Local Color:

Local color is literary movement that started after the civil war. The writers wrote
about different area in the States including Appalachia.
They publish about 200 stories about Appalachia and these stories have the biggest
effect on Appalachia in terms of the stereotypes. Local color fiction helped a lot in
spreading the stereotypes about mountain people.
The audience of the local fiction were elite people who were urbanized and fan of
industrialization and those people want to believe that there is place in America were
people are still not affected by urbanization and industrialization.
Audience of the fiction want to believe that rural places are substantially different
from urban places
Culture evolution: the idea that cultures and societies develop over time to more
enlightened and moral states. There is also the assumption that some group of people
hasnt yet develop to the state that achieved by metropolitan whites.
Stages of culture evolution: most primitive (children), barbarism (adolescent) and
most advanced (adults)
Cultural evolution assumes that the most civilized are the best people so it suffers
from ethnocentricity in the sense that people would call themselves the most civilized
group of people.
Middle class people are always considered superior because they are the dominant
group. And hence the non-industrial cultural is considered old-fashioned but lacking
and incomplete.
Local color fiction assumes that rural places are static in time and hasnt evolved to
the right state of urbanization.
Local color fiction stories are mostly predictable and follow general patterns in terms
of the flow of the story. They usually show the conflict between the middle class and
mountain people and they always make the values of the middle class win. For
instance, if the story contains romantic relationship between the middle class people
and mountain girl, its either that they will change the values of the girl to match the
middle class values or they will force the middle class man to reject her.
Fox, who was a famous local color writer, shift his prospective in writing about
mountain people as just old-fashioned and progress ahead to describe them as violent
and lawless and in deep need to be civilized.
The local color fiction debate was: 1) Appalachians were represented as coming from
different race (not white) and they are referred to as other. 2) Appalachians were
represented as coming from the white race (white Anglo-Saxon) and they are
considered as little brother
Agreement of scholars on local color: 1) all the writers were motivated by means of
some agenda, so most of what they wrote was subjective instead of objective 2) the
way that the writers capture and represent Appalachian people was coming from what
the audience want to hear or what the author want to say to gain some personal benefit
from the story and hence the local color fiction wasnt a true representation of what
was happening in Appalachia after the civil war. 3) Lastly scholars agree that local
color movement leads to exploitation to the Appalachian land by the northern
industrialists.
Disagreement of scholars on local color: 1) one set of scholars say that writes
describe Appalachian as totally OTHERED and hence what they did is spreading the
negative stereotypes about mountain people because they want to justify the

exploitation of the area. 2) the other set say that writers consider Appalachians as
FAMILARED people and they are originally white. Those people spread the positive
and romantic stereotypes about Appalachia in order to facilitate the reconciliation
between Sothern and northern rich people and elites.
Some stereotypes that Fox conveys them is his story: 1) mountain people were mostly
uneducated people, this is particularly obvious from the use the eye dialect in his story
when he was narrating conversation between mountain people.2) Fox also like to
racialize a lot in his story and his intention is to spread a stereotype that mountain
people have intrinsic problems and those problems are caused by their biological
nature.
The white mans burden is the obligation and the responsibility of people to civilize
others. This concept was used by imperialist to justify their exploitation of the
Appalachian area to seek for its natural recourses. Fox attitude toward imperialism
was clear in his story when he considered mountain people as barbarian and Blacks as
people with childish behaviors, so he was trying even in his story to rationalize the
imperialism of the rich people by saying that the current existing people in
Appalachia need to be civilized and hence they cannot make use of what they have in
terms of natural resources.

