Local Color:

Local color is literary movement that started after the civil war. The writers wrote

about different area in the States including Appalachia.

They publish about 200 stories about Appalachia and these stories have the biggest effect on Appalachia in terms of the stereotypes. Local color fiction helped a lot in

spreading the stereotypes about mountain people.

The audience of the local fiction were elite people who were urbanized and fan of industrialization and those people want to believe that there is place in America were people are still not affected by urbanization and industrialization.

Audience of the fiction want to believe that rural places are substantially different from urban places

Culture evolution: the idea that cultures and societies develop over time to more

enlightened and moral states. There is also the assumption that some group of people hasn’t yet develop to the state that achieved by metropolitan whites.

Stages of culture evolution: most primitive (children), barbarism (adolescent) and most advanced (adults)

Cultural evolution assumes that the most civilized are the best people so it suffers from ethnocentricity in the sense that people would call themselves the most civilized group of people.

Middle class people are always considered superior because they are the dominant group. And hence the non-industrial cultural is considered old-fashioned but lacking and incomplete.

Local color fiction assumes that rural places are static in time and hasn’t evolved to

the right state of urbanization.

Local color fiction stories are mostly predictable and follow general patterns in terms of the flow of the story. They usually show the conflict between the middle class and mountain people and they always make the values of the middle class win. For

instance, if the story contains romantic relationship between the middle class people and mountain girl, it’s either that they will change the values of the girl to match the middle class values or they will force the middle class man to reject her.

Fox, who was a famous local color writer, shift his prospective in writing about

mountain people as just old-fashioned and progress ahead to describe them as violent and lawless and in deep need to be civilized.

The local color fiction debate was: 1) Appalachians were represented as coming from

different race (not white) and they are referred to as other. 2) Appalachians were represented as coming from the white race (white Anglo-Saxon) and they are considered as little brother

Agreement of scholars on local color: 1) all the writers were motivated by means of

some agenda, so most of what they wrote was subjective instead of objective 2) the way that the writers capture and represent Appalachian people was coming from what the audience want to hear or what the author want to say to gain some personal benefit from the story and hence the local color fiction wasn’t a true representation of what

was happening in Appalachia after the civil war. 3) Lastly scholars agree that local color movement leads to exploitation to the Appalachian land by the northern industrialists.

Disagreement of scholars on local color: 1) one set of scholars say that writes

describe Appalachian as totally OTHERED and hence what they did is spreading the negative stereotypes about mountain people because they want to justify the

exploitation of the area. 2) the other set say that writers consider Appalachians as FAMILARED people and they are originally white. Those people spread the positive and romantic stereotypes about Appalachia in order to facilitate the reconciliation

between Sothern and northern rich people and elites.

Some stereotypes that Fox conveys them is his story: 1) mountain people were mostly uneducated people, this is particularly obvious from the use the eye dialect in his story

when he was narrating conversation between mountain people.2) Fox also like to racialize a lot in his story and his intention is to spread a stereotype that mountain people have intrinsic problems and those problems are caused by their biological nature.

The white man’s burden is the obligation and the responsibility of people to civilize others. This concept was used by imperialist to justify their exploitation of the Appalachian area to seek for its natural recourses. Fox attitude toward imperialism was clear in his story when he considered mountain people as barbarian and Blacks as

people with childish behaviors, so he was trying even in his story to rationalize the imperialism of the rich people by saying that the current existing people in Appalachia need to be civilized and hence they cannot make use of what they have in terms of natural resources.

1. How does Fox describe African Americans? Plying pranks like child. Signing laughing and talking in primitive way.

2. How does Fox describe the white miners/“mountaineers” and Easter? Erect figure, she was high-born and she belongs to a race whose descent was unmixed English. Yellow hair –not the flaxen yellow that was common in the mountain- but more like gold.

Mountaineers were lank, bearded and coatless. Their faces was tanned by sun to sympathy in color with their clothes which had the dun look of soil. They were peculiarly a race of soil. 3. How does Fox describe Clayton?

Mostly as different and more elegant than most of the other mountaineers. Smooth round face

Local Color Movement

Local color is literary movement that started after the civil war. The writers wrote about different area in America including Appalachia. They publish about 200 stories about Appalachia and these stories have the biggest effect on Appalachia in terms of the stereotypes because they helped a lot in spreading the stereotypes about mountain people. The audience

of the local fiction were elite people who were urbanized and fan of industrialization and those people want to believe that there is place in America were people are still not affected by urbanization and industrialization and hence believing that rural places are substantially different from urban places.

