Appalachian History

The Charleston Gazette by Greg Moore CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Robert Carlyle Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress in United States history, who spent much of his career as a conservative Democrat, and ended it by fiercely opposing the war in Iraq and questioning the state’s powerful coal industry, died Monday. He was 92. Byrd was [...]

Originally posted at Hillbilly Savants by Eric D. Smith Lorenzo & Eleanor Fugate (Image from Hazard, Kentucky & Perry County: A Photographic History) Around the world there are legends of human beings who have skin of a unusual shades, folk whose skin color wasn’t some variation on brown or pink. These people, as they are [...]

Wilma Dykeman (1920-2006) pioneered and popularized the concepts of Appalachian Studies and Appalachian Literature.  She wrote prolific columns for the ‘Knoxville News-Sentinel.’ She served as the Tennessee State Historian, a Trustee of Berea College, and as a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment of the Humanities. During her long career Dykeman was awarded the Sidney [...]

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. You can start listening right away by clicking the podcast icon over on the right side of your screen. If you’d rather grab the show off itunes for later listening, click here: We open today’s show with a saga of science and political [...]

“It is related that the late J.J. Jones, during the palmy days of the seventies (1870s) when the virgin soil in that Red Belt section was at its best, and before erosion had marred the face of the fields, raised on a certain year on his farm nearly 1500 bushels of wheat, and that Jason [...]