1. How does Fox describe African Americans?

Plying pranks like child. Signing laughing and talking in primitive way.
2. How does Fox describe the white miners/mountaineers and Easter?
Erect figure, she was high-born and she belongs to a race whose descent was unmixed
English. Yellow hair not the flaxen yellow that was common in the mountain- but more like
gold.
Mountaineers were lank, bearded and coatless. Their faces was tanned by sun to sympathy in
color with their clothes which had the dun look of soil. They were peculiarly a race of soil.
3. How does Fox describe Clayton?
Mostly as different and more elegant than most of the other mountaineers. Smooth round face
Local Color Movement
Local color is literary movement that started after the civil war. The writers wrote about
different area in America including Appalachia. They publish about 200 stories about
Appalachia and these stories have the biggest effect on Appalachia in terms of the stereotypes
because they helped a lot in spreading the stereotypes about mountain people. The audience
of the local fiction were elite people who were urbanized and fan of industrialization and
those people want to believe that there is place in America were people are still not affected
by urbanization and industrialization and hence believing that rural places are substantially
different from urban places.
Local color writers promote the concept of culture evolution which is the idea that cultures
and societies develop over time to more enlightened and moral states. There is also the
assumption that some group of people hasnt yet develop to the state that achieved by
metropolitan whites. Culture evolution has three main stages: most primitive (children),
barbarism (adolescent) and most advanced (adults). Using the cultural evolution concept,
local color writers assume that the most civilized group of people are the best people and
hence the writers suffer from ethnocentricity and biasing when it comes to rank people. For
instance, middle class people are always considered superior because they are the dominant

group which leads to capturing the non-industrial people as old-fashioned but lacking and
incomplete.
Local color fiction stories are mostly predictable and follow general patterns in terms of the
flow of the story. They usually show the conflict between the middle class and mountain
people and they always make the values of the middle class win. For instance, if the story
contains romantic relationship between the middle class people and mountain girl, its either
that they will change the values of the girl to match that if the middle class or they will force
the middle class man to reject her. By doing this, they helped in conveying the stereotypes
concerning the level of maturity and civilization of mountain people. Fox, who was a famous
local color writer, shift his prospective in writing about mountain people as just old-fashioned
and progress ahead to describe them as violent and lawless and in deep need to be civilized.
Fox conveys in Mountain Europa some stereotypes about Appalachian people. For instance,
Fox wanted to spread the stereotype that mountain people were mostly uneducated; this is
particularly obvious from the use the eye dialect in his story when he was narrating
conversation between mountain people. Furthermore, Fox like to racialize a lot in his story
and his intention is to spread the stereotype that mountain people have intrinsic problems and
those problems are caused by their biological nature. Fox illustrates the cultural evolutionism
in his story by dividing the people into three main cultural groups: Blacks, mountaineers and
outsider whites. Fox considers Blacks as barbarian, primitive and childish, and hence he
categorizes them in the lowest stage of social status. Mountaineers are racially between
Blacks and Whites so they are still better than Blacks according to Fox, but they havent
reached the finest state of evolution especially that he describes them as peculiarly a race of
soil. From this we can say that Fox considered the white mountaineers as different race from
metropolitan whites. Lastly, outsider whites considered by Fox as the most civilized and
educated people in Appalachia.
The white mans burden is the obligation and the responsibility of people to civilize others.
This concept was used by imperialist to justify their exploitation of the Appalachian area to
seek for its natural recourses. Fox attitude toward imperialism was clear in his story when he
considered mountain people as barbarian and Blacks as people with childish behaviors, so he
was trying even in his story to rationalize the imperialism of the rich people by saying that
the current existing people in Appalachia need to be civilized and hence they cannot make
use of what they have in terms of natural resources. This idea was the motivation for local
color writers like Fox to write about the bad stereotypes of the mountain people. So in a
nutshell, Fox was writing his stories and pretended that they were documentary to serve his
own agenda which was for the most part to rationalize for the rich people their exploitation of
the Appalachian areas.

Racial Violence:

Mob violence in Appalachia was consistent between 1880 and 1940.

After roughly 1885, lynchings increased sharply, peaking during the 1890s.
From 1882 to 1901, the annual number nationally usually exceeded 100
12 out of 22 counties in Southwest Virginia experienced lynchings
6 counties experienced lynchings more than once
Before 1900 mobs in the mountain executed in equal proportion between whites and
blacks. In general, after 1900 lynching in Appalachia was exclusively anti-black
violence
Mob violence in Appalachia was consistent between 1880 and 1940 peaking in 1890s.
After 1900 lynching in Appalachia was exclusively against blacks.

