In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Bloodroot: Appalachia since 1970
  • Kathryn Newfont (bio)

Deep in the understories of the native Appalachian forest, a few inches below the soil line, grows the flowering native plant known as “bloodroot.” Each spring it offers a hopeful sign for those awaiting winter’s end. Its distinctive deep green leaves and white blossoms emerge very early, even before other spring ephemerals. Called Gi-ga u-na-s-te-tlv in Cherokee and Sanguinaria Canadensis in Latin, the little plant’s common name comes from its tuberous roots. When cut or broken these roots ooze “blood,” a rusty reddish juice that stains human skin and makes beautiful rivercane basket dye.1

The plant’s dramatic “bleeding” makes a vivid introduction to Appalachian forests, as octogenarian Daymon Morgan knew quite well when he snapped a bit for visitors to his eastern Kentucky land. In the spring of 2006, a group of writers came to Morgan’s home at the invitation of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC). KFTC, a citizens’ group rooted in the Kentucky mountains, organized the tour as part of its long campaign against mountaintop removal [End Page 1] (MTR) coal mining, an extraction technique with devastating social and environmental consequences. The tour introduced the writers to Morgan and other residents who were suffering MTR’s devastations. Participants produced vivid pieces describing what they saw, and for writer Dianne Aprile, the visit with Morgan stood out. “More than all the other sights and experiences of the trip—and they were plentiful,” Aprile noted in Louisville’s Courier-Journal, “I remember the figure of Daymon Morgan, an eighty-year-old World War II veteran, wearing bib overalls and a wide-brimmed hat, standing in the lush green woods of his Leslie County farm, holding a broken wildflower.”2 For Aprile, the image of the delicate forest plant bleeding in the aged veteran’s hand lingered. In it she found a symbol for the region.

This was a perceptive analysis. Both the encounter and the blood-root image offer fruitful avenues for considering Appalachian history since 1970. First, Daymon Morgan’s visitor education work stands as a reminder of Appalachian generosity and knowledge-bearing. These admirable hallmarks of the region’s last half-century too often lie buried under avalanches of falsehood, exploitation, and neglect. Environmental expertise has been and continues to be a key component of this knowledge-bearing. This ties in with our second point: Appalachian forests’ spectacular richness. Eastern North America’s highland forests are among the world’s most complex and biologically diverse ecosystems. From these woods spring great waters, including headwaters for many of the continent’s vital rivers and drinking sources for millions of U.S. residents. Medicines rooted in these woods have supported human health on several continents for centuries. Appalachian timbers built U.S. infrastructure and European luxuries. At present biologists believe they have identified only a fraction of the forests’ native species. Morgan’s tiny bloodroot plant represents these global wonders.3 [End Page 2]

Thirdly, the KFTC-organized tour, like so many resourceful grassroots efforts since 1970, aimed to protect and sustain Appalachian communities facing immense challenges. Like the 2006 tour, many used innovative methods and leveraged local analysis, expertise, and creativity. The pieces gathered here offer multiple examples of this pattern. Appalachian citizens repeatedly campaigned on behalf of fundamental needs such as life, health, livelihood, learning, clean water, clear air, physical safety, and the well-being of natural systems. They fought to protect themselves, their families, and their human neighbors, and also the woods and waters so crucial to all human health. They envisioned thriving futures for their communities and region. They worked strategically and diligently to create those imagined futures. Too often they faced nearly impossible odds. Yet some achieved remarkable results, even clear victories. Others fell short of their goals, as did the 2006 KFTC tour, which aimed to abolish mountaintop removal mining. That campaign continues.4

Finally, like Dianne Aprile, an army of observers joined Appalachian residents in bearing witness to the region’s beauties and traumas since 1970. Together, residents and visitors used nearly every medium imaginable on the region’s behalf: reportage, poetry, story, song, film, scholarship, visual...

pdf

Share