AN APPALACHIAN MIGRANT TALKS ABOUT MOVING NORTH:
n_F*"ENOUGH WORK WAS AVAILABLE, 90% OF US WOULD
COME BACK HOME"
by Jim Cornett
LIBERATION News Service
"When I was a child, my family would travel
Down to Western Kentucky, where my parents were born
And there's a backwards: old town,  that's often
remembered
So many times,  that my memories are    worn.
And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paridise lay
Well I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."
—From "Paradise",   a song by J,.,.  ..
,, ' John Prine
(Editor's note:  Since World War II,  there has
been  a steady migration of people  from small rural
communities  in the  south  looking for work in the
big cities  of the north. Most often when people think
of that migration they think of black people  coining
up  from the  deep _outh.  But there  is   another migration;  the migration  of mostly white people  from
the coal fields  of Appalachia. i
In the last  30 years  at least  four million
people have moved into  cities  like Cincinnatti,
Dayton, Akron,  Cleveland,  Chicago and Detroit.  Many
of them have found jobs in the large, heavy industries  in those  cities.  Others kren't  as lucky; many
wind up on welfare .   The  lucky ones have been  able
to move to working class  suburbs ;  others  live
in their own  innerucity ghettos.
The  overwhelming pattern  of "progress"   in Appalachia has been that of the  destruction of the
land by the ravenous  coal  companies.  They have  leased,
stole and bought  it  from the small farmers.  They
have bought  "mineral rights"  and proceeded to strip
the  land clear down to the  coal deposits—leaving
nothing behind.  They have  opened mines which draw
the men  from the  land down into the  earth where
accidental death, or black lung wait.
In the 19.0's  there was  a lull  in the  coal
market.  Energy experts were predicting that coal	
outmoded as  a fuel—would soon be replaced by natural
gas  and even nuclear energy. And so the jobs in
the mines  dwindled.
When the  great  resurgence of the  coal industry
came  in the late   '60s( mostly due to  an increased
demand from Japan's steel industry and a discovery
that  coal was  useful in    manufacturing plastics),
strip mining flourished.  Strip mining,  compared
to underground mining ,   is  a much quicker,  easier
process  requiring very few miners.     So althoughethe
coal industry boomed,    there was  not'an equivalent
boom in jobs.
Because of the way the  land has been developed,
Appalachia bas  a   ::one product economy:   coal.  Therefore Appalachians,  and their local governments,   are
totally dependent  on the  coal companies.  Companies
like Peabody Coal,  Consolidated Coal,  and Hanna
Mining, write their own laws.  Virtually untaxed,
they leave no resources  to pay  for better schools,
better roads, homes  or other developments which	
Page 4 LIBERATION News  Service!
might attract other business  and therefore  other
jobs»  They have taken Appalachia's  coal and
minerals—and huge profits—and left nothing behind,
The following story,  reprinted from the
Mountain Eagle,  a community paper from Kentucky,
is written by Jim Cornett,  a young Appalachian
who left Kentuckt to' find work up north. )
I  left the mountains of Letcher County,  Ken -
tucky,  in 1955,   two weeks  after graduation from
high school.  My reason for leaving was  like that
of so many thousands before me,  to find employment
and a better way of life.
In my;last year of school, we were given a
battery of aptitude tests»  My test results  revealed
that the only thing I was  completely qualified
to do was inspecting.   (This only meant that I
have very good eyesight»)
I couldn't even get into the Caney College
because  I didn't have enough "math." The attitude
of my high school seemed to be,  "Get the student
through and give- him his diploma,  and we're through
with him."    I was totally unprepared for stepping
out into the world of industry,  and learned no
skills  in high school  other than typing.
One of my courses was  called "shop"  and it
was supposed to teach us  cabinet-making.   In the
first two weeks we made a carpenter's box to
carry our tools in. The rest of the year was spent
sanding and painting all  the chairs in the school
cafeteria.
I  then  felf that  I had five choices  left open
to me,   I  could  leave  for Ohio or Indiana to  look
for a job, but I  didn't have a car or any money to
get  started on,   I  could stay and  look  for work  in
one of the few remaining coal mines still operating, but    weighing only 120 pounds,  it is doubtful   I would have been hired.
I  could sit on my duff at home  and hope some
work would turn up that  I could do,   I could  stay
at home another year and wait for the inevitable
draft   (I was only 17).  Or,   I could volunteer for
the service,   I  chose the  latter.
Of all the people who graduated with..me,  I
know of only three who are_still  in Letcher County.
Two of them married soon after graduation and a-
nother was  later disabled in the service.  The rest
of us  are in Ohio, Michigan and California,  We
followed the graduating classes before us  and were
followedcby the graduating classes  of succeeding
years »
The migration from Letcher, and surrounding
counties has been tremendous, and continues on a
monstrous scale.
It has been said that "Southern Ohio was  taken
over by Kentuckians without firing a shot".  Here
in Dayton, Ohio there are at least two thousand
people who were originally from Letcher County.
If you could    check 100 houses  in any city in
southern Ohio, you would find at  least 40 families
who originally had their roots in Eastern Kentucky»
',#513)
April 4,  1973
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