Black in Appalachia
HistorieHaving long been in this region, Black Appalachians remain mostly invisible, while the dominant narratives of Appalachia depict an overwhelming, white cultural homogeneity. The Black in Appalachia Podcast challenges these misconceptions by highlighting how Black families have shaped and have been shaped by the region. Through historical and contemporary stories of people, places and experiences, hosts Enkeshi El-Amin and Angela Dennis interrogate what it means to be Black in Appalachia, creating space where under-told stories can be heard and Black identity can be reclaimed.
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- Black in Appalachia: Tennessee Humanities in Action (00:19:29)
Reshared episode from Host and Historian Brigette Jones discussing Belonging in Tennessee with Black in Appalachia director William Isom. This interview was recorded as part of Humanities Tennessee's United We Stand Project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Black in Appalachia: Power, Light & Outmigration (00:56:46)
Power, Light & OutmigrationThis episode is a special live recorded production hosted at the National Archives Museum in Washington DC with Ron Carson and Dr. Karida Brown. Participants discussed Black life in Appalachian coal camps, mass outmigration & the return one generation later. Event was held in conjunction with the exhibition, 'Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey'.
- Black in Appalachia: Researching Black Businesses (00:31:36)
Researching Black BusinessesCo-hosted by Precious Brown, in this episode we're learning about her research on Black businesses in her homeplace, McMinn County, Tennessee. Sourced from historical records, interviews, and community connections, we'll get some highlights from that research and the importance of Black-owned businesses in preserving cultural heritage in today's Southeast Tennessee.
- Black In Appalachia: Meals, Health & Habits (00:31:44)
We are talking about food with Femeika Elliot, a food policy advocate. She discusses food insecurity, food apartheid, policy and zoning decisions that limit access to nutritious food as well as the social determinants of health, employment, income, and transportation & her community-led innovation and education in addressing these issues.
- Black in Appalachia: Bessie Woodson Yancey (00:28:10)
We explore the life and work of Bessie Woodson Yancey, a prolific Black Appalachian poet and writer and sister of Carter G. Woodson. Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin teams up with Courtney Shimek & Jennifer Sano-Franchini from West Virginia University's National Writers Project to discuss Woodson-Yancey's 1939 poetry collection "Echoes from the Hills" and her themes of nature, childhood, imperialism and Black identity.
- Black in Appalachia: Marcus Garvey Revisited: Eugenics (00:36:54)
In this episode we delve into the short, but complex relationship between Marcus Garvey and Virginia eugenicists during the 1920s. These strange bedfellows' brief alliance formed around the infamous Racial Integrity Act of 1924 & Garvey's imprisonment, exposing the gendered and classist aspects of racial purity movements.
- Black in Appalachia: What's in a Name (00:26:35)
This episode we explore the history and significance of racially charged place names in Appalachia. From Ann Miller Woodford in Far Western North Carolina, SW Virginia's Great Stone Face to poet Cecil Giscombe's reflection on the absurdity of "Negro Mountain" in Appalachian Pennsylvania, this discussion underscores the importance of addressing these place names and the work toward respectful historical narratives.
- Black in Appalachia: Immigrant Independence (00:29:03)
On this episode of the Black in Appalachia podcast, West Virginia University Sociology Major, Suraya Boggs, shares her experience of growing up in Appalachia as a second generation immigrant with a West Indian parent. She is particularly concerned with the codependent relationships between immigrant parents and American-born children. Boggs found many similarities among herself and other second generation peers and also compared their codependent familiar relationships to their more independent non-immigrant peers.
- Black in Appalachia: Frank X Walker (00:38:12)
On this episode of Black in Appalachia we talk with Frank X Walker, Black Appalachian award winning author, coiner of the term “Affrilachian” and 1st Black Poet Laureate of Kentucky. Frank shared with us about his background and growing up in Danville, Kentucky, the origins of his career as a poet, the founding of the Affrilachian poets and some of his work and writing processes.
- Black in Appalachia: Cornel West runs for president (00:53:05)
Enkeshi and William sit down and talk with Cornel West about his run for President of the United States.
- Black in Appalachia: The 102 years of Clara Hughes (00:39:43)
The Black in Appalachia Podcast was lucky enough to talk with 102 year old Clara Hughes from Oliver Springs, Tennessee. She has led an incredible life, so you can only imagine the amazing stories she has to share, such as, she was the first Black woman to sit on the Y-12 Union Board in Oak Ridge, outliving 2 husbands and carving out a career and life from the East Tennessee coalfields to a venue of cutting edge technology and science.
- Black in Appalachia: Black Safety (00:35:50)
On this episode of Black in Appalachia, Enkeshi is joined by University of Tennessee Sociologists, Shaneda Destine and Michelle Brown to share about a project the three of them worked on around the topic of Black safety. Black safety is a term Enkeshi developed in her dissertation that was concerned with how in a violent anti-black racists society, Black people and Black communities provide a sense of safety not captured in mainstream carceral understandings of safety. Together they curated a set of scholars to write on the topic and interviewed activists about their understanding and practices of safety. The episode highlights their interview with Ash-lee Woodard Henderson, Chattanooga native and Co-Executive Director at Highlander Research and Education Center.
