Black in Appalachia

Black in Appalachia treats the history of Black people in the mountains as something best heard from the people who carry it. It is a conversation, not a lecture. Sociologist Enkeshi El-Amin, who studies race, place and Black Appalachian experiences, works alongside Angela Dennis, a journalist covering race and socioeconomic issues in Knoxville, Tennessee, and each sometimes takes an episode solo. Their follow-ups are the practical kind: where was that, how old were you, what happened next. Then the answer is allowed to run. The clearest example is a conversation with Clara Hughes, who was past 100 at the time. She remembers Victrola records and dancing all over the floor, weekend fish fries and ball games, standing up in a truck, and what a big deal a trip to Knoxville was. She also works through her first husband's family, naming Hazard, Kentucky, Oliver Springs and Annadale, Tennessee, and pauses over a name that will not come. Nobody hurries her. The same attention goes to larger forces. At a live recording at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., introduced by reference archivist Damani Davis, speakers describe Black mining families in Eastern Kentucky as the last hired and the first fired, the first to lose their homes when mechanization came, with children told early that they would have to leave after high school. An episode produced by Humanities Tennessee for its Humanities in Action podcast, featuring project director William Isom, reaches further back, to enslaved and free Black people building railroads through East Tennessee and to ethnic cleansings that pushed rural Black communities toward the cities. The present gets its turn too. In a solo episode about the Black press, El-Amin talks with West Virginia publisher Crystal Good, who describes launching a newspaper, driving copies around the state herself, and hoping Black by God will grow into a wider publishing venture. Walter DeBarr, a singer and songwriter, wrote in to the show and ended up talking about growing up as the only biracial child in his West Virginia hometown. An episode titled 'Black in Appalachia: Nazi Hunter: a Conversation with Daryle Lamont Jenkins' covers white nationalist groups, the Proud Boys among them, and the people of color they push to the front. A small ritual ties the feed together: guests commonly give their name and then say that they are Black in Appalachia. The register is casual, with archival vocabulary and everyday talk in the same breath, and the sign-off is often a simple 'Peace.' The default tone is warm. Forced labor and racial violence get grave, unembellished handling. The Clara Hughes conversation shows the approach at its most patient, and the National Archives taping shows how far it reaches.