Appalachian History

A long time ago there was an old woman and an old man and a little girl and a little boy and their pet squirrel sitting up on the fireplace. One day the old woman wanted to bake some biscuits but she needed some sody. So she sent the little boy to the store to [...]

On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all slaves held in locations in conflict with the United States were henceforth free. Black communities in Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina have observed Emancipation Day on that day ever since. Not so elsewhere in Appalachia. When Union soldiers took control of an area, they would, [...]

Stories of Mountain Folk is an ongoing all-sound oral history program produced by Catch the Spirit of Appalachia (CSA), a western North Carolina not-for-profit, for local radio and online distribution; then archived through the Hunter Library Digital Collections at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. “Storytelling has always been important to me,” says Amy [...]

We post a new episode of Appalachian History weekly podcast every Sunday. Check us out on the Stitcher network, available on mobile phones, in-car dashboards and tablets worldwide. Share the show with friends via automatic Facebook Timeline integration and with one-click Twitter, Facebook and email icons. Just click the icon below to start listening: We [...]

“I sweated over my introduction, rewrote it ten times. When I had finished, this, in part, was the text: “There were Alabama Bankheads in one or another of the houses of Congress for sixty consecutive years. My father was Speaker of the House for four years, served with that body for twenty-five. My grandfather, John, [...]