”
I now have the incredible opportunity to direct the Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia. Founded by Don and Connie West in 1965, the ASFC was founded to educate young people about their mountain heritage and to focus on “the restoration of self-respect and human dignity lost as a consequence of the region’s colonial relationship with industrial America.”
We didn’t get here overnight and we won’t get out of this overnight. There is no quick fix, no easy button, no campaign promise to fix what is broken. What remains is you and me. What is possible is what we choose to do. In Don West’s poem Mountain Boy, he writes, “What will you do for your hills, You mountain boy?”
What will you do for home?
There's no other way to say it. Since its creation in 1965, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has literally transformed our region. Using federal dollars to draw support from every sector—state and municipalities, major corporations, and local investors—it's created this dramatic multiplier effect and supercharged more than 25,000 projects.
From high speed internet to job training to local foods to education to tourism to healthcare, the ARC has quietly supported every imaginable Appalachian sector. I say quietly because the commission doesn't post signs with its name at project sites or publicize its work. Which means, in Appalachia, the ARC is arguably the most powerful institution no one knows.
That's fine until the sitting U.S. President introduces a radical budget that strips the ARC of all funding. You read right. In his "Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again," President Trump allocated $0 to the ARC. This was in spite of the overwhelming support he found in rural parts of the region. (Election results in Appalachian cities were more mixed, but that's a topic for another day.)
Regardless of who won our presidential votes or where we fall on the political spectrum, we all know that parts of Appalachia are still in crisis. The economic underpinnings of coal country have collapsed. Even coal executives say it will never be the same, and this job crisis has led to a health crisis. Just look at drug abuse, diabetes, and obesity rates. They're all off the charts in Appalachia's struggling areas.
But we can turn things around. We're doing it in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, in Greenville and Roanoke, in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, and in the Shenandoah Valley. To extend this economic revival west, we must fire on all cylinders. That includes federal support.
If you want to see every part of Appalachia thrive, please share the above graphic along with the hashtag #SaveARCgov. Still need convincing? Here are five reasons to save the Appalachian Regional Commission.
The federal government has invested $3.8 billion in Appalachia outside of highway projects. (Oh yeah, the ARC basically built the highway system that connected isolated mountain communities to the rest of the nation.) That $3.8 billion has leveraged another $16 billion in private funds. You'd be hard pressed to find a stronger driver of private investment in the region. The ratio between federal money and private money has actually grown over the years. In 2013, every federal dollar was matched by nearly $15 in leveraged private investments (LPI's below) plus additional dollars from other public sources like states, cities, and towns.
The number of high-poverty counties in Appalachia (those with poverty rates above 150 percent of the U.S. average) has dropped a staggering 70 percent since 1960. That is a remarkable change in a region that was literally cut off from the rest of the nation until a few decades ago, and nearly every ARC grant has chipped away at poverty in some way. If we maintain this pace, Appalachia could have zero high-poverty counties in another twenty years or so.
The ARC's non- highway projects have led to more than 310,000 new jobs and $10 billion in added earnings in the region. That's almost $3 in earnings for every dollar of federal spending. How's that work? It all comes back to the commission's cross-sector partnerships. They have helped keep Appalachia's unemployment rate on par with the rest of the nation in spite of regional declines in coal and manufacturing jobs.
Back in 1970, 1 in 9 Appalachian households still lacked plumbing. With a focus on basic needs like these, the ARC improved sanitation. It also funded healthcare projects. As a result, lifespans for all ages grew and infant mortality dropped by a dramatic two-thirds. Federal investments literally saved many of our children, but now we're seeing a reversal in trends. Factors like obesity and an aging population are driving overall mortality back up. If the ARC disappears, hundreds of thousands of jobs could be lost or never even created, forcing many young people to leave Appalachia, and with cuts to healthcare programs, the lives of those who remain would literally be on the line.
Graphics from Appalachia Then and Now: Examining Changes to the Appalachian Region since 1965.
The thing that struck me about the Rural Entrepreneurship Summit was the granola. I mean, it wasn't the only thing—there were also amazing small business people in the room along with heavy hitters like Aaron Sporck from U.S. Senator Shelly Moore Capito's office and Ray Daffner, Entrepreneurial Development Manager at the Appalachian Regional Commission —but this was some seriously good granola. It was sweet without being syrupy, and it had a smoky undertone that surprised me.