Lynching in mountain werent a substitute for the absence of legal institution in the
area. Some lynching was a hue and cry type of affairs in which mountain people want
to punish the murder. However, most of lynching activities show great aspects of
organization in the way that they were done. This can be seen by looking at the way
that mobs broke into jails and then how they took the victims from the legal
authorities and add to that the logistics in which these people were transported and
performed the lynching all these actions suggested that lynching were done in an
organized fashion.
Mobs brutality in Appalachia was dependent on the race of the victim that was
lynched. For instance, lynching of whites in general didnt contain the high level of
brutality that blacks victim exposed to
Violence in Appalachia including lynching was not because of intrinsic genetic
problems neither a cultural issue that existed in the Scots-Irish ancestors. The main
reason for violence in Appalachia was the rapid changes that occur to the region
during the industrialization period. We can look at it in terms of compound effects
that accumulated to give raise to violence in Appalachia. For instance, industrialist
brought to the region unwelcomed immigrants and blacks that changed the racial
distribution of the region population; add to that the rapid developments that occurred
in some counties due to modernization that swept those regions. These fast changes
led to racial tensions between the original residences of the region and the immigrants
who transported to the area for industry related jobs. Hence, the violence in
Appalachia was a consequence of these rapid social and economic developments.
Residence of Appalachia tended to fear from industrialization because they say that
the inflow of labors especially blacks changed some of the social and economic status
that were well suited for those people. Many people in Appalachia have the
prospective that the new social behavior of blacks in the area was greatly disturbing
and not appealing at all because it posed threats on properties and social life. People
complained about the arrival of the rail road by saying along the tracks of the
railroad there have congregated ex-convicts robbers, cutthroats, and outlaws, the very
scouring of the earth, until life and property are not safe (Brundage 307). From this,
we can see how industrialization affects the violence and lynching that happened in
Appalachia. But we have to be careful not to assume that Appalachian people resist
modernization or that their violence reaction was a way to convey their intentions to
stop industrialization from coming to the region. The reality is that lynching wasnt a
type of irrational process, it was a way to control the rapid social changes in the area
due to the large number of labors and immigrants who start to live and work in the
area. As a result, Appalachian people used violence and lynching as a form of telling
the Blacks and transient laborers what accepted social behaviors are in areas where
white were dominants. For many Appalachians this reaction was important because it
helped reconstruct the social traits that were on verge to be changed by the inflow of
new immigrants to the area.
Its worth to notice that racial violence was not due to competition between white and
black workers, because if it were the case we then would expect that most lynching
happened in coal mine towns were these two races were side by side working at the
same place. However, lynching occurred mostly in cosmopolitan town in Appalachia
in which transportation, financial and administrative centers existed and hence
lynching was concentrated in towns that were the centers of rapid development and
modernization. So the intensification of industrialization and modernization in
Appalachia was the main reason for lynching movement.

Feuding in Appalachia
What are the myths about feuds? The realities? How and why did those myths become established?
What were the motivations of the creators and the consumers of the stereotypes? What is the
relationship between industrialization and feuding?

Feuding in Appalachia helped a lot in constructing the idea of Appalachia, more accurately
the stereotypes about Appalachia. A lot of writes and scholars between late nineteen century
and the beginning of the twentieth wanted to capture Appalachia as isolated and peculiar
region in America and those people were motivated by several factors. Writing about feuding
in Appalachia was a way to justify some of these motivations and agendas that the writers
obligated to. Appalachia became a social construction that was handled in newspapers and
between scholars in such a way to spread some stereotypes that influence the way we see
Appalachia in the present. Its misfortune to see that these bad influences last for a very long
time after they had been first published and hence helped a lot in making the arguments in
them more objective in current time.
Edward Said in his work Culture and Imperialism describe the culture as being a theater in
which several agendas are being put in place in order to produce the desirable culture and
hence he is saying that the culture we hear about is probably not the actual reality but instead
some sort of discretions that benefit a group of people. Feuding in Appalachia was
constructed exactly the same as the culture that Said is describing. Local color fiction
writers and other scholars used the community conflicts that happened in Appalachia to
create and construct bad stereotypes that helped them describing the violence and feuding
with what they see appropriate according to their working agendas. Newspapers and popular
magazines helped in spreading the literature of local color writers and hence spreading the
stereotypes and myths about feuding in Appalachia. The reasons for spreading stereotypes
were political for most part and also for aesthetic factors that the middle-class people like to
see in those types of stories.
Feuding in Appalachia happened for reasons that have nothing to do with the common
stereotypes about Appalachian people being irrational and genetically and inherently had lust
for blood and killing people. Feuding mainly happened because of economic and political
conflicts between local elites and their allies in the region. For instance, in Clay County the
White and Garrard families were in conflict with each other since the first day of settlement.
The conflicts initiated because of the desire of each family to take control over the countys
industry and commerce. The economic and political conflicts lead eventually to intensify the
feuding in Clay County especially between 1897 and 1901. Local color writers conveyed the
idea (stereotypes) that the feuding in Appalachia was vast and overwhelming and they
described in their published stories that people in Kentucky regard killing as a simple daily
activity like removing stone from their paths. This idea is hugely amplified from the reality
since even in the most intensive period of feuding in Clay County less than twelve people
were reported to be killed. Moreover, the local color description of the situation in that time
implies that the lifestyle in Kentucky would be irregular and completely destroyed. However,
normal lifestyle existed in Kentucky at that time since elections held, children sent to their
schools and usually properties were sold and bought in a regular fashion.
Another myth about feuding in Appalachia is that feuding happened as a result of isolation,
poverty and the low level of education between people who were fighting. For instance, The
New York Times claimed that the poverty and isolation was the cause of feuding in the
region and hence the region needed the civilizing railroad and industrialization to stop

