Few career opportunities were available to minority women in Appalachia in the first half of the 20th century. Nursing offered them a respected, relatively well paid profession and--as few physicians or hospitals would treat people of color--their work was important in challenging health care inequities in the region. Working in both modern surgical suites and tumble-down cabins, these women created unprecedented networks of care, managed nursing schools and built professional nursing organizations while navigating discrimination in the workplace. Focusing on the careers and...

Dwight Hamilton Diller is a musician from West Virginia devoted to traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo music, and a seminary-trained minister steeped in local Christian traditions. For the past 40 years, he has worked to preserve archaic fiddle and banjo tunes, teaching his percussive, primitively rhythmic style to small groups in marathon banjo workshops. This book tells of Diller's life and music, his personal challenges and his decades of teaching an elusive musical form.

Born in Roanoke County, Virginia, on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation, Richard L. Davis was an early mine labor organizer in Rendville, Ohio. One year after the 1884 Great Hocking Valley Coal Strike, which lasted nine months, Davis wrote the first of many letters to the National Labor Tribune and the United Mine Workers Journal. One of two African Americans at the founding convention of United Mine Workers of America in 1890, he served as a member of the National Executive Board in 1886-97. Davis called upon white and black miners to unite against wage slavery. This biography provides...

When Ashe County Memorial Hospital opened in November 1941, it was the realization of a dream for the poor, sparsely populated county in the mountains of northwestern North Carolina. Building a hospital is a major undertaking for any community at any time. Accomplishing this in the waning days of the Great Depression and on the brink of World War II, while scant local resources were taxed by catastrophic floods and severe snows, was a remarkable feat of community organization. This is the story of the generations of supporters, doctors, nurses, emergency personnel and others whose lives are...

Appalachian literature is filled with silent or non-discursive characters. The reasons for their wordlessness vary. Some are mute or pretend to be, some choose not to speak or are silenced by grief, trauma or fear. Others mutter monosyllables, stutter, grunt and point, speak in tongues or idiosyncratic language. They capture the reader's attention by what they don't say.

"Who is Melungeon, how do we know and what does that mean? In a series of interviews with individuals who claim Melungeon heritage, the author finds common threads that point to shared history, appearance and values, and explores how we decide who we are and what kind of proof we need to do so"--