By sheer luck, I was seated next to the fella who made it. His name is Jacob Gahn. Tall and bespeckled with a wide smile and a ponytail, Jacob is the kind of guy you picture whipping up batches of granola in his kitchen, and that's actually how he and his wife Carolyn started their company Sweetgrass.
"Sweetgrass has been with us for longer than we've been a family," he said, "From the time we were just young pups, living out in a little cabin and making granola by the tray full."
From these humble roots, the couple added employees and new products. They also added one of Appalachia's favorite ingredients, sorghum. That twist gave their granola its signature flavor and helped capture the attention of major retailers. Today, Sweetgrass products can be found in Kroger and Whole Foods supermarkets with the phrase "lightly sweetened with locally grown sorghum" right on the bag.
Oddly, sorghum came up more than once during the Blacksburg, Virginia event, which was hosted by Village Capital, a firm that drives entrepreneurship outside California, Massachusetts, and New York. That's where some 78 percent of venture funds currently go. None of these states face problems like West Virginia, where a lot of land has been contaminated by coal, but biomass specialist Joe James has found a natural, sustainable way to clean it—by growing sorghum. In this case, it's a non-edible variety, one that actually pulls problem substances from the soil. When planted over old surface mines, mine tailings, water collection sites, and coal fine ponds, the plant jumpstarts the restoration process, capturing all kinds of nasty substances. While you wouldn't want to eat this sorghum, it can be made into products, ranging from plastic fillers to a renewable form of bio-coal, which Joe's company, ATP-WV, plans to sell to industry customers.
Speaking of coal, it's no secret that the traditional kind, the fossil fuel, is losing its market fast, which leaves many miners out of work. As of March 2016, the U.S. had just 56,700 remaining coal jobs, down from a high of 178,300 in April 1985. Amid these depressing figures, Rusty Justice saw an opportunity. He's the fourth generation in his family to live in Pikeville, Kentucky, the heart of coal country, and he knows that, contrary to every stereotype, former miners have what it takes to become computer programmers. Rusty set about proving it when he co-founded BitSource, a software development firm that hails from his hometown holler. Entering its second year, Bitsource has trained ten mountain people, including many former miners, to program websites. While the small business' leaders acknowledge that this is just the start, it's been enough for Forbes magazine to name Bitsource as one of seven world-changing companies and for Justice and crew to land their first Fortune 500 client.
Each of these start-ups has an element that's unique to Appalachia. Each either pulls from the area's traditions or addresses area problems. This distinction doesn't escape Village Capital CEO Ross Baird. He sees a lot of people outside Appalachia wringing their hands over the region. "But few ever go there to understand how people live every day, what challenges they're facing, and what resources they have."
That's what it will to take to spread the wealth and discover true innovation, he said, looking outside venture capital's big three states. All across the country, entrepreneurs are solving real problems right in their communities. It's just a matter of finding them, according to Baird, and then "working side by side to improve their businesses."
The good folks at WVTF Public Radio invited me to talk about Trump's appeal with working class Americans and the revival we're seeing in Appalachia.
It's okay to sit in the yard in your underwear.
The second coming already happened. It was called The Allman Brothers Band.
Everyone loves an ABC Store gift card for Christmas.
Ain't nothing more fun than bouncing along country roads in the back of a '78 Chevy truck, except driving a '78 Chevy truck on country roads.
If you can drive a '78 Chevy truck, you can drive a tank.
Wear more than a corduroy jacket when you go deer hunting.
You can get a decent car for $25.
Never make your kid mow when it's over 100 degrees.
Chainsaws are fun!
William Jones under the resort's gracious porticos.[/caption]
The resort's elegant dining room was converted to a chapel for retirement home residents.[/caption]
The dining room during its heyday.[/caption]
The oldest structure at Sweet Springs, the jail predates the resort by some forty years.[/caption]
Furnishings and office supplies hint at Sweet Springs' past.[/caption]
Coal is dead. There, I said it. It's a tough pill for Appalachia to swallow—where coal has underpinned local economies for more than a century, where it's given folks who hold nothing but high school diplomas a path to the middle class—but those days are going, going, gone.
