All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia by Matthew Algeo (review)

In All This Marvelous Potential: Robert Kennedy's 1968 Tour of Appalachia, Matthew Algeo presents a detailed account of two days Kennedy spent in eastern Kentucky while he pondered a presidential run. The trip occurred at a "pivotal moment in American history—the Tet Offensive had launched just weeks before" (xiv). In brief chapters, Algeo provides snapshots of the events of the tour, glimpses of the national political and cultural context, and digressions on issues facing the region.

At the heart of this tour were two hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty that Kennedy held, one on February 13 in a one-room schoolhouse in the town of Vortex and the other the next day in the Fleming-Neon High School. Along the way, Kennedy stopped in several counties—Knott, Breathitt, Perry, Knott, Letcher, and Floyd—at family homes, an African American neighborhood, a strip mine, county courthouses, and Alice Lloyd College.

Algeo also introduces readers to Harry Caudill, the Appalachian Volunteers sedition trial, the journalism of Tom and Pat Gish, and other subjects likely to be well known to students of Appalachian history. A common theme in most chapters is the juxtaposition of the wealth extracted by the coal industry and the poverty and devastation left behind in many communities.

Algeo relied on his own interviews and correspondence with those who witnessed Kennedy's tour, including teachers, students, antipoverty workers, and activists. He shares their observations on Kennedy and their backstories and lives since then. The portrait that seems to emerge is one of a privileged politician who had a genuine connection with these coalfield residents, who, in turn, had growing admiration for him.

Typical was Larry Hayes, who initially thought that eastern Kentucky was being used as a "political prop" but was struck by Kennedy's muddy shoes, evidence that he had actually gotten out of his car and walked around communities (118). There is also Rev. Lawrence Baldridge, an English teacher at Alice Lloyd College. Readers learn about his childhood, his ministry—he presided over the first interracial marriage in Knott County and received death threats for doing so—his opposition to strip mining, and his poetry. Algeo includes a dozen such portraits.

Algeo focuses especially on Tommy Duff, an Evarts High School activist who testified at the second hearing. Duff was part of a group trying to raise awareness about dilapidated schools. He had a tough life, growing up in an abusive home, struggling to find acceptance as a gay teen, and ultimately moving to Los Angeles where he joined an LGBTQ community and apparently became a sex worker. In a tragic twist, he killed his former lover and then committed suicide.

Admirers of Kennedy will undoubtedly appreciate a close-up look at this slice of his life, his words and actions, and his effect on people along the way.

Readers looking for larger meanings may be frustrated by some of the digressions and strings of topics. While the bulk of All This Marvelous Potential seems to tell the story of Kennedy's message and persona deeply resonating with residents, the last part quotes at length residents' angry letters that excoriated Kennedy for what they perceived as opportunism and misrepresentation. That is followed by a brief update on food stamps, a law student's reaction to Kennedy's assassination, Nixon's dismantling of the War on Poverty, and an emotional visit to Tommy Duff's gravesite—all in ten pages.

Algeo seems to be implying parallels between then and now—poverty, activism, LGBTQ issues, racism, and divisive politics—but he leaves it to readers to try to make meaning out of many of the events.