Description
Book SynopsisA personal remembrance from the preeminent chronicler of Black life in Appalachia.
The Harlan Renaissance is an intimate remembrance of kinship and community in eastern Kentucky's coal towns written by one of the luminaries of Appalachian studies, William Turner. Turner reconstructs Black life in the company towns in and around Harlan County during coal's final postwar boom years, which built toward an enduring bust as the children of Black miners, like the author, left the region in search of better opportunities.
The Harlan Renaissance invites readers into what might be an unfamiliar Appalachia: one studded by large and vibrant Black communities, where families took the pulse of the nation through magazines like
Jet and
Ebony and through the news that traveled within Black churches, schools, and restaurants. Difficult choices for the future were made as parents considered the unpredictable nature of Appalachia's economic realities alongside the unpredictable nature of a national movement toward civil rights.
Unfolding through layers of sociological insight and oral history,
The Harlan Renaissance centers the sympathetic perspectives and critical eye of a master narrator of Black life.
Table of Contents
- Foreword by Loyal Jones
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Alex Haley—The Taproot
- 2. Between Alex Haley, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ed Cabbell, and the Affrilachian Poets
- 3. Black Mountain Mantrips and Woman Trips
- 4. What's in a Name?
- 5. Black Folk Done Lost Their Stuff
- 6. The Common Narrative of Black Appalachian Coal-Camp Families
- 7. Blacks Moving between Central Alabama and Central Appalachia
- 8. Close-Knit Central Appalachian Coal-Camp Black Communities
- 9. On Trash-Talking and Signifying along Looney Creek
- 10. In a Coal Mine, Everybody Is Black; Outside, Not So Much
- 11. School Integration Was Worse than a Kick in the Head by an Alabama Mule
- 12. The Principal of the White School Became a Lifelong Friend
- 13. Not Bad for Some Colored Kids from Harlan County, Kentucky
- 14. King Coal Leaves the Throne
- 15. The Graying of the Eastern Kentucky Social Club
- 16. Meditating on the Future at the Mountaintop
- Notes
- Index
