Edited by Ancella R. Bickley and Lynda Ann Ewen
“One of the first books to show how Appalachian blacks—like those in the Cotton Belt South and the Northern migrants—successfully pitted their intellect against historical realities and contradiction, and won!”
William H. Turner, co-editor of Blacks in Appalachia
“Anecdotally rich. Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman fills the gap in historical accounts of mining. Of particular interest is her work on the NAACP and her recollections of its less-remembered cultural mission in the black community—organizing the Negro Artists Series—as well as its political one.”
Publishers Weekly
As a black Appalachian woman, Memphis Tennessee Garrison belonged to a demographic category triply ignored by historians.
The daughter of former slaves, she moved to McDowell County, West Virginia, at an early age and died at ninety-eight in Huntington. The coalfields of McDowell County were among the richest seams in the nation. As Garrison makes clear, the backbone of the early mining work force—those who laid the railroad tracks, manned the coke ovens, and dug the coal—were black miners. These miners and their families created communities that became the centers of the struggle for unions, better education, and expanded civil rights. Memphis Tennessee Garrison, an innovative teacher, administrative worker at U.S. Steel, and vice president of the National Board of the NAACP at the height of the civil rights struggle (1963-66), was involved with all of these struggles.
In many ways, this oral history, based on interview transcripts, is the untold and multidimensional story of African American life in West Virginia, as seen through the eyes of a remarkable woman. She portrays a courageous people who organize to improve their working conditions, send their children to school and then to college, own land, and support a wide range of cultural and political activities.
Ancella Bickley is a retired professor of English and Vice President for Academic Affairs at West Virginia State College. More info →
Lynda Ann Ewen is a professor of sociology at Marshall University, where she directs the Oral History of Appalachia Program and is co-director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia. More info →
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Paperback
978-0-8214-1374-6
Retail price: $24.95,
S.
Release date: June 2001
288 pages
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6 × 9 in.
Rights: World
Hardcover
978-0-8214-1373-9
Retail price: $49.95,
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Release date: June 2001
282 pages
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6 × 9 in.
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Electronic
978-0-8214-4065-0
Release date: June 2001
282 pages
Rights: World
Red, White, Black, and Blue
A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia
By William M. Drennen Jr. and Kojo (William T.) Jones Jr.
·
Edited by Dolores Johnson
A groundbreaking approach to studying not only cultural linguistics but also the cultural heritage of a historic time and place in America. It gives witness to the issues of race and class inherent in the way we write, speak, and think.
Memoir · African American Studies · Social Science | Regional Studies · Gender Studies · Appalachia · Ohio and Regional · Creative Nonfiction · Literature · Appalachia
Coal and Culture
Opera Houses in Appalachia
By William Faricy Condee
Opera houses were fixtures of Appalachian life from the end of the Civil War through the 1920s. The only book on opera houses that stresses their cultural context, Condee’s unique study will interest cultural geographers, scholars of Appalachian studies, and all those who appreciate the gaudy diversity of the American scene.
Social Science | Regional Studies · Theater - History and Criticism · History | Modern | 20th Century · 19th century · Appalachia · Ohio and Regional
Beyond Hill and Hollow
Original Readings in Appalachian Women’s Studies
Edited by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt
Women’s studies unites with Appalachian studies in Beyond Hill and Hollow, the first book to focus exclusively on studies of Appalachia’s women. Featuring the work of historians, linguists, sociologists, performance artists, literary critics, theater scholars, and others, the collection portrays the diverse cultures of Appalachian women.The
Women’s Studies · Social Science | Regional Studies · Literary Criticism, Women · Women’s History · Appalachia · Literature · Ohio and Regional
Keeping Heart
A Memoir of Family Struggle, Race, and Medicine
By Otis Trotter
·
Introduction by Joe William Trotter Jr.
Organized around the life histories, medical struggles, and recollections of Otis Trotter and his thirteen siblings, Keeping Heart is a personal account of an African American family’s journey north during the second Great Migration.
Memoir · Biography, African American · African American Studies · Social Science | Regional Studies · Political Science | Civil Rights · Appalachia · Ohio and Regional
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