Acknowledgments

This textbook builds on generations of scholarship by historians, sociologists, folklorists, geographers, and writers who have spent their careers studying Appalachia — and, in many cases, who are from Appalachia themselves. Their work made this book possible, and their insistence that the region be understood on its own terms, rather than through the lens of outsider pity or condescension, provides its intellectual foundation.

Special acknowledgment is owed to the scholars whose foundational work structures this book's approach: John Alexander Williams, whose 2002 Appalachia: A History remains the closest thing to a standard regional history and whose chronological framework influenced the organization of this text; Ronald Eller, whose Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945 documented the failures of modernization theory applied to mountain communities; Henry Shapiro, whose Appalachia on Our Mind revealed how "Appalachia" was constructed as a concept by outsiders; and John Gaventa, whose Power and Powerlessness remains essential reading on how economic power suppresses political participation.

The chapters on race in Appalachia depend on the work of scholars who insisted that the story be told completely: William Turner and Edward Cabbell, whose Blacks in Appalachia opened a field; Karida Brown, whose Gone Home documented Black life in the coal camps of Harlan County; and Frank X Walker, whose coinage of the term "Affrilachian" gave a name to an identity that had always existed but lacked institutional recognition. Crystal Wilkinson's creative work and advocacy for Black Appalachian voices have been equally indispensable.

The chapters on labor history draw on decades of research made possible by the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, the Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College's Appalachian Archives, and the Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University. The mine wars did not document themselves — archivists and oral historians preserved what corporate interests preferred to forget.

The chapters on Appalachian culture build on the fieldwork of folklorists and musicologists including Alan Lomax, Jean Ritchie, Ralph Rinzler, and the student researchers of the Foxfire project, who demonstrated that the people of the mountains were perfectly capable of telling their own stories if anyone cared to listen. Contemporary scholars including Elizabeth Catte, whose What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia provided the intellectual framework for dismantling stereotypes with evidence rather than sentiment, and Jessica Wilkerson, whose To Live Here, You Have to Fight centered women's activism in the Appalachian story, have shaped this book's approach to its modern chapters.

The geological chapter depends on the work of the United States Geological Survey and the researchers who have mapped the Appalachian Basin across centuries — and who continue to remind us that these mountains are older than most of the life forms on Earth.

This textbook is offered as a teaching resource under Creative Commons licensing because the history of Appalachia belongs to the people of Appalachia — not to publishers, not to outside "experts," and not to anyone who believes that understanding requires a paywall. The editors invite instructors, students, community historians, and anyone who cares about this region to improve this book, challenge it, translate it, and make it their own. That is how history should work.