Thomas E. Wagner - African American Miners and Migrants: The Eastern Kentucky Social Club

African American Miners and Migrants

The Eastern Kentucky Social Club

THOMAS E. WAGNER
AND PHILLIP J. OBERMILLER

Afterword by William H. Turner

University of Illinois Press
Urbana and Chicago

2004 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 C P 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Unless otherwise noted, the illustrations in this book are from the
collections of the Appalachian Archive, Southeast Community College,
Cumberland, Kentucky, and are used with its permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wagner, Thomas E.
African American miners and migrants : the Eastern Kentucky
Social Club / Thomas E. Wagner and Phillip J. Obermiller ; afterword
by William H. Turner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-252-02896-1 (cl. : acid-free paper)
ISBN 0-252-07164-6 (pbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Eastern Kentucky Social ClubBiography. 2. African Americans
Societies, etc. 3. African AmericansInterviews. 4. African American coal
minersKentuckySocial life and customs. 5. Mining camps
KentuckyHistory. 6. Rural-urban migrationUnited States.
7. KentuckySocial life and customs. 8. Mountain lifeKentucky.
9. Benham (Ky.)Biography. 10. Lynch (Ky.)Biography.
I. Obermiller, Phillip J. II. Title.
E 185.5. W 34 2004
305.896'0730769154dc21 2003012089

For the members of the Eastern Kentucky Social Club
may your friendships, joy, and spirit endure.

My Native Mountains

I love my native mountains,

The dear old Cumberland,

Rockribbed and everlasting,

How great they are, and grand!

I love each skyward reaching peak,

Each glassy glade and dale,

Each moss-and-fern-clad precipice

Each lovely flower decked vale.

I love each vine-hung rocky glen

I love each dark ravine

Though there may hide the catamount

And wild dog sly and mean.

I love my mountains forests

Varied and beautiful

I love her springs and waterfalls,

So pure and wonderful.

I love her richly plumaged birds

The pheasant and the jay,

The merry scarlet tanager,

The woodpeck bright and gay.

How oft among these mountains

Has the silvery music clear

From the larks throat cheered the traveler,

And the honest mountaineer.

But more than these old mountains

Which with wonder I revere

I love with true devotion

The people who live here.

So heres with love sincere and dear

For her sons of brawn and worth;

And her daughters pure and lovely,

The fairest types of earth.

From Effie Waller,

Rhymes from the Cumberland (1909)

William H. Turner

Many years ago, we began a journey toward understanding why people in the Appalachian mountains would want to leave the region, learning more about the difficulties they faced and exploring their life experiences in their new homes. Along the way, we became especially interested in the organizations formed by these migrants that enabled them to maintain connections to their mountain heritage. We were already familiar with the migrants who came to Cincinnati, where they organized the Urban Appalachian Council and celebrated their heritage with an annual Appalachian Festival; although not from the mountains, we both had played minor roles in the creation of the council and the festival. Our academic backgrounds and natural curiosity led us to more detailed studies about urban Appalachians and their organizations. And so our journey began.

Since 1990 we have interviewed nearly a hundred individuals in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Akron, Cleveland, Hamilton, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and parts of Kentucky and West Virginia. Many were founders of urban Appalachian groups or had worked very closely with migrant organizations. We have written conference papers, articles, book chapters, and books as a result of our efforts.

In our travels we came to the Eastern Kentucky Social Club (EKSC), a group of black Appalachian migrants, which began in Cleveland. With the help of William H. Turner, a member of the group, we set up interviews with several officers of the EKSC. Sitting in the homes of EKSC members in Cleveland, Detroit, Lexington, and in Benham and Lynch, Kentucky, we heard not only about the club but also about their fond memories of the places they had left behind in the mountains. We were intrigued by the stories of their early lives in Benham and Lynch. What was it about these communities that had instilled such strong positive memories? After all, these were coal company towns, with all the negative characteristics of such communities; many of the migrants had grown up there when the mining industry was in decline, at the end of the depression and during World War II. What was it about the Eastern Kentucky Social Club that so excited people living in cities outside the region? Why had many of these migrants devoted so much of their time to building and sustaining their organization? We set about trying to find the answers to such questions about this group of African American miners and migrants. This book is the result of our efforts.

We would like to thank each of the Eastern Kentucky Social Club members we interviewed for the warm reception we invariably received. We are especially grateful to Bill Turner, known to most EKSC members as Billbo, who was unfailingly generous with insight, encouragement, and advice and whose Afterword brings a firsthand perspective to this book.

We are also indebted to Robert Gipe, Theresa Osborne, and Larry LaFollette at the Southeast Kentucky Community College Appalachian Archives for their assistance; to Rose Kent for reviewing the manuscript; to William Bosch, who enjoys sharing his love of Lynch; and to Judith McCulloh, Mary Giles, and Bruce Tucker for comments and guidance. Although Eastern Kentucky Social Club members were most helpful in guiding us through this project, in the end we are the ones who put pen to paper and therefore hold sole responsibility for any errors or omissions in this volume. We are also grateful for Sue Wagners and Katie Browns patience with innumerable road trips to archives, conferences, and interviews.

Throughout this narrative we have tried to keep a balance between the objective historical reasons for Eastern Kentucky Social Club members remaining so close to their Harlan County heritage and the profoundly personal reasons underlying their reverence for these old mountains and love with true devotion for the people who lived there. These are, indeed, the ties that bind them.

African American Miners and Migrants

The life of poet Effie Waller Smith encompassed much of the history of the people described in this bookblack Appalachian migrants from the eastern Kentucky coalfields. At first, it seems Effie Smith would have little in common with the members of the Eastern Kentucky Social Club, most of whom lived in coal towns and were miners or are the children of miners. There is no evidence that the poet ever lived in a company town or a coal camp, even though some of her students probably did, because major coal operators opened mines in Pike County while she was teaching there. However, her strong attachment to the mountains and to the people who lived in them, as shown in her poetry, is where she shares a deep common bond with members of the EKSC.