The First Appalachian Studies Conference—A Retrospective Look

16 The First Appalachian Studies Conference— A Retrospective Look by Bill Best It is easy to overlook the sometimes turbulent history of the very idea of Appalachian Studies. This article is intended to give some background information about how the first Appalachian Studies Conference came about and to review some of the happenings at that conference which was held at Clinch Valley College in Wise, Virginia, on October 24 and 25, 1970. At the 1970 annual meeting of the Council of Southern Mountains at Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, the Education Commission of the Council, of which I had just become chairman, entertained the idea of hosting an Appalachian Studies Conference. On the Commission were several individuals who felt that it was important to begin integrating Appalachian Studies into the public schools and the few remaining private schools in the region and into both private and Eublic colleges and universities. (Memership on the Education Commission was voluntary and anyone wishing to be a member could be so just by attending meetings.) At that time I was on a year-long leave from Berea College to study Appalachian Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.1 I was nearly through my residency program and was preparing to do a couple of independent studies and begin work on my dissertation . One of the independent studies was to be an attempt to develop a consortium of Appalachian colleges and universities. I personally thought that an Appalachian Studies Conference which, among many others, would include individuals from potential consortium members, might be an important first step in getting such a consortium off the ground. While most members of the Education Commission were excited about the prospects of an Appalachian Studies conference, there was considerable dissension among the members themselves, a reflection of the dissension in general among the Council members at that time. At the CSM meeting at Fontana Village, North Carolina, the previous year, the Council had started the long process of reforming itself (which also 17 turned out to be the beginning of a lenghty process of disintegration). The stresses and strains were evident in the membership of the Education Commission and members couldn't agree on an agenda.2 A further meeting of the Commission was held in Berea on August 29, 1970, at which time a conference agenda was finally formulated. Since my graduate work at the time involved the development of Appalachian Studies curricula, I was chosen to give the opening address. Helen Lewis, then of Clinch Valley College, and Ratha McGee of DILENOWISCO , a nearby multi-county Education Cooperative, had previously agreed to assist with arrangements and to appear on a panel discussion. Others who agreed to appear on the panel included James Branscome of the Appalachian Regional Commission; Julian Mosley of Union College; Zi Graves, a community leader in Rockcastle, Kentucky ; Dr. John Gaus of Morehead State University; and Ike Vanderpool of the Council of Southern Mountains staff, who was to be the moderator. Mary Kepecs, secretary of the Education Commission and affialiated with the National Education Association Council on Human Relations, sent notification of the meeting to the presidents of teachers' associations throughout the region in order that they could notify their members . Teachers from a total of forty associations were invited. We also invited representatives of all regional higher educational institutions, representatives from Settlement Schools and from non-traditional private schools such as Edith Easterling's School at Marrowbone in Pike County, Kentucky, and private citizens who had expressed an interest. (Many had). An open invitation was also issued to the public at large through the media and by word-ofmouth . It is important to note that most members of the Education Commission saw the conference at Clinch Valley College as only the first of several such Appalachian Studies conferences to be held during a two- to five-year period. However, subsequent events were to change that optimism drastically. What I did not know at the time the conference was being planned was that we were playing directly into the hands of a sizeable group of mostly white, mostly male, mostly young, usually affluent , "change agents" and "democratizers " from throughout the country who were very...