Local color writers promote the concept of culture evolution which is the idea that cultures and societies develop over time to more enlightened and moral states. There is also the assumption that some group of people hasn’t yet develop to the state that achieved by metropolitan whites. Culture evolution has three main stages: most primitive (children),

barbarism (adolescent) and most advanced (adults). Using the cultural evolution concept, local color writers assume that the most civilized group of people are the best people and hence the writers suffer from ethnocentricity and biasing when it comes to rank people. For instance, middle class people are always considered superior because they are the dominant

group which leads to capturing the non-industrial people as old-fashioned but lacking and incomplete. Local color fiction stories are mostly predictable and follow general patterns in terms of the

flow of the story. They usually show the conflict between the middle class and mountain people and they always make the values of the middle class win. For instance, if the story contains romantic relationship between the middle class people and mountain girl, it’s either that they will change the values of the girl to match that if the middle class or they will force

the middle class man to reject her. By doing this, they helped in conveying the stereotypes concerning the level of maturity and civilization of mountain people. Fox, who was a famous local color writer, shift his prospective in writing about mountain people as just old-fashioned and progress ahead to describe them as violent and lawless and in deep need to be civilized.

Fox conveys in Mountain Europa some stereotypes about Appalachian people. For instance, Fox wanted to spread the stereotype that mountain people were mostly uneducated; this is particularly obvious from the use the eye dialect in his story when he was narrating conversation between mountain people. Furthermore, Fox like to racialize a lot in his story

and his intention is to spread the stereotype that mountain people have intrinsic problems and those problems are caused by their biological nature. Fox illustrates the cultural evolutionism in his story by dividing the people into three main cultural groups: Blacks, mountaineers and outsider whites. Fox considers Blacks as barbarian, primitive and childish, and hence he

categorizes them in the lowest stage of social status. Mountaineers are racially between Blacks and Whites so they are still better than Blacks according to Fox, but they haven’t reached the finest state of evolution especially that he describes them as peculiarly a race of soil. From this we can say that Fox considered the white mountaineers as different race from

metropolitan whites. Lastly, outsider whites considered by Fox as the most civilized and educated people in Appalachia. The white man’s burden is the obligation and the responsibility of people to civilize others. This concept was used by imperialist to justify their exploitation of the Appalachian area to

seek for its natural recourses. Fox attitude toward imperialism was clear in his story when he considered mountain people as barbarian and Blacks as people with childish behaviors, so he was trying even in his story to rationalize the imperialism of the rich people by saying that the current existing people in Appalachia need to be civilized and hence they cannot make

use of what they have in terms of natural resources. This idea was the motivation for local color writers like Fox to write about the bad stereotypes of the mountain people. So in a nutshell, Fox was writing his stories and pretended that they were documentary to serve his own agenda which was for the most part to rationalize for the rich people their exploitation of

the Appalachian areas.

Racial Violence:

Mob violence in Appalachia was consistent between 1880 and 1940. After roughly 1885, lynchings increased sharply, peaking during the 1890s. From 1882 to 1901, the annual number nationally usually exceeded 100

12 out of 22 counties in Southwest Virginia experienced lynchings

6 counties experienced lynchings more than once

Before 1900 mobs in the mountain executed in equal proportion between whites and

blacks. In general, after 1900 lynching in Appalachia was exclusively anti-black violence

Mob violence in Appalachia was consistent between 1880 and 1940 peaking in 1890s. After 1900 lynching in Appalachia was exclusively against blacks.

Lynching in mountain weren’t a substitute for the absence of legal institution in the area. Some lynching was a hue and cry type of affairs in which mountain people want

to punish the murder. However, most of lynching activities show great aspects of organization in the way that they were done. This can be seen by looking at the way that mobs broke into jails and then how they took the victims from the legal authorities and add to that the logistics in which these people were transported and

performed the lynching all these actions suggested that lynching were done in an organized fashion.

Mob’s brutality in Appalachia was dependent on the race of the victim that was lynched. For instance, lynching of whites in general didn’t contain the high level of

brutality that blacks’ victim exposed to

Violence in Appalachia including lynching was not because of intrinsic genetic problems neither a cultural issue that existed in the Scots-Irish ancestors. The main reason for violence in Appalachia was the rapid changes that occur to the region

during the industrialization period. We can look at it in terms of compound effects that accumulated to give raise to violence in Appalachia. For instance, industrialist brought to the region unwelcomed immigrants and blacks that changed the racial distribution of the region population; add to that the rapid developments that occurred

in some counties due to modernization that swept those regions. These fast changes led to racial tensions between the original residences of the region and the immigrants who transported to the area for industry related jobs. Hence, the violence in Appalachia was a consequence of these rapid social and economic developments.