- Black in Appalachia: Y’all Don’t Hear Me (00:32:07)
Curator Kreneshia Whiteside-McGhee talks about her installation Y’all Don’t Hear Me: The Black Appalachia. As part of the exhibit Kren sits down for a conversation with Nikki Giovanni. Featured artists include Amanda Banks, Jabari Browne, Kamau Bostic, Kywaun Davenport, Laiza Fuhrmann, Nikki Giovanni, Genesis The Greykid, Vandorn Hinnant, Frederick Johnson, Ashley Jones, Mary Martin, Charlie Newton, Iantha Newton, Mikael Owunna, Travis Prince, Walter Reap, Justin Rocha, RaMell Ross, Jessica Scott-Felder, Larry Silver, Myke “Murda” Stallone, Moses Sumney, Raymond Thompson, Carrington Ware, Crystal Wilkinson and Coco Villa.
- Black in Appalachia: Letters from the past. (00:33:02)
On this episode of Black in Appalachia, Enkeshi teams up with four educators of West Virginia University's national writers project to bring you letters from the archives. The team went to the University's archive for a workshop on how to incorporate primary sources in developing new narratives of Appalachia. While in the archives they discovered a master clap-back king and had to tell his story.
- Black in Appalachia: An update with Daryle Lamont Jenkins (00:32:46)
In this unreleased episode from March 2022 William talks with Daryle Lamont Jenkins of the One People’s Project to get an update on what’s happening in the white supremacy movement.
- Black in Appalachia: Environmental Justice (00:24:08)
Enkeshi and Pumpkin talk with Pam Nixon about her advocacy work in Environmental Justice in Institute, West Virginia. This was a live-recorded event that was part of the University of Tennessee's Black Ecologies Week, held as a partnership with UT Humanities Center initiative with Africana Studies, The Bottom, Black in Appalachia, East Tennessee PBS, UTK departments, and other community and university partners.
- Black in Appalachia: Agree to Disagree (00:30:11)
Black in Appalachia’s Angela Dennis talks with Matthew Hawn, a teacher who was fired for exploring the concepts of white privilege and racial disparity. Hawn stresses the need to engage students to think deeply about values, history and society as he tries to reclaim his place in the classroom.
- Black in Appalachia: Birdwatching while Black (00:30:29)
On this episode, Enkeshi and Pumpkin welcome wildlife biologist, writer, and poet, Dr. J Drew Lanham. Originally interviewed at Black in Appalachia's live show for the University of Tennessee's "Black Ecologies Week", we discuss and riff about birds, nature, and Appalachian South Carolina. We discuss his memoir "The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature", as well as his lessons from being a birdwatcher.
- Black in Appalachia: Race First | Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (00:31:04)
On this episode of the Black in Appalachia podcast, Director William Isom sits down with Enkeshi El-Amin to talk about the Marcus Garvey led Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the organization’s early twentieth century impact across Appalachia. Explore the scope of the UNIA and the types of activities that were attractive to working class Black people in the mountains, how informal networks and the organization's newspaper facilitated its spread and the challenges the group faced particularly from the feds.
- Black in Appalachia: Black by God (00:28:42)
On this episode of the Black in Appalachia podcast we reflect on the historical and contemporary importance of the Black press to Black people and Black communities. We ground this conversation in a special feature of a new Black newspaper in West Virginia called Black by God: The West Virginian. The paper is published by Afrolachian Poet, Crystal Good. Around the paper’s 1st anniversary, we had a conversation with Good to learn about its origins and all the work she is doing with Black by God.
- Black in Appalachia: Swimming and Pools (00:41:33)
On this episode of the podcast Enkeshi and Pumpkin talk about Black people’s relationship with swimming and pools in America. We discuss the stats, dispel the myths, explore the racist histories and share the stories from Black experiences in Appalachia. Guests on this episode include swim advocate Beverly McCloud Iseghohi, University of Montana Professor, Dr. Jeff Wiltse, Black Appalachian author Malaika Adero and Knoxville based cultural worker Aishia Brown.
- Black in Appalachia: Punch Me Up to the Gods (00:43:53)
Enkeshi El-Amin talks in-depth with Pittsburgh-based Brian Broome, the author of Punch Me Up to the Gods: A Memoir. His book recounts his experiences—in all their cringe-worthy, hilarious, and heartbreaking glory—revealing a perpetual outsider awkwardly squirming to find his way in.
- Black in Appalachia: John Henry (00:36:08)
On the next episode of the Black in Appalachia Podcast, Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin & Pumpkin Starr dig into the story of John Henry. There are dozens of tales of this Black laborer covered in myth & metaphors on race & class, but very little discussion on health & the sacrifice of Black bodies for capital.
- Black in Appalachia: #GiveBlackAppalachia (00:29:54)
On this episode of the Black in Appalachia Podcast Enkeshi and Pumpkin discuss the importance of the giving season to Black organizations in the region. They also talk about inequity in funding and the need for shifts in philanthropy. The episode closes with a charge to our listeners to #Giveblack. Tell us which Black orgs, projects, initiatives, artists, groups you are giving to this season and why?
- Black in Appalachia: Sepia Tones (00:53:37)
Black in Appalachia Initiative Director William Isom shares Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music. This series chronicles the experience of freed and escaped African slaves and their descendants in the development of what we know today as Appalachian music.