The Hillbilly in the American Imagination

Historically Speaking · January/February 2005 seminars designed for doctoral students writing their dissertations. Here we could try to bring together a manageable number of national and international doctoral candidates exploring a common theme alongwith some faculty in the specialty, who could create an intellectually fertile atmosphere. Such an activitywould advance scholarship as well as further cement our collégial relations in an increasingly global academic community. The second idea would be to try to find sponsors forbringing college and high school teachers to the biennial meetings ofthe Historical Society. The format ofthe meetings is perfect for this dialogue. The principal theme is advertised more than two years in advance. The location moves around the country. Alarge proportion ofthe papers are available online before the meeting. Most sessions are dominated by free-flowing discussions in an intimate, collégial atmosphere rather than the preacher-and-congregation format so utterly subversive ofpublic participation and contemptuously dismissive of intellectual equality. At the Historical Society the audience is the star. In such an atmosphere good ideas can genuinely find root. Over the next two years I hope that you will frequently send to me and to the staff ideas and initiatives that you feel we should pursue. Tell us what you are doing and how your activityadvances the mission ofthe Historical Society. We trulywelcomeyourinput. This is your Historical Societyand we are all goingtogether on this greatintellectualjourney . With your help the nextyears should be enormously exciting ones. Franklin W. Knight, the LeonardandHelen R. Stulman ProfessorofHistory at theJohnsHopkins Univernty, is thefourthpresidentofthe HistoricalSociety. He haspublishedeightbooks andeighty-twoscholarlyarticles, chapters, and forewordsin booksdealingwith Caribbean and LatinAmerican history, including Slave Societyin Cuba Duringthe Nineteenth Century (University ofWisconsin Press, 1970); The Caribbean: The Genesis ofa Fragmented Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 1990); Atlantic Port Cities: Economy, Culture and Societyin the AtlanticWorld, 1650-1850 (University ofTennessee Press, 1991); Slave Societies in the Caribbean (UNESCO/Macmilian, 1997); andtheforthcomingContemporary Caribbean Cultures and Societies in a Global Context (2005). ProfessorKnightisapastpresidentoftheLatin American StudiesAssociation. The Hillbilly in the American Imagination Anthony Harkins Musicians today like Dwight Yoakam and Marty Stuart call their brand of "roots" country "hillbilly." Snuffy Smith remains a popular comic strip seventy years after its creation. Nearly everyone can immediatelyidentify the first fewnotes ofthe banjo song from the 1972 film Deliverance. And the Fox television show The Simple Life has garnered a huge audience partly byplaying offofstereotypes about plain folk in the Arkansas hills. The hillbilly has been one of the most pervasive and enduring icons of American popular culture. The hillbilly has served such a role because this image and identity is a fundamentally ambiguous one that includes both positive and negative features ofthe American past and present. Central to this ambiguity is its unique racial and cultural status. As a depiction ofwhat I call a "white other"— impoverished, isolated, and primitive Americans who nevertheless possess a supposedly pureAnglo-Saxon Protestantheritage—"hillbilly " signifies both rugged individualism and stubborn backwardness; strong family and kin networks but also inbreeding and bloody feuds; a closeness to nature and the land but also the potential for wild savagery; a clear sense ofselfand place but, at the same time, crippling geographic and cultural isolation. The essential duality ofthe hillbilly persona is clear from the word's firstuse in print in The (NewYork)JournalofApril 23, 1900. "A Hill-Billie," author Julian Hawthorne explained to his northern urban readers, "is a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who fives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires offhis revolver as the fancy takes him." Clearlyderogatoryand accentuatingpoverty and improper social behavior, Hawthorne's hillbilly also possesses the more admirable attributes offreedom and independence. This definition matched the article's focus on the political importance and autonomyofmountain folkwho happilyaccepted free liquor and campaign payouts from one candidate only to vote for his rival. Although this was the firstappearance of the word in print, itwas hardly the origin of the image and persona. The image stemmed from separate but overlapping 18th- and 19th-century representations of the New England rusticyokel "BrotherJonathan," the poorwhite ofthe southern backcountry, and the mythic frontiersman ofAppalachia and Arkansas. In the antebellum...