Appalachian History

Please welcome guest author Roger May. May is a documentary photographer currently living in Raleigh, NC. He was born and raised in the Tug Valley region of southern WV and eastern KY. He’s currently enrolled in the Certificate in Documentary Arts program at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, where he’s also a [...]

Hearings before the Select Committee Investigating National Defense Migration, House of Representatives, Seventy-seventh Congress, first session, pursuant to House Resolution 113, a resolution to inquire further into the interstate migration of citizens, emphasizing the present and potential consequences of the migration caused by the national defense program. MAY 7 AND 8, 1942 Huntsville AL Concerning [...]

From 1935-1943, President Franklin Roosevelt looked to the U.S. Farm Security Administration, under the direction of Roy Stryker, to photograph people in need across the country in order to help sell his New Deal programs to the public. Ben Shahn was one of the first photographers Styker hired. Shahn worked for a part of the [...]

Sunday school picnic. Much of the food brought into abandoned mining town of Jere, West Virginia by “neighboring folk” from other parishes. There is a great deal of “hard feelings” and many fights between Catholics and Protestants. Miners as a whole are not very religious, many not having any connections with church, though they may [...]