In the southeastern United States there is a unique area known as the Appalachian mountains. The Appalachian mountains are 2,189 miles long and find home in fourteen states in the United States. These states include Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. However, when people speak of Appalachia, they are most commonly referring the region that stretches across seven states known as, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and North Carolina. The information following mainly applies to those seven states. Appalachia is a place like no other. It’s unique beauty attracts thousands of visitors annually, however, many people do not desire to reside there. Reasons behind it’s declining population vary, but include negative stigmas, corruption within the coal industry, the lack of work, especially among women and mountaintop removal mining. Appalachia is also infamously known for being extremely poverty stricken in regard to the rest of the United States. As a country we must aim to help our brothers and sisters of Appalachia progress economically and help them combat poverty, however, the issues that keep Appalachia submerged in such a state often go unnoticed by many Americans. In fact, the United States government has also been accountable for restricting certain accommodations and facilities that other areas have been accustomed to. The reason behind this is that many ignorant officials and overall citizens of the United States have skewed views of the Appalachian people and view them as “backwards hillbillies”.
There are many negative stigmas about people who live in Appalachia. Many authors and journalist who study the area, however, aim to curb this stigma and highlight the many wonderful aspects of a national treasure. In an article known as, Where the Sun Set Crimson and the Moon Rose Red, novelist John Fox Jr. is discussed as he described people who live in Appalachia as, “proud, sensitive, kindly, obliging in an un reckoning way that is almost pathetic, honest, loyal, in spite of their common ignorance, poverty, and isolation.” He also, however, gives a counteracting account of negative aspects of the area. John Fox Jr. also states, “It is only fair to add, however, that nothing that has ever been said of the mountaineer’s ignorance, shiftlessness, and awful disregard for human life, especially in the Kentucky mountains, has not its basis, perhaps, in actual fact.” Another popular author, Altina Waller states, “The mountain political region of Eastern Kentucky was singled out as being uniquely guilty of producing individuals who possessed defective character traits more savage, degraded, and lawless than other Americans or even southerners.” There are, however, quiet places that have been studied. One example is Manchester which is described as, “as serene as a sleeping child” by a New York Times correspondent. The Encyclopedia of Appalachia, an eight pound and 1800 page encyclopedia that consists of insights from over 8000 scholars, discusses Appalachia’s diversity and also its many influences on American culture. It states how far too often children who grow up in Appalachia end up developing a stigmatized image of Appalachia. The Encyclopedia aims to bring positive aspect of Appalachia to light by stating, “highlight loftier contributions: haute cuisine like smoked quail in black currant sauce and scientific advances like a propulsion system, developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, that put U.S. astronauts on the moon.”
The coal industry is infamous for its uncanny ability to take advantage of miners in Appalachia. However, there are not many other job options other than mining in the area. Appalachian land is mostly controlled by single industry economies, the controlling of land by corporations. Therefore, there is extremely high levels of poverty and unemployment. Coal has always been in trouble as even before the great depression, coal was declining. There has multiple accounts of corruption in Appalachia as large companies take advantage of those with less money. They would use labor slaving techniques and pay miners extremely low wages. Timber and coal companies would also bribe the government to favor them in court cases. Lack of investment from those in and outside the community has also been credited in contributing to the corruption. Large corporations take advantage of the Appalachian people by prohibiting labor forces from creating worker unions. Coal companies also manipulated and pitted small, local companies against each other. They would try to control almost every single aspect of each miner’s life in order to pay them very minimal salaries.
People who live in Appalachia often don’t think about life outside of Appalachia. It is the belief that they cannot ever leave and will stay in the same communities forever. This idea haunts them and discourages them from leaving.
Few jobs in Appalachia are available to women and only those high up economically frequently find jobs. Estimates have shown that women in the United States do not participate in the informal economy as much as women in third world countries, but do significantly participate more than their male counterparts. In a study of the informal economy in Appalachia by Kathleen McInnis-Dittrich, twenty three women ages fourteen to forty two with an average of two point four children, all minors in age, were sampled. The results concluded that prostitution, the sale and growth of marijuana, selling stolen property and bootlegging were the main sources of informal economy among women in Appalachia.
Mountaintop removal is a big issue that haunts Appalachia. An article titled, Mountain Voices by Stephen D. Mooney, a professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, discusses coalfield residents and the severe impact coal mining has. Coal mining, contradictory to this fact however, remains residents main source of income. The coal mining economy is also directly connected to the broader regional economy which, as a result, has a direct impact on quality of life. Southwestern Virginia went from a town in which local farming was their main source of profit, to a town destroyed and submerged poverty over large corporate mines. In fact, throughout the 1960’s there was a War on Poverty initiated by Lyndon B. Johnson as thousands of residents were out of work as machines took their place. Even today, although mining causes multiple issues, it remains Southwestern Virginia’s main source of income. Residents also aim to slow the decline of the coal industry until a self sufficient economy occurs where they will not have to use coal as an energy source. Examples of these include fracking and solar energy.
Many statistics prove that coal mining has multiple negative consequences. 1.4 million acres have been destroyed by coal mining. There are approximately six hundred coal fire plants in the United States. Fifty percent of electricity comes from burning coal. Thirty three percent from of coal in the United States comes Appalachian mines. 1 million acres of forest have been destroyed by mountaintop removal. Exposure to coal mining in one’s hometown cause can cause many psychological impacts such as depression, alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse. 1.4 million acres have been destroyed by coal mining.
Appalachian struggles go unnoticed by many Americans. An article in the popular magazine Newsweek titled Appalachia: Hillbillies and Haute Cuisine written by Amy Green and Arian Campo-Flores Appalachian poverty and statistics about the area are discussed.Poverty rates throughout the United States was approximately 15.6% in regard to to 19.7% of the combined regions in Appalachia known as Kentucky, Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee and West Virginia. One may assume this has to do with unemployment, however they would be wrong. It has to do with salary and income. The United States unemployment rate is at 6.2% while Appalachian region is only .2 more at 6.5%. The people employed in Appalachia make extremely lower salaries than their United States counterparts. The per capita income of the Appalachian region of Kentucky in 2014 rounded to $30,308 while the rest of the United States came to $46,049. The whole region of Appalachia average income is $37,260. This is only 80.9% of the average United States per capita income. Poverty in Appalachia often goes unnoticed by the majority of the country. Amy Green and Arian Campo-Flores hope that providing people with these statistics will help to curb the issue. It is said, according to an article titled America’s Forgotten People, that more than forty percent of all Appalachian residents are living in poverty. Sixty percent of those not in poverty, a vast majority are on the border line. Among children in Appalachia, over fifty percent are raised in poverty. Owsely, Kentucky bears the title of highest poverty rate among children with a shocking number of sixty five percent. In regard to the rest of the United States, Appalachian people have been said to live the shortest life span on average.