Quotes About Appalachia

The mountains made travel difficult much of the year and at times impossible. But industry had no trouble finding what it wanted and removing it. Corporations lay track into thousands of hollows and pulled billions of dollars in lumber and coal from the region over the following century. Still, those searching for the causes of poverty in Appalachia—throughout the twentieth century and even today—blame its isolation.

In school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies. District 12 was in a region known as Appalachia. Even hundreds of years ago, they mined coal here. Which is why our miners have to dig so deep.

In school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies. District 12 was in a region known as Appalachia.

school, they tell us the Capitol was built in a place once called the Rockies. District 12 was in a region known as Appalachia. Even hundreds of years ago, they mined coal here. Which is why our miners have to dig so deep.

You can tell it's good if you light it and a blue flame comes up; that means it's good moonshine and it won't make you go blind.

NEAR FAYETTEVILLE WEST VIRGINIA USA

SOUTHEASTERN OHIO USA

The end of coal in Appalachia doesn't mean that America is running out of coal (there's plenty left in Wyoming). But it should end the fantasy that coal can be an engine of job creation - the big open pit mines in Wyoming employ a tiny fraction of the number of people in an underground mine in Appalachia.

I am from Appalachia. The Tennessee mountains with the early evenings and that great morning light made storytellers out of all of us.

Deep Southerners assumed Appalachia would rally to the Confederacy because of a shared doctrine of white supremacy. Instead, Borderlanders did as they always had: they took up arms against whatever enemy they felt was the greatest threat, and fought ferociously against them. To the planters' shock, most Appalachian people regarded them as a greater threat to their liberty than the Yankees.

Night Comes to the Cumberland.

But overall, Obama's record on the environment has been uninspired - and that's putting it kindly. He hasn't stopped coal companies from blowing up mountaintops and devastating large regions of Appalachia.

One time at the University of Colorado, at a faculty dinner, this professor said to me, 'Well, my goodness, a boy from Appa-lay-chee-a with a Ph.D!' The dinner was in her house. And I said, 'My grandparents didn't have indoor plumbing, but they had more books in their house than you do.' I was a little insulted by the Appa-lay-chee-a business.

Harry M. Caudill

When my father started talking about strip mining in the Appalachia back in the '60s, I remember a conversation I had with him where he said, you know, this is the richest state in the country if you look at the resources and the land, but the poorest people after the state of Mississippi: the 49th poorest people in the country.

The lack of an integrated life meant that no part of his life recognized the treatment of black people as an important disturbance. To not remember is perhaps not to feel touched by events that don't interfere with your livelihood. This is the reality that defines white privilege no matter how much money one has or doesn't have. From Appalachia to Fifth Avenue, my precarity is not a reality shared.

A Melungeon. She ain't white, she ain't colored, she ain't Injun. Ain't any one a them three kinds would claim her. Ain't just any fool'd take a chance on her, neither. Them Melungeons been hidin' up in these mountains long's anyone can remember. Got a certain look to 'em, like her—dark skin, but not red like a Injun. Black hair, and them cold blue eyes.

I grew up in southwestern Virginia. I was born in South Carolina, but only because my parents had a vacation cabin or something there on the beach. I was like a summer baby. But I did grow up in the South. I grew up in serious, serious Appalachia, in a very small town.

Down Cut Shin Creek: The Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky by Kathi Appelt and Jeanne Cannella Schmitzer.

Appalachia was Appalachia, regardless of boundaries someone had set an eternity ago. A land of breathtaking beauty, of steep hills and rolling mountains

Because it's Appalachia. The coal companies are destroying our mountains, towns, culture, and lives, and it's not a story.

Mollie Carter would sing the hymns she loved best: "The Land of the Uncloudy Day," "Amazing Grace," or "The Gospel Ship." But she also sang traditional ballads, known as "English" songs, because the form—if not the songs themselves—had crossed the Atlantic with the English and Scotch-Irish who settled the southern mountains.

The Carters won fame—if not fortune—because they could recast the traditional music of rural America for a modern audience. And like their music, the Carters themselves had to negotiate the gap between the insular culture of preindustrial Appalachia and the newly modern America.

In some cases, these communities also happened to have long-standing problems with prescription drug abuse. In some parts of Appalachia, people would pair an OxyContin with a Valium—one of Richard Sackler's pills and one of his uncle Arthur's. They called this "the Cadillac high.