African American History

Affrilachia, a portmanteau of African and Appalachia, is a term coined by poet Frank X Walker in response to an assumption that Appalachia is a white enclave.* The term is not universally adopted; historian William H. Turner refers to it as "a craftily marked brand" (62). Many contemporary authors and artists have adopted Affrilachia as a term that demonstrates the presence of Black people in Appalachia. We use the term in this guide along with Black Appalachian and African Americans in Appalachia. 

*Walker, Frank X. Affrilachia: Poems. Old Cove Press, 2000.

**Turner, William Hobart. The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns. First edition. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2021, 63.

Archives

Oral History Projects

See also: Sikes, Scott. “Meaning, Encounter, and Reclamation: Relistening to the Appalachian Oral History Project.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 27, no. 1 (2021): 106–15.

Abramson, Rudy. Jean Haskell (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006.

Black in Appalachia

"Black in Appalachia: Research, Education & Support is a non-profit that works in collaboration with public media, residents, university departments, libraries, archives, and community organizations to highlight the history and contributions of African Americans in developing the Mountain South and its culture." Includes documentary films, recordings of public forums, and digital archives: census records, school records, photos, and oral history. Includes a podcast and profiles on specific Appalachian cities.

Brosi, George. 2008. “Bibliography of African-American Appalachian Books.” Appalachian Heritage 36 (3): 109–15.

Divided by topical category and includes biography, children's books, history, novels, and poetry.

Dunaway, Wilma A. Slavery in the American Mountain South. Studies in Modern Capitalism. Cambridge University Press, 2003. 

Dunaway, Wilma A. The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation. Studies in Modern Capitalism. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 

Dunaway's two sociological studies focus on African American women during the 19th century and point to many useful primary resources.

El-Amin, Enkeshi Thom, Shaneda Destine, Michelle Brown, Ejeris Dixon, Krystal Leaphart, and Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson. “Select Commentaries from Black in Appalachia Interviews.” Social Justice 49, no. 3 (July 2022): 115–36. 

Discussions of "Black safety--the labor of organizing and struggling to pursue it and the beautiful moments when Black people live and find it together" (116).

Higgs Robert J Laura L Higgs Ambrose N Manning Jim Wayne Miller Cindy Hyder Tipton Annie H Michal Douglas Powell et al. Appalachia Inside Out : Conflict and Change. Knoxville TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1995.

"Representing the work of approximately two hundred authors—fiction writers, poets, scholars in disciplines such as history, literary criticism, and sociology." It covers the topics of Appalachian history and culture.

Inscoe John C. Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. 2 vols.

The edited collection examines slavery, racism, and the Civil War in the 19th century and then examines how race and racism in Appalachia are featured in literature and film. 

Lewis, Ronald L. Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780-1980. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1987.

Part IV of the book focuses specifically on the experiences of Black coal miners in central Appalachia, from 1880-1920. The appendix includes a nice list of primary sources, organized by state.

McCarroll, Meredith. Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film. South on Screen Series. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2018. 

From the catalog entry summary:  "demonstrates how typical characterizations of Appalachian people serve as foils to set off and define the "whiteness" of the non-Appalachian southerners. In this dynamic, Appalachian characters become the racial other." Films studied include Deliverance, Cold Mountain, Medium Cool, Norma Rae, Cape Fear, The Killing Season, and Winter's Bone.

McCommons, Jillean, “‘Not Just Whites in Appalachia’: The Black Appalachian Commission, Regional Black Power Politics, and the War on Poverty, 1965-1975.” PhD diss, (University of Kentucky, 2022). https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2022.180.

Study of Civil Rights Movement in Appalachia. This study focuses on Black activism and Black Power in Appalachia in the 1960s and 1970s, with attention to environmental and institutional racism and grassroots organizing.

Smith, Ada. “Appalachian Futurism.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 22, no. 1 (2016): 73–75.

Turner, William H., Edward J. Cabbell, and Professor Edward J. Cabbell. Blacks in Appalachia. 1st ed. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

A seminal work on the topic, a collection of essays, many of which focus on coal mining. 

Additional Authors: Theda Perdue, Carter G. Woodson, Booker T. Washington, James C. Klotter, James T. Laing, Russell D. Parker, David A. Corbin, Kenneth R. Bailey, John H. Stanfield, W.E.B. Du Bois, Herbert R. Northrup, Ronald L. Lewis, Richard A. Straw, Leon F. Williams, Jack Guillebeaux, Reginald Millner, Pearl Cornett, Groesback Parham, and Gwen Robinson.

