The Shadow
The late Jim Wayne Miller, PhD., novelist, essayist, dramatist, and Poet Laureate of Ky., was fond of telling a story about the man who vainly searched for Appalachia but could never find it.
Miller, a native of N.C. who was a professor at Western Kentucky University when he passed away in 1996, was noted for his dramatic recitations as a poet and his wry sense of humor.
As Miller often told the story, a man drove to Southwest Virginia, stopped at a gas station and asked the attendant if he was in Appalachia. The attendant told him that Appalachia was up in W. Va.
After the man gassed up, he drove to W.Va. and stopped at a café where he inquired about being in Appalachia, but the waitress told him that Appalachia is in Eastern Ky.
In Eastern, Ky., the man asked a miner, and the miner told him that Appalachia was farther south in East Tenn.
The point of Miller’s story is that no one wanted to be from Appalachia because of the severe stereotyping that Hollywood and mass media perpetrated and perpetuated through such TV series as the “The Andy Griffith Show,” and comic strips as Al Capp’s “L’il Abner” that he wrote and drew from 1934-1977, United Syndicate.
L’il Abner was presented as a hayseed lout who was not very bright although he was kind to others, and Capp used his character to poke fun at southern dialect via his satirical and humorous comic strip that often waxed political.
“The Andy Griffith Show” which ran eight full seasons on CBS Television from 1960-1968 depicted rural Americans in N.C. (Griffith’s hometown was Mt. Airy, N.C.) as mainly honest but behind-the-times folk who were often portrayed as uneducated mountaineers. The sitcom series proved to be very lucrative for the network that loosely based Mayberry on Mt. Airy.
Andy Griffith portrayed Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor, and Ron Howard was cast as Andy’s son, Opie. Don Knotts provided much of the comedy during the first five seasons as Deputy-Sheriff Barney Fife, and Francis Bavier performed as Aunt Bee who helped take care of Opie.
During the last three years of “The Andy Griffith Show,” each episode was filmed in color.
The spinoff, “Mayberry R.F.D.” ran on the network from 1968-1971, and 159 episodes were filmed in black and white while 90 were filmed in color. R.F.D. stands for rural free delivery, a service provided by the U.S. Post Office to rural areas.
The reruns today speak for themselves, and some of the episodes depict backwoods characters coming down from the mountains to shop in town.
Eastern Ky. and Southern W.Va., the sections of the two states that are separated by the Tug River, became known worldwide for the Hatfield and McCoy Feud that occurred shortly after the War Between the States.
Other violent feuds that took place there were arson and assassinations became the trademark of the warring families contributed to the stereotyping that followed to depict those living in that part of Southern Appalachia as being impoverished, rough-around-the-edges White Americans, lacking insufficient education and sophistication.
Though not set in Appalachia, TV shows like “Green Acres” and “The Beverly Hillbillies” contributed to stereotyping rural White Americans as they were contrasted to characters from urban areas who were portrayed as having more education and sophistication.
Adding to the stereotyping of Southern Appalachians who live in W.Va., Eastern Ky., Southwest Va., East Tenn., and Northern Ala., President Lyndon B. Johnson flew to Eastern Ky. in April of 1964 and announced his “War on Poverty.”
President Johnson visited a family in Martin County, Ky., a county that borders W.Va. The couple had 11 children to support on their combined income of $2,000. The visit in Inez and Paintsville, two Eastern Ky. towns, motivated President Johnson to vow that he would create a road of hope for the impoverished people of Southern Appalachia.
Nearly 50 years later, statistics in 2014 showed that the poverty rate in Eastern Ky. was 25.4 percent compared to the 18.9 poverty rate in the rest of the state.
Low wages and reliance on coal mining in the Southern Appalachian Region has contributed to the poverty level that lagged behind the nation in 2014 when the per capita income was $30,308 compared to $46,049 nationally.
President Johnson first announced the unofficial name of his “War on Poverty” legislation on Jan. 8, 1964, and a recent movie, “Dopesick,” filmed in part in Clifton Forge, depicts the infiltration of opioids into Appalachia and the way drug abuse in Southern Appalachia contributes to the perpetuation of poverty and loss of life in the region.
The City of Covington and Alleghany County are part of Appalachia as defined by the Appalachian Regional Committee (ARC).
President Johnson signed the Appalachian Regional Development Act (ARDA) into law on March 9, 1965, and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) was created as the federal agency to oversee the activities of the 13 states endeavoring to bring about economic development.
As for stereotyping of Appalachians, the images of L’il Abner and Barney Fife have been put to bed years ago in the City of Covington and Alleghany County.
