Mountain memories: a wave of new books from scholars shed light on the Appalachian past shared by many African Americans.

By its very nature, Appalachia is a hidden culture. The mountains keep its people, language and customs in a kind of time bubble, barring easy access to prying eyes of outsiders and the pressures for changes.

The region stretches along mountain ridges from New York to Mississippi with the core snaking through Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina. The face of its people most often seen by others is overwhelmingly white and poor. Yet these mountains have given the world accomplished black leaders, too--among them Booker T. Washington, Carter G. Woodson, the Reverend Leon Sullivan, Tony Brown and Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. It has also produced many not-so-ordinary, hardworking black people, the kind immortalized in the legend of John Henry.

While books have been written by and about many of the individuals, less has been said about the region's culture as a whole, built on different experiences and realities than those of blacks in either the plantation South or the turban centers to the north and west. One exception, Blacks in Appalachia by William Hobart Turner and Edward I. Cabbell, (University Press of Kentucky, February 1985, ASIN 0-813-10162-X), is out of print.

For decades, African Americans in much of Appalachia enjoyed what many were denied elsewhere: better-paying jobs and decent homes (often in "model communities" of the early 20th century). Many were "recruited" from further south for their labor. Better access to education, even if segregated, frequently came with the deal. If life was less than fully integrated, blacks lived and worked in close proximity to similarly recruited white immigrants, usually performing the same soul-breaking work.

Newer books are broadening the view of who and what Appalachians are. They also fill in some of the gaps about the history of women, notably Memphis Tennessee Garrison, a Virginian who did social work and taught in West Virginia, and Effie Waller Smith, a poet who lived in Kentucky and Tennessee.

From the Hills

Appalachia: A History by John Alexander Williams, The University of North Carolina Press, April 2002 $49.95, ISBN 0-807-82699-5

While providing a broad, comprehensive history of the region, Williams gives particular attention to the role of African Americans in developing its industrial life, as well as to their struggles in labor and civil rights. He captures the impact of their out migration when industries began to falter. This book gives the best overall view of the history, geography, economics and sensibilities of Appalachia, including its boundaries and definition.

Black Days, Black Dust: The Memories of an African American Coal Miner by Robert Armstead, as told to S.L. Gardner, University of Tennessee Press April 2002, $17.95, ISBN 1-572-33176-3

This book is described as the first published memoir by an Appalachian coal miner Armstead followed his father into mines in West Virginia in 1947 and worked at various sites until his retirement as a safety inspector in 1987. He died in 1998, but not before sharing his story with a librarian and teacher who has written extensively about the Appalachian culture. Its value is that it puts a human face on a way of life and gives voice to the many thousands of workers whose lives paralleled his.

The Brevard Rosenwald School: Black Education and Community Building in a Southern Appalachian Town, 1920-1966 by Betty J. Reed, McFarland & Co. March 2004, $30.00, ISBN 0-786-41743-9

This is the history of a school established to educate African Americans in Transylvania County, North Carolina, that benefited from a fund set up by Julius Rosenwald, a president of Sears, Roebuck & Co. While accepting the requirement of segregation at the time, its goal was to involve local communities in supporting the school and to give black students a meaningful education to improve their lot.

Historic Coal Towns of the Big Sandy River Valley by George D. Torok. University of Tennessee Press, April 2004 $24.95, ISBN 1-572-33282-4

This valley which meanders through Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, sprung to life with the coal boom at the end of the 19th century and saw that vibrancy snuffed out abruptly by the mid-20th century. The book is a guide through time with ample field notes on the Appalachian, African American and ethnic cultures that comingled there.

Extracting Appalachia: Images of the Consolidation Coal Company 1910-1945 by Geoffrey L. Buckley Ohio University Press, April 2004 $48.95, ISBN 0-821-41555-7

This coal company commissioned thousands of public relations photographs when Appalachian mining was in its heyday. Today, they are at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, where they illuminate a culture and its hidden ethnic, racial and other social dimensions.

High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in Time and Place Edited by Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Bleten, University of Illinois Press June 2004, $40.00, ISBN 0-252-02916-X

"The first comprehensive, cohesive volume to unite Appalachian history with its culture," this collection of essays makes ample reference to the black past.

Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman Edited by Ancella R. Bickley and Lynda Ann Ewen, Ohio University Press, May 2001 $17.95, ISBN 0-821-41374-0

The back cover of this book notes, "As a black Appalachian woman, Memphis Tennessee Garrison belonged to a group triply ignored by historians. Bickley and Ewen drew on oral history of her to shape this book. Born in Virginia in 1890, she was transplanted to McDowell County, West Virginia, then one of richest coal-mining cultures in America. She became a highly educated social activist and teacher, mentoring many children. She also brought prestigious entertainers and speakers to the out-the-way region, organized school-teachers statewide and played a key role in the national NAACP.

Hawk's Nest: A Novel of America's Disinherited by Hubert Skidmore, University of Tennessee Press, May 2004 $19.95, ISBN 1-572-33280-8

This novel was published first in 1941 by a white West Virginia native about a seldom-mentioned episode in labor history that left hundreds dead of a ghastly disease, among them many African Americans. So revealing was the novel that it was almost instantly withdrawn from the market, with only a handful of copies sold, and Skidmore's death in a fire at 37 is still considered suspicious. Skidmore artfully captured the desperation of thousands of men from many ethnic groups during the Depression drawn from all over the country as if by a Pied Piper for the promise of good pay to build a hydroelectric tunnel through the heart of West Virginia.

Red, White, Black and Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia by William M. Drennen Jr. and Kojo Jones Jr., edited by Dolores M. Johnson, Ohio University Press, January 2004 $17.95, ISBN 0-821-41536-0

The interconnected stories of two men, born in 1942--one a wealthy white kid and the other a middle-class black kid--who grew up and played together in bills overlooking Charleston, West Virginia.

The Tangled Roots of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Appalachian Literature by Elizabeth S.D. Englehardt Ohio University Press, December 2003 $24.95, ISBN 0-821-41510-7

A West Virginia University professor looks at the lives of early women writers. Among them is an intriguing African American poet Effie Waller Smith, whose verse addresses race, gender and class in pointed language.