Williams, John Alexander. Appalachia: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. 

A thorough scholarly overview of Appalachian history. Helpful for overall context and provides many details about African American history and culture in the region.

Turner, William H. 2011. “Affrilachia as ‘Brand.’” Appalachian Heritage 39, no.4 (2011): 27–30.

Turner, William Hobart. The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns. First edition. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2021.

As Turner puts it, Harlan Renaissance is a "personal as well as a group biography framed inside a wide-ranging summary of the history and culture of Black people who have been embedded for most of the past century in the coal-producing zones of the central Appalachian mountains" (10). Geographic focus: Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, West Virginia.

Jackson County, North Carolina

Casey McDonald, Victoria A., and Marie T. Cochran. Just over the Hill: Black Appalachians in Jackson County, Western North Carolina. Cullowhee, NC: Western Carolina University, Hunter Library, 2022. 

Davis Lenwood G and Milton Ready. The Black Heritage of Western North Carolina. Asheville N.C.: University Graphics, UNCA, 1984.

Inscoe, John C. Mountain Masters: Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. 

Western North Carolina

Keefe, Susan E., and Junaluska Heritage Association (Boone, N.C.), eds. Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community. Southern Appalachian Studies 48. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2020. Publishers. 

Sheffield, Betty Jane. Barbering under King Street: 67 Years, Jerry Wilson’s World, Friends. Deep Gap, N.C: B.J. Sheffield, 2006.

Woodford, Ann Miller. When All God’s Children Get Together: A Celebration of the Lives and Music of African American People in Far Western North Carolina. Andrews, N.C: Published by Ann Woodford in cooperation with One Dozen Who Care, Inc., 2015. 

Smith, Gerald L., Karen Cotton McDaniel, and John A. Hardin. The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 

Brown, Karida. Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.  Harlan County, Kentucky

Brown, Karida L. 2019. “What I Learned from This Book I Wrote: A Rejoinder by Karida L. Brown.” Ethnic & Racial Studies 42, no.13 (2019): 2339–47. Southern WV and Eastern KY

McCommons, Jillean. "Appalachian Hillsides as Black Ecologies: Housing, Memory, and The Sanctified Hill Disaster of 1972." Black Perspectives, June 16, 2020. Sanctified Hill, Cumberland, Harlan County, Kentucky

Turner, William Hobart. The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns. First edition. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2021. Harlan County, Kentucky

Coggeshall, John M. Liberia, South Carolina: An African American Appalachian Community. H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman Series. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018.  Pickens County, South Carolina.

Coggeshall, John M. Something in These Hills: The Culture of Family Land in Southern Appalachia. hapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2022. South Carolina. 

Grady, Timothy Paul, and Melissa Walker. Recovering the Piedmont Past : Unexplored Moments in Nineteenth-Century Upcountry South Carolina History. The University of South Carolina Press, 2013.

Thomas, Rhondda Robinson. Call My Name, Clemson : Documenting the Black Experience in an American University Community. University of Iowa Press, 2020.

Henderson-Alexander, Mary. (2001). Black life in Johnson City, Tennessee 1856-1965 : A Historical Chronology. Thesis (M.A.)--East Tennessee State University, 2001. Johnson City, East Tennessee

Lamon, Lester C. Black Tennesseans, 1900-1930. Twentieth-Century America Series. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977. 

———.Blacks in Tennessee, 1791-1970. 1st ed. Tennessee Three Star Books. Knoxville: Published in cooperation with the Tennessee Historical Commission [by] the University of Tennessee Press 1981. 

Wynn, Linda T., and Tennessee Historical Commission, eds. Journey to Our Past: A Guide to African-American Markers in Tennessee. 1st ed. Nashville, Tenn.: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1999.

Bickley, Ancella R. “Carter G. Woodson: The West Virginia Connection.” Appalachian Heritage 36, no. 3 (Summer 2008): 59–69. doi:10.1353/aph.0.0085.

Brown, Karida L. 2019. “What I Learned from This Book I Wrote: A Rejoinder by Karida L. Brown.” Ethnic & Racial Studies 42, no.13 (2019): 2339–47. Southern WV and Eastern KY

Drennen, William M., Kojo Jones, and Dolores Johnson. Red, White, Black & Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia. Ohio University Press Series in Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. Charleston, West Virginia.

Garrison, Memphis Tennessee, Ancella R. Bickley, and Lynda Ann Ewen. Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appalachian Woman. Ohio University Press Series in Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001. McDowell County, West Virginia.