Local leaders, though, didn't get the memo. Maybe they're holding out for some imaginary coal revival. Maybe they don't have the skills to attract new industries or foster entrepreneurship. Maybe they're just scared. Why doesn't matter much. Their inaction leaves many thousands of mining families in dire straights.
We've all heard about former miners working for a fraction of their prior pay, selling their trucks, cars, or even homes to put food on the table. We've read about soaring public assistance rates due, in part, to laid off miners dragging themselves to social service offices, hats in hands, having to ask for help. It's like there's a big gash right across the heart of Appalachia, and no one is even applying direct pressure.
Sure, a bill is weaving through Congress that could infuse $1 billion into coal country, but the Tea Party has a stranglehold on Washington. Sticking to their promise to downsize government, these extremists kill anything that resembles new spending, even if it might help the people who elected them. These days, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a social program to pass on the hill, and some folks are just tired of waiting.
In eastern Kentucky, former miners are taking economic recovery into their own hands. They've started BitSource, a training ground for would-be coders and a consultancy that hopes to land clients from around the world.
Writer Lauren Smiley recently visited this crew and in the below article, captures the kind of determination and ingenuity it'll take to turn mining communities around. But is it enough? Can a tech start-up make it big in a Kentucky coal town? And how else can we help our Appalachian neighbors get back on their feet?
If you have coal stories or ideas for improving life in coal country, please leave a comment below.
***
Rusty Justice doesn’t think about Michael Bloomberg very often. But when he does — even if it’s just for a moment — it’s like remembering the gloating rich kid who stole his lunch.
The distaste started when the New York City billionaire donated $50 million to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign back in 2011, and continued when he poured in another $30 million this year. Rusty, you see, runs a land-moving company in Eastern Kentucky, and the anti-coal movement is playing a big role in systematically closing down the industry he’s worked around all his life.
Say what you will about the long-term environmental effects (Justice, for one, is very pro-coal) but the impact on the area’s one-source economy has been brutal. Some 8,000 miners have been laid off in the last four years — that’s more people than the entire population of Justice’s hometown, Pikeville. On the road to a cleaner energy future, the surrounding neck of Appalachia is looking like roadkill.
But Rusty’s unease with Bloomberg turned into a gut-deep animus last year, when the self-confessed hillbilly—if you’re from this part of the world that’s a self-identifier, not an insult—sat down for his weekly, three-hour, Saturday morning news-reading session. That’s when he came across Bloomberg’s latest jab.
“You’re not going to teach a coal miner to code.”
I'm such a slacker. On Wednesday night, The Mine Wars premiered on the PBS series American Experience, and I have to admit I missed it. (If it's any comfort, PBS, I was binge watching Downton Abbeyat the time!) Luckily, this groundbreaking mini-series is streaming on PBS.org, and it's an event we all should see.
In the earliest days of the 20th century, our region was being transformed. Newly established coal companies, almost always owned by outside interests, offered steady work in our mountains, an area that, until then, had relied mostly on subsistence farming. But regular pay came at a price.
“In our town we have many good things, good churches and schools,” one miner summarized, “but there is another thing of much more importance that the coal operators have intentionally overlooked — our freedom.”
While coal companies provided housing for miners and their families, they also turned Appalachian natives into the capitalist equivalent of serfs. Following a feudal model, they created coal towns with no elected officials, no democratic process or even local police forces. Instead, companies hired private guards armed with rifles and machine guns to police the towns, a practice miners detested. Thy even paid in their own currency, called scrip, which could only be used at company-owned stores.
As awareness of this exploitation grew, union leaders focused their attention on coal country, and miners faced a difficult choice—live in steady subjugation or fight for their rights.
Over the next several decades, violence erupted, a war that has been all but forgotten. Schools have rarely taught about it. No books or films on the topic have seen wide distribution. Appalachia's mine wars have barely been a blip in the telling of U.S. history...at least, until this week.
American Experience is the nation's most-watched history series, one that reaches millions of viewers and even influences classroom conversations through popular teacher guides. By airing The Mine Wars, the show is moving this bloody Appalachian story from the fringe to the mainstream, taking us a big step closer to rewriting history.
Do you feel like this is a story worth telling? Is coal part of your family story? And if you've seen the show, what did you think?
Please leave a comment below.
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