When Joe Kuhlman moved from Seattle, Wash., to attend school at East Tennessee State University in the foothills of the Appalachians, his friends asked, “Why?”
And they weren’t asking out of polite curiosity.
“They were concerned,” said Kuhlman, a senior in criminology who plays bass in the university’s gospel choir. “They really wanted to know why I would do that to myself.”
These questions showed Kuhlman that negative stereotypes painting Appalachians as “overall-wearing-no-indoor-plumbing-making-their-own-corn mash rednecks” are still strong, And while he admitted to harboring some of those stereotypes himself before he moved, he now feels they hurt Appalachians.
“You guys get a bad rap in the West,” Kuhlman said. “I think the projected ideal that Appalachians embrace ignorance stops a lot of people from coming here for vacation or for school.”
Stereotypes of Appalachians as ignorant, intolerant and violent likely began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when industrialism blazed through the mountains in the form of railroading and coalmining, said Norma Myers, an archivist at the Archives of Appalachia.
The Archives, which serves as the research arm of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, holds over 450 collections of Southern Appalachian music, photographs, films, and personal and business papers.
“There are little grains of truth in some of these stereotypes, but Appalachia is actually very diverse,” Myers said. “The stereotypes have been applied broadly to [all Appalachians], and it’s been turned into a caricature.”
Officially, Appalachia comprises 406 counties in parts of 12 states and all of West Virginia, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission. It includes “cotton planters in Alabama … and vintners in the grape-growing counties of New York.”
So why is it, then, that Appalachians are more likely to hear the sound of “Dueling Banjos” being hummed in their ears than questions about wine, art or literature?
The answer has everything to do with historical misunderstanding and willful ignorance on the part of outsiders, said writer John O’Brien, author of “Home in the Heart of Appalachia.”
According to O’Brien, non-native businessmen from coal companies played on the cultural differences of Southern Appalachians as a way of justifying their own gains.
“As coal companies swindled families out of land, the social order in the Southern Appalachians collapsed,” O’Brien said in an interview with The Borzoi Reader. “The unmitigated hell of coal boomtowns created unbelievable squalor and violence. Coal operators blamed it on backward culture and feral people.”
In the 1960’s, stereotypes worsened when, in an effort to get funding for a new government initiative called The War on Poverty, newspapers and magazines flashed black-and-white pictures of hollow-eyed Appalachian children, slack-jawed from hunger and ignorance.
Though more affectionate portrayals of the Appalachian “hillbilly” surfaced through country musicians and television shows like “Hee-Haw,” “Petticoat Junction” and “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Appalachians were still portrayed as uneducated simpletons.
“You get stupid comments from people who ask if we wear shoes or have an outhouse, or sometimes they think we’re all barefoot and pregnant,” said Julie Large, an ETSU senior from Elizabethton, Tenn.
“I’m not sure people always take us seriously because of that.”
While the effect of these stereotypes is difficult to guage, Appalachians have been dubbed “the invisible minority” by some cultural sensitivity trainers, and a 1997 study on racial attitudes by the University of Dayton reports “respondents with bias against African-Americans also tended to be biased against Appalachians.”
But Myers was quick to shrug off the idea that Appalachians are being systematically discriminated against. “I don’t think we’re being locked out or anything like that,” she said. “I just think the region is developing within the broader context of the world.”
This change, said Myers, has made it more important than ever for people to know the truth about the culture, not just the stereotypes.
“We don’t want to promote those stereotypes,” Myers said. “We’ve had requests from filmmakers to use pictures from the archives that show the very worst poverty scenes,” she said, referring to a request from producers of the film “Fire Down Below,” who wanted to emphasize the victimization of the region by using pictures of abject poverty in the credits of the film.
“We want people to understand the region, and something like that doesn’t promote full knowledge,” she said.
Understanding, more than anything else, is what the Archives of Appalachia aims to promote, Myers said.
“It’s why we collect all these pieces of Appalachian life -the music, the religion, social activities, the economy, the art,” she said. “They’re puzzle pieces, and they fit together so people can find the truth.”
The Archives of Appalachia is located in ETSU’s Sherrod Library and is open weekdays 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with the exception of ETSU holidays. To find out more information or to request material, call the archives at 439-4338.

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