feuding. The New York Times knew precisely that feuding happened between elite people in
the region who were highly educated and wealth people with prominent political positions,
and hence they were just spreading a stereotype to justify the exploitation of the region from
other industrialists who want to make profit from Appalachia natural recourses. Those people
suggests that industrialization will be the solution for such regions in which feuding was an
issue. In fact, counties like Clay exhibited industry during antebellum and hence it was
already industrialized county. Its clear then that industry will not be a solution to feuding as
suggested by some local color writers and other scholars, in fact, industrialization was a cause
that intensified feuding in Appalachia since the region elites fight with each other to control
the economic profits from industry to gain absolute advantage to themselves.
Its worth to note here that violence actions like the one in Clay County existed in America in
other regions and wasnt a unique characteristic of Appalachia at that time. However, some
scholars and especially local color writers captured the violence in Appalachia and especially
in Clay County as unusual action in America and they considered Clay County and other
counties in Kentucky as one the darkest places in America at that time and hence they are in
deep need to be civilized. The motivation behind the scholar to focus on Appalachia was to
justify the outside intervention of these areas.
The big one:

Appalachia in the postbellum era went through a lot of economic, social and industry related
changes. These changes influence the behavior of the people living in the region and also the
presentation of Appalachia through the local color movement, and hence, a lot of stereotypes
about the region had been formed during postbellum era. Industrialization has a big impact on
the region and it actually influences local color literature, lynching, feuding and to some
extent mine wars. Local color literature helped a lot in rationalizing and justifying the
exploitation of Appalachia lands from the industrialist because they promote the idea of the
white mans burden. The white mans burden is the obligation and the responsibility of
people to civilize others. This concept was used by imperialist to justify their exploitation of
the Appalachian area to seek for its natural recourses. Fox, who was a famous local color
writer, has a clear attitude toward imperialism which can be seen in his story Mountain
Europa. He considered mountain people as barbarian and Blacks as people with childish
behaviors, so he was trying in his story to rationalize the imperialism of the rich people by
saying that the current existing people in Appalachia need to be civilized and hence they
cannot make use of what they have in terms of natural resources. This idea was the
motivation for local color writers like Fox to write about the bad stereotypes of the mountain
people in order to establish a wrong picture of mountain people in the eyes of their audiences.
So in a nutshell, Fox and other local color writers were writing their stories and pretended
that they were documentary to serve their own agendas which were for the most part to
rationalize for the rich people their exploitation of the Appalachian areas.
The main reason for violence in Appalachia was the rapid changes that occur to the region
during the industrialization period. We can look at it in terms of compound effects that
accumulated to give raise to violence in Appalachia. For instance, industrialist brought to the
region unwelcomed immigrants and blacks that changed the racial distribution of the region
population add to that the rapid developments that occurred in some counties due to
modernization that swept those regions. These fast changes led to racial tensions between the
original residences of the region and the immigrants who transported to the area for industry
related jobs. Hence, the violence in Appalachia was a consequence of these rapid social and

economic developments. Residence of Appalachia tended to fear from industrialization