Residence of Appalachia tended to fear from industrialization because they say that the inflow of labors especially blacks changed some of the social and economic status that were well suited for those people. Many people in Appalachia have the prospective that the new social behavior of blacks in the area was greatly disturbing

and not appealing at all because it posed threats on properties and social life. People complained about the arrival of the rail road by saying” along the tracks of the railroad there have congregated ex-convicts robbers, cutthroats, and outlaws, the very scouring of the earth, until life and property are not safe (Brundage 307)”. From this,

we can see how industrialization affects the violence and lynching that happened in Appalachia. But we have to be careful not to assume that Appalachian people resist modernization or that their violence reaction was a way to convey their intentions to stop industrialization from coming to the region. The reality is that lynching wasn’t a

type of irrational process, it was a way to control the rapid social changes in the area due to the large number of labors and immigrants who start to live and work in the area. As a result, Appalachian people used violence and lynching as a form of telling the Blacks and transient laborers what accepted social behaviors are in areas where

white were dominants. For many Appalachians this reaction was important because it helped reconstruct the social traits that were on verge to be changed by the inflow of new immigrants to the area.

It’s worth to notice that racial violence was not due to competition between white and

black workers, because if it were the case we then would expect that most lynching happened in coal mine towns were these two races were side by side working at the same place. However, lynching occurred mostly in cosmopolitan town in Appalachia in which transportation, financial and administrative centers existed and hence

lynching was concentrated in towns that were the centers of rapid development and modernization. So the intensification of industrialization and modernization in Appalachia was the main reason for lynching movement.

Feuding in Appalachia

What are the myths about feuds? The realities? How and why did those myths become established?

What were the motivations of the creators and the consumers of the stereotypes? What is the relationship between industrialization and feuding? Feuding in Appalachia helped a lot in constructing the idea of Appalachia, more accurately

the stereotypes about Appalachia. A lot of writes and scholars between late nineteen century and the beginning of the twentieth wanted to capture Appalachia as isolated and peculiar region in America and those people were motivated by several factors. Writing about feuding in Appalachia was a way to justify some of these motivations and agendas that the writers

obligated to. Appalachia became a social construction that was handled in newspapers and between scholars in such a way to spread some stereotypes that influence the way we see Appalachia in the present. It’s misfortune to see that these bad influences last for a very long time after they had been first published and hence helped a lot in making the arguments in

them more objective in current time. Edward Said in his work “Culture and Imperialism” describe the culture as being a theater in which several agendas are being put in place in order to produce the desirable culture and hence he is saying that the culture we hear about is probably not the actual reality but instead

some sort of discretions that benefit a group of people. Feuding in Appalachia was constructed exactly the same as the “culture” that Said is describing. Local color fiction writers and other scholars used the community conflicts that happened in Appalachia to create and construct bad stereotypes that helped them describing the violence and feuding

with what they see appropriate according to their working agendas. Newspapers and popular magazines helped in spreading the literature of local color writers and hence spreading the stereotypes and myths about feuding in Appalachia. The reasons for spreading stereotypes were political for most part and also for aesthetic factors that the middle-class people like to

see in those types of stories. Feuding in Appalachia happened for reasons that have nothing to do with the common stereotypes about Appalachian people being irrational and genetically and inherently had lust for blood and killing people. Feuding mainly happened because of economic and political

conflicts between local elites and their allies in the region. For instance, in Clay County the White and Garrard families were in conflict with each other since the first day of settlement. The conflicts initiated because of the desire of each family to take control over the county’s industry and commerce. The economic and political conflicts lead eventually to intensify the

feuding in Clay County especially between 1897 and 1901. Local color writers conveyed the idea (stereotypes) that the feuding in Appalachia was vast and overwhelming and they described in their published stories that people in Kentucky regard killing as a simple daily activity like removing stone from their paths. This idea is hugely amplified from the reality

since even in the most intensive period of feuding in Clay County less than twelve people were reported to be killed. Moreover, the local color description of the situation in that time implies that the lifestyle in Kentucky would be irregular and completely destroyed. However, normal lifestyle existed in Kentucky at that time since elections held, children sent to their

