Contributors

Contributors William Archer is a staff writer for the Observer in Bluefield, Virginia. Joyce Bickerstaff, an associate professor at Vassar College, is on leave to Berea College as Director of the Black Mountain Youth Leadership Development Project and visiting professor in general studies. Ancilla Bickley recently retired after a long career as vice president for academic affairs at West Virginia State College. George Brosi has done the New Appalachian Books section for Appalachian Heritage since 1985 and has operated an Appalachian bookstore in Berea and North Carolina . Jackie Burnside, a Berea graduate, teaches in the sociology department at Berea College . David Deskins has spent several years researching Effie Waller and her poetry and is currently writing a book about her. Richard Drake is a professor of history at Berea College. Willie Hardison Eckles is on the staff of the Boston Children's Museum. She graduated from high school in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and writes poetry and fiction based on her childhood experiences. John E. Fleming is director of the National Afro-American Museum and Culture Center in Wilberforce, Ohio. Alex Haley, famous as the author of Roots, lives in Norris, Tennessee, and in California. Betty L. Powell Hart teaches at the University of Southern Indiana. Wilburn Hayden, Jr., is head of the Department of Social Work and Sociology at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Bob Hill is a staff writer for the CourierJournal in Louisville, Kentucky. Emily Jones Hudson, a 1978 Berea College graduate, lives in Hazard, Kentucky. She is site coordinator for the area's chapter of the Black Mountain Improvement Association. She also writes fiction and researches genealogies . Andy Mead is a staff writer for the HeraldLeader in Lexington, Kentucky. Pictureman Mullins (William Richardson Mullins, 1886-1969), lived in Virginia and took photographs of the land and the people of Appalachia, including many of black people. He left more than 3,000 negatives, which are now owned by Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Sparky Rucker is a nationally recognized singer and commentator on African American folk culture. Richard Sears, a Berea College English professor, has devoted many years to researching the origins of the college. John B. Stephenson is the president of Berea College. Earlier he was director of the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center. Joe W. Trotter, a professor of history at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is author of Coal, Class and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32. William H. Turner is spending the current year writing while serving part-time as a consultant to the Kellogg Foundation's community -based leadership programs. He is on leave from Winston-Salem State University and is founder of the Berea College-based Black Mountain Improvement Association. 77 ...