Appalachia

The Appalachian region of the United States is a cultural and geographical area with undefined borders. It roughly traverses six to ten states along the Appalachian Mountain system, considered among the oldest on Earth. Appalachia shares a history, culture, and environment that span the nation from east to south. In popular culture, the idea of Appalachia identifies more than a geographic region. It evokes a certain type of folk music, crafts, and other artifacts that identify the region in American culture. Many scholars and authors have dealt with the history and idea of Appalachia. For many in the United States, Appalachia—southern Appalachia, in particular—represents cultural and economic backwardness, poverty, and violence. In popular culture, the region and its inhabitants often bring up images of hillbillies and moonshiners. Most historians and activists today argue that the region has been particularly subject to stereotyping, misunderstanding, and economic and environmental depredation.

Background

The history of the people of Appalachia can be traced to Native American communities. Such communities remained the core population, even after contact with Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century. In the 1700s, immigrants of Scots-Irish origin built settlements, followed by German, French, and various other settlers. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, enacted during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, resulted in the massive displacement of Native Americans. Most particularly affected was the Cherokee Nation, whose brutal removal from their ancestral territory in eastern Appalachia is known to history as the Trail of Tears. These actions paralleled the social conflicts in the South that eventually led to the Civil War, although the issue of slavery arguably had little impact on the rural people of Appalachia.

The most notable geographical division in the region of Appalachia is between the low country and the mountains. There were also sociocultural divides between rural and urban people. Among the region’s most important social and cultural developments was the antialcohol movement that emerged in the 1830s. Appalachian temperance groups were among the first alcohol reform advocates in the United States. Adopting the virtues of sobriety and frugality, they argued, would make society more productive. The temperance movement reflected the class divides in Appalachian society, specifically between town and rural people. Middle-class townspeople, who considered themselves more educated and progressive than their rural counterparts, adopted and promoted temperance; they believed that alcohol use and production caused moral and economic harm. They also wanted reliable workers in order to attract industrial development.

Mountain people, particularly in North Carolina, fought for their traditional right to consume and produce liquor. Liquor distillation was an important part of their economy. Moreover, rural folk, who had developed a fiercely independent culture, resented attempts to limit their individual and economic freedom. The disagreements over alcohol reform deepened the cultural gap and regional divide between town and rural highlanders. This divide would increase after the Civil War and Industrial Revolution. It helped build the ground for the enactment of prohibition legislation. The temperance movement achieved state-wide prohibition in 1908 and nationwide prohibition, in 1920.

Topic Today

The anti-alcohol movement played a significant role in forming negative stereotypes of rural Appalachia. However, scholars today explain that stereotypes were mostly created by journalists, missionaries, filmmakers, and color novelists who, claiming to have “discovered” isolated highlanders still living like pioneers, promoted a romanticized and often denigrating view. In these portrayals, post–Civil War modernization and technology appeared to have ignored most of the region. In consequence, the natural isolation of mountain people perpetuated a backward and undeveloped culture.

Although there is some truth in these depictions, they are often grossly exaggerated. The region suffered from long-standing developmental neglect, such as a lack of optimal road systems, modern transportation, and technology. It long conserved a form of speech that historians trace back to early colonial settlers. However, Appalachia seemed to function as a contraposition to modernity, its imagery manipulated to remind nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Americans of the benefits of progress and industrialization. Contemporary experts explain that most of these portrayals came from outside the mountain region. Townspeople, for example, often emphasized differences between urban dwellers and the less prosperous country people, to the detriment of the latter. Logging, mining, and other profit-making interests portrayed the region as in urgent need of industrialization and development.

The transition from a rural to an urban-industrial economy in Appalachia took place in the late nineteenth century, during the Industrial Revolution. Outside investors acquired cheap property rights. Rural dwellers moved to the towns following jobs, driven by problems such as poor land and farming techniques. Logging and mining eventually became the strongest regional industries. Logging started in the 1880s, after a lumber shortage in other regions made the Appalachian forests attractive. Farmers then became wage-dependent workers. Iron and coal mining eventually followed.

The Industrial Revolution also brought about demographic expansion in the region. A rich and unique mountain culture had shaped Appalachian communities, and mountain people were proudly independent and self-sufficient. Families relied on each other and extended kinship relationships. After industrialization, not only were rural people dispersed through urban centers, but immigrants from other regions, such as African Americans and Italians, moved to the region searching for work, contributing to population growth. After 1927 the demand for Appalachian coal fell, plunging the region into a deep recession. During the years of the Great Depression, a government-commissioned study showed that the urban population had increased 75 percent but had not reaped the economic benefits of modernization, such as access to health and education.

The depredation of Appalachian forests gave rise to early conservation movements. Today, the region hosts a great many environmental protection organizations. Modern environmental research shows that low-income regions often bear the burden of harmful environmental impacts. Appalachian societies suffer a long-standing legacy of such environmental effects. Experts argue that these are the consequences of relying on mining-dependent development.

In contrast to stereotypical depictions of the region as uncultured, Appalachia is an area rich in folk culture, traditions, and arts, often characterized by a flair for independence. It is the home of notable folk music styles including bluegrass, and the relatively late penetration of industrialization and mass culture into the region led many ethnomusicologists and sociologists to study Appalachia as a window into unique folkways that largely disappeared in other parts of the country in the second half of the twentieth century. Its cultural richness is not only unique in the United States but also gave birth to modern folk festivals as they are known today.

Bibliography

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Abramson, Rudy, and Jean Haskell, eds. Encyclopedia of Appalachia. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2006. Print.

Edward Davis, eds. Mountains of Injustice: Social and Environmental Justice in Appalachia. Athens: Ohio UP, 2011. Print.

Eller, Ronald D. Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2013. Print.

Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1984. Print.

Fisher, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed. New York: Oxford UP, 1989. Print.

Fisher, Steven L., and Barbara Ellen Smith. Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia. Champaign: U of Illinois P, 2012. Print.

Kingsolver, Barbara. "Read Your Way Through Appalachia." The New York Times, 9 Apr. 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/books/barbara-kingsolver-appalachia-books.html. Accessed 12 Feb. 2025.

Rivers, Michael. Appalachia Mountain Folklore. Atglen: Schiffer, 2012. Print.

Stewart, Bruce E. Moonshiners and Prohibitionists. The Battle over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2011. Print.

Williams, John Alexander. Appalachia: A History. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2001. Print.

Woodward, Colin. American Nations: A History of Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.