schools and usually properties were sold and bought in a regular fashion. Another myth about feuding in Appalachia is that feuding happened as a result of isolation, poverty and the low level of education between people who were fighting. For instance, The New York Times claimed that the poverty and isolation was the cause of feuding in the

region and hence the region needed the “civilizing railroad” and industrialization to stop

feuding. The New York Times knew precisely that feuding happened between elite people in the region who were highly educated and wealth people with prominent political positions, and hence they were just spreading a stereotype to justify the exploitation of the region from

other industrialists who want to make profit from Appalachia natural recourses. Those people suggests that industrialization will be the solution for such regions in which feuding was an issue. In fact, counties like Clay exhibited industry during antebellum and hence it was already industrialized county. It’s clear then that industry will not be a solution to feuding as

suggested by some local color writers and other scholars, in fact, industrialization was a cause that intensified feuding in Appalachia since the region elites fight with each other to control the economic profits from industry to gain absolute advantage to themselves. It’s worth to note here that violence actions like the one in Clay County existed in America in

other regions and wasn’t a unique characteristic of Appalachia at that time. However, some scholars and especially local color writers captured the violence in Appalachia and especially in Clay County as unusual action in America and they considered Clay County and other counties in Kentucky as one the darkest places in America at that time and hence they are in

deep need to be civilized. The motivation behind the scholar to focus on Appalachia was to justify the outside intervention of these areas.

The big one:

Appalachia in the postbellum era went through a lot of economic, social and industry related

changes. These changes influence the behavior of the people living in the region and also the presentation of Appalachia through the local color movement, and hence, a lot of stereotypes about the region had been formed during postbellum era. Industrialization has a big impact on the region and it actually influences local color literature, lynching, feuding and to some

extent mine wars. Local color literature helped a lot in rationalizing and justifying the exploitation of Appalachia lands from the industrialist because they promote the idea of the white man’s burden. The white man’s burden is the obligation and the responsibility of people to civilize others. This concept was used by imperialist to justify their exploitation of

the Appalachian area to seek for its natural recourses. Fox, who was a famous local color writer, has a clear attitude toward imperialism which can be seen in his story Mountain Europa. He considered mountain people as barbarian and Blacks as people with childish behaviors, so he was trying in his story to rationalize the imperialism of the rich people by

saying that the current existing people in Appalachia need to be civilized and hence they cannot make use of what they have in terms of natural resources. This idea was the motivation for local color writers like Fox to write about the bad stereotypes of the mountain people in order to establish a wrong picture of mountain people in the eyes of their audiences.

So in a nutshell, Fox and other local color writers were writing their stories and pretended that they were documentary to serve their own agendas which were for the most part to rationalize for the rich people their exploitation of the Appalachian areas.

The main reason for violence in Appalachia was the rapid changes that occur to the region during the industrialization period. We can look at it in terms of compound effects that accumulated to give raise to violence in Appalachia. For instance, industrialist brought to the

region unwelcomed immigrants and blacks that changed the racial distribution of the region population add to that the rapid developments that occurred in some counties due to modernization that swept those regions. These fast changes led to racial tensions between the original residences of the region and the immigrants who transported to the area for industry

related jobs. Hence, the violence in Appalachia was a consequence of these rapid social and

economic developments. Residence of Appalachia tended to fear from industrialization because they say that the inflow of labors especially blacks changed some of the social and economic status that were well suited for those people. Many people in Appalachia have the

prospective that the new social behavior of blacks in the area was greatly disturbing and not appealing at all because it posed threats on properties and social life. People complained about the arrival of the rail road by saying” along the tracks of the railroad there have congregated ex-convicts robbers, cutthroats, and outlaws, the very scouring of the earth, until

life and property are not safe (Brundage 307)”. From this, we can see how industrialization affects the violence and lynching that happened in Appalachia. But we have to be careful not to assume that Appalachian people resist modernization or that their violence reaction was a way to convey their intentions to stop industrialization from coming to the region. The reality

is that lynching wasn’t a type of irrational process, it was a way to control the rapid social changes in the area due to the large number of labors and immigrants who start to live and work in the area. As a result, Appalachian people used violence and lynching as a form of telling the Blacks what accepted social behaviors are in areas where white were dominants.