because they say that the inflow of labors especially blacks changed some of the social and
economic status that were well suited for those people. Many people in Appalachia have the
prospective that the new social behavior of blacks in the area was greatly disturbing and not
appealing at all because it posed threats on properties and social life. People complained
about the arrival of the rail road by saying along the tracks of the railroad there have
congregated ex-convicts robbers, cutthroats, and outlaws, the very scouring of the earth, until
life and property are not safe (Brundage 307). From this, we can see how industrialization
affects the violence and lynching that happened in Appalachia. But we have to be careful not
to assume that Appalachian people resist modernization or that their violence reaction was a
way to convey their intentions to stop industrialization from coming to the region. The reality
is that lynching wasnt a type of irrational process, it was a way to control the rapid social
changes in the area due to the large number of labors and immigrants who start to live and
work in the area. As a result, Appalachian people used violence and lynching as a form of
telling the Blacks what accepted social behaviors are in areas where white were dominants.
For many Appalachians this reaction was important because it helped reconstruct the social
traits that were on verge to be changed by the inflow of new immigrants to the area. Its
worth to notice that racial violence was not due to competition between white and black
workers, because if it were the case we then would expect that most lynching happened in
coal mine towns were these two races were side by side working at the same pla ce. However,
lynching occurred mostly in cosmopolitan town in Appalachia in which transportation,
financial and administrative centers existed and hence lynching was concentrated in towns
that were the centers of rapid development and modernization. So the intensification of
industrialization and modernization in Appalachia was the main reason for lynching
movement.
Feuding in Appalachia happened for reasons that have nothing to do with the common
stereotypes about Appalachian people being irrational and genetically and inherently had lust
for blood and killing people. Feuding mainly happened because of economic and political
conflicts between local elites and their allies in the region. The New York Times claimed that
the poverty and isolation was the cause of feuding in the region and hence the region needed
the civilizing railroad and industrialization to stop feuding. The New York Times knew
precisely that feuding happened between elite people in the region who were highly educated
and wealth people with prominent political positions, and hence they were just spreading a
stereotype to justify the exploitation of the region from other industrialists who want to make
profit from Appalachia natural recourses. Those people suggests that industrialization will be
the solution for such regions in which feuding was an issue. In fact, counties like Clay which
had feuding activities exhibited industry during antebellum and hence it was already
industrialized county. Its clear then that industry will not be a solution to feuding as
suggested by some local color writers and other scholars, in fact, industrialization was a cause
that intensified feuding in Appalachia since the region elites fight with each other to control
the economic profits from industry to gain absolute advantage to themselves.
From the above, we can see the effects of industrialization and local color literature on
violence in Appalachia. Local color literature effects can be seen in terms of the
representation of lynching and feuding. In both cases, local writers conveyed to their
audiences wrong ideas about what actually happened in the region. These wrong
representations aimed to justify the ambitions of industrialist to take over the natural
resources of Appalachia. On the other hand, industrialization effects on feuding and lynching
were to fuel and intensify these two actions. In the case of lynching, its the rapid social
changes and the transportation of transient people associated industrialization that established
lynching in industrial towns. Industrialization affects feuding as well since local elites were

fighting with each other to gain political and economic benefits and to take over the rewards
of industrialization to one group without the other.
Revise Matawan and the chart about different type of violence in Appalachia
Matewan (1920) review the overview sheet. What were the mine wars and what prompted them?
What was the Matewan Massacre? What was the Paint Creek/Cabin Creek Strike? The Battle of Blair
Mountain? What were the companys tactics for controlling labor? What key vocabulary did we
learn about mining towns (aka coal camps)? Who was Sid Hatfield and why was he considered a
hero, and by whom?

Mine wars happened mostly in 1920s. They started in 1912 by the Cabin Creek Strike in
West Virginia in which miners refuse to work for the coal company due to the low wage they
had at that time compared to other places in the States. Mine wars in West Virginia happened
mainly because coal companies didnt want to make the mine workers get into the union (get
under the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)) because coal companies wanted to
control the prices of coal and minimize the cost of labor for their own economic benefit. So
the mine wars were between the coal company owners and the pro-union miners who were a
collection of local whites, Immigrants from several places in Eastern Europe and Blacks
coming from the Deep South. In order for the coal companies to control their worker and
make sure that they are not associated with the union, several actions had been taken to insure
the superiority of these companies among the poor miners. One of the techniques was to
make the miners in