Mountain Talk: Integrated Coal Camps, w/the Hollyfields of Dunham, Ky., & Residents of Clinchco, Va.

Описание: There is no Appalachian history without Black history. And this week on Mountain Talk, we hear about life in two different integrated coal camps in our area: Dunham, Ky., and Clinchco, Va.

First, we visit with Collins & Effie Hollyfield (pictured), of Dunham, in Letcher County, Ky., via a series of excerpts from an oral history interview conducted with them in 1991. The Hollyfields moved to Kentucky from Alabama in 1934 for Collins to find work in the coal mines, and in this conversation, we hear about what it was like to move to east Kentucky from the deep south in the 1930’s; about Collins’s work—both as a miner, and then, after a mining accident that damaged his vision, as Letcher County’s locally-infamous “Popcorn Man;" and also about what life was like in general for the Black community in Dunham. This interview, which comes from the Appalshop Archive, was co-led by Bob Gates as well as by our dear friend & colleague, Elizabeth Barret, who we already miss so deeply.

Then, we head across Pine Mountain to another integrated mining camp: Clinchco, Va. In this piece, a radio adaptation of the 1982 Appalshop film, Clinchco: Story of a Mining Town (dir. Susie Baker), we hear a patchwork of interviews about life in Clinchco, including the experience of Black miners & their families in the area. Among the voices in this piece are various local residents, alongside Dr. William Turner, a distinguished Black scholar & writer originally from Harlan County, and most recently the author of the book Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns.

(Music in this episode comes from Pigmeat Jarrett, from the June Appal Records release "Look at the People," and from Don Bikoff, from the Free Music Archive.)