For many Appalachians this reaction was important because it helped reconstruct the social traits that were on verge to be changed by the inflow of new immigrants to the area. It’s worth to notice that racial violence was not due to competition between white and black workers, because if it were the case we then would expect that most lynching happened in

coal mine towns were these two races were side by side working at the same place. However, lynching occurred mostly in cosmopolitan town in Appalachia in which transportation, financial and administrative centers existed and hence lynching was concentrated in towns that were the centers of rapid development and modernization. So the intensification of

industrialization and modernization in Appalachia was the main reason for lynching movement. Feuding in Appalachia happened for reasons that have nothing to do with the common stereotypes about Appalachian people being irrational and genetically and inherently had lust

for blood and killing people. Feuding mainly happened because of economic and political conflicts between local elites and their allies in the region. The New York Times claimed that the poverty and isolation was the cause of feuding in the region and hence the region needed the “civilizing railroad” and industrialization to stop feuding. The New York Times knew

precisely that feuding happened between elite people in the region who were highly educated and wealth people with prominent political positions, and hence they were just spreading a stereotype to justify the exploitation of the region from other industrialists who want to make profit from Appalachia natural recourses. Those people suggests that industrialization will be

the solution for such regions in which feuding was an issue. In fact, counties like Clay which had feuding activities exhibited industry during antebellum and hence it was already industrialized county. It’s clear then that industry will not be a solution to feuding as suggested by some local color writers and other scholars, in fact, industrialization was a cause

that intensified feuding in Appalachia since the region elites fight with each other to control the economic profits from industry to gain absolute advantage to themselves. From the above, we can see the effects of industrialization and local color literature on violence in Appalachia. Local color literature effects can be seen in terms of the

representation of lynching and feuding. In both cases, local writers conveyed to their audiences wrong ideas about what actually happened in the region. These wrong representations aimed to justify the ambitions of industrialist to take over the natural resources of Appalachia. On the other hand, industrialization effects on feuding and lynching

were to fuel and intensify these two actions. In the case of lynching, it’s the rapid social changes and the transportation of transient people associated industrialization that established lynching in industrial towns. Industrialization affects feuding as well since local elites were

fighting with each other to gain political and economic benefits and to take over the rewards of industrialization to one group without the other.

Revise Matawan and the chart about different type of violence in Appalachia Matewan (1920) – review the overview sheet. What were the mine wars and what prompted them? What was the Matewan Massacre? What was the Paint Creek/Cabin Creek Strike? The Battle of Blair Mountain? What were the company’s tactics for controlling labor? What key vocabulary did we learn about mining towns (aka coal camps)? Who was Sid Hatfield and why was he considered a hero, and by whom?

Mine wars happened mostly in 1920s. They started in 1912 by the Cabin Creek Strike in West Virginia in which miners refuse to work for the coal company due to the low wage they had at that time compared to other places in the States. Mine wars in West Virginia happened mainly because coal companies didn’t want to make the mine workers get into the union (get

under the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)) because coal companies wanted to control the prices of coal and minimize the cost of labor for their own economic benefit. So the mine wars were between the coal company owners and the pro-union miners who were a collection of local whites, Immigrants from several places in Eastern Europe and Blacks

coming from the Deep South. In order for the coal companies to control their worker and make sure that they are not associated with the union, several actions had been taken to insure the superiority of these companies among the poor miners. One of the techniques was to make the miners in continuous debt to the company by establishing a captive town system in

the areas that the miners were living. This means that the miners can buy their supplies only from the company stores and they have to live in properties owned by the company itself. Furthermore, the company paid their workers with no real money instead it paid them with the Scrip which is a currency that could only be used in the company stores. In addition, the

company made all the miners sign the “yaller dog” which is a contract to insure that the miners will not be associated with the union in any fashion and if they did they will immediately lose their housings and jobs. Other factors to control the miners include hiring gun thugs, bribing the local politics and segregation between different races of the miners.

Due to all these facts, miners in Mingo County in Matewan decided to join the union because it would be the only way to get freed from the company captive system and to get higher wages as in the rest of the States. In 1920 in Matewan town miners decided to stop working for the company and they joined the union in a hope that their situation becomes better in the

near future. As a result of this strike the company evicted all the miners from their housing and made them live in muddy tent encampments a movement that intended to make the miners break their strike and get back to work with the company. Sid Hatfield who was the Matewan Chief of Police order to arrest the gun thugs who evicted the miners from their

housings and he confronted the gun thugs with couple of miners at the Matewan train station with what is called after that as the Matewan Massacre. Most causality in the Massacre was from the company side. This Massacre helped Matewan miners to get unionized and gain better wages in 1935 after series of battle and rebellious wars.