Reformers to Radicals (30 page)

In 1966, following their split with the Council of the Southern Mountains, the Appalachian Volunteers began organizing to demand more say in local issues. The sign carried in this photograph reads, “Poor power: We demand fair taxes, good roads, decent schools, qualified teachers, job training, honest officials, jobs!” (Courtesy Records of the Appalachian Volunteers, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)

The demonstrators in this photograph wore bags on their heads because they feared retribution from those on whom they focused their protest. (Courtesy Records of the Appalachian Volunteers, Southern Appalachian Archives, Berea College.)

Continued local resistance to AV programs was also a factor prompting the switch to a more politically aggressive stance. According to a
Louisville Courier-Journal
article on June 27, 1966, Clay County prohibited the Volunteers from the use of six schools, and Owsley County denied access to the Indian Creek, Mistletoe, Licking Fork, and Wolf Creek schools. Despite a petition from 135 Owsley residents that requested county support for the program, the superintendent stated that the Volunteers “could pack up and go home, . . . the county could take care of itself.” Similarly, Neureul Miracle, the superintendent of the Rockcastle County schools, informed the Appalachian Volunteers that the county did not need AV services. Federal funding, she maintained, made it possible for her to improve the county's education system without AV help. “This way,” she told the Volunteers, “we will be able to employ people from this area and people who understand our problems and our way of living. People from outside sometimes cause more problems than they help to solve.”
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In Martin County, the Appalachian Volunteers encountered a recalcitrant welfare department. According to the terms of the summer program, mountain residents who housed summer volunteers received a $50 per month stipend to help cover expenses. When the county welfare office learned of this arrangement, it threatened to reduce welfare payments by the same amount if any of its clients accepted Volunteer funds. On learning of the county's position, the Appalachian Volunteers protested to the state welfare department. This move by the county, the Volunteers argued, violated the spirit and intent of the welfare system by punishing those who sought to learn from the Volunteers. The actions of the Volunteers, the AVs themselves claimed, resulted in the removal of people from the welfare roles, and, thus, those most closely associated with the program had the best opportunity to become fully productive citizens. Ultimately, AV pressure convinced the state office that the county was in error. Because the income gained through the summer project lasted only a few months, the welfare department considered it “non-continuing” income, which did not affect regular benefits.
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Though quite a number of summer volunteers questioned the practice of strip mining, at least one discovered the impact that the coal industry
alone had on the mountaineers. Working in a former company town, Judy Stewart discovered that a major concern in her assigned community was the water supply. The American Association, a major international corporation, installed a water system, but, “when the mines played out, the American Association absolved [itself of] all responsibility for keeping up the homes” that it still owned. Finally, Stewart continued, “the central pump quit working, [and] the lines rusted out.” Despite the fact that this was an important issue, the community residents did little to resolve it because they felt “completely caged in by the power the American Association wields over their lives.” These people, she further explained, were “hungry for approval, for encouragement, for some reason to have confidence in themselves against the dead weight of the social and economic pressures which drive them down to self deprecation and sullen resentment.”
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After considering these developments, the Appalachian Volunteers determined that the roots of poverty lay not in the poor education that the rural mountaineers received but in the political and economic structures of the region. In Appalachia, the Volunteers now realized, “the county [was] the basic unit of local government.” Serving as the administrative and judicial head of each county, the county judge also presided over the county's fiscal court. Probably even more powerful was the local superintendent of schools. Because he controlled “the largest budget and the largest patronage in terms of jobs in and around the county schools,” he was the most powerful local political figure. “This political structure depends, in mining counties particularly,” the Volunteers noted, “on the good will and support of the mining interests.” On the other hand, the electorate in eastern Kentucky consisted mostly of a rural population living “at or below subsistence level.” The “isolated geographical situation in which these people live” and “their inadequate education or experience in political action” make them “unaware of and unaccustomed to political action as a means of attaining their own interests and needs.” This, the AVs strongly asserted, resulted in a “kind of feudalism” or “colonialism . . . throughout the Appalachian region.”
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According to the Appalachian Volunteers, the county “power structure” coerced the people by manipulating job opportunities. The hiring of, for example, janitors, school bus drivers, and road workers took place at the centers of power. These jobs provided a cash income and were “highly prized among the poor.” The AVs argued that their “political disposal” ensured
“the perpetuation of the existing political pattern.” Through their nearly three years of work in eastern Kentucky, volunteers had witnessed “many examples of how efforts to replace county officials by the election process . . . resulted in the discriminatory hiring and firing as a means of controlling the votes of the poor.” These practices “led . . . to still further alienation of the poor from the main stream of American ideas and practices—and of participation.” When local elected officials felt threatened, they resorted, the volunteers contended, to the use of “direct bribery in the form of food baskets, ‘red liquor' gifts or cash payments” to sway voters to their side.
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The AVs were, therefore, determined to make the Appalachian poor more aware of their capacity for “local political participation.” The means by which they hoped to do so was the “traditional American way of action: ‘town meetings.'” The hope was that, as these meetings became increasingly popular with mountain residents, they would create more formal community organizations: “Local AV representatives [would help] the initial groups . . . develop their own structures and ways of cooperation in single or multi-community areas.” In addition, the Appalachian Volunteers would facilitate “the capacity of these groups to cooperate on common ends where . . . these common interests emerged from the discussions in different local communities.” Through these community organizations, the AVs asserted, the mountaineers could quickly develop the self-confidence to challenge the existing county power structure.
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In order to aid in the creation of these formal community organizations, the Volunteers established, in addition to the intern program, “educational outposts.” Set up ostensibly to provide a quality educational experience that was based on the “values and needs” of local children and adults in the region, the outposts soon became a focal point of AV opposition to local county governments and the current trend toward school consolidation then under way in the Southern mountains. The AVs' personal approach in the outpost schools contrasted sharply with the move toward school consolidation, which, according to the AVs, conceived of children as “a product” that could be mass-produced. Another problem with consolidation, they argued, was that it contradicted the whole notion of community action, the alleged goal of the OEO. Consolidation destroyed the centerpiece of the local community—the school—and undermined the mountaineers' belief in the superiority of personal over economic relationships. The outpost
schools therefore became an important component in the AV program of individual and community development.
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Each outpost operated independently, and the curriculum varied from outpost to outpost “due to the different skills that the local instructor possess[ed].” What the outposts had in common, however, was that they represented a “technical service staff” on which the local community could draw. For example, they developed “expertise . . . in such areas as strip-mining, welfare rights, educational opportunities, and similar problems.” Their very existence thus represented a threat to local school superintendents and the other people and institutions seen by the AVs as the cause of poverty in the Southern mountains.
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As the Appalachian Volunteers became more and more involved in community organizing, they “gradually phased out the more direct physical and social services which they undertook in the initial stage of their activities.” The emergence of grassroots political organizations among the mountain communities also had “repercussions . . . on the structure and functions of the AVs themselves.” These repercussions manifested themselves in the “shifting emphasis from summer volunteer activities to year round services.” “Physical and social” problems remained, but “the importance of year-round local community organization[s] [had] become more evident.”
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With this dramatic shift in emphasis, the original Appalachian Volunteer concept rapidly faded. No longer did the AVs send local college students to remote mountain communities to repair schools and houses. In fact, there were very few volunteers from Appalachia in the organization; the majority of participants were VISTA volunteers assigned by the OEO to the Appalachian Volunteers, Inc. The composition of the organization itself consisted of a paid, professional staff utilizing “‘outsiders' . . . oriented toward service and educational functions,” which had now become “the core of the AV program.” Thus, the end of the summer 1966 program marked another change in the meaning of the term
Appalachian Volunteer
. The organization now utilized few pure volunteers, and it no longer relied on Appalachians to perform the work.
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The effects of these changes emerged surprisingly quickly. Even before the end of the summer program, some of the volunteers had already embraced the new approach to community action. The minutes of a July 1966
ad hoc meeting of the AV Board of Directors indicate that, while the early renovation and enrichment projects did not “muster much community participation,” the current emphasis on community organization did. Now “communities were directly involved in the work of the AVs.”
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It did not take long for evidence of the success of the AVs' new approach to surface. In October 1966, the communities of Wilkerson, Midspring, Gatliff, and Hanging Rock (the latter hosted an AV outpost), in Whitley County, sent representatives to the county CAP meeting to request road improvements. When they introduced the issue, the agency director ruled them out of order. In response, the towns of Hanging Rock and Wilkerson organized petition drives. Because Hanging Rock received only a “token” response to its petition, the VISTA volunteers and AVs assigned to the county made arrangements for fifty people from not just Hanging Rock but also Wilkerson, Midspring, and Gatliff to visit the county fiscal court. According to a Volunteer report: “For the first time people from several communities stood together. Two of these communities are now directly feeling the effects of their efforts. Wilkerson is actually building their own road with some county support.” Even more dramatic: “Midspring is now taking steps that may lead to a suit being filed against the county fiscal court.” Things did not stop there, however: “Folks from several areas in Whitley County participated in a multi-county effort to (1) demand more representation of the poor on the [CAP] board and (2) . . . force the board to submit to their demands or at least keep the board honest.” Should the county CAP refuse to cooperate, the Volunteers promised to help the poor people of the county form their own CAP and apply directly for OEO funding. Already the new, more confrontational approach of the Appalachian Volunteer program had made one county in Kentucky a political battleground in the War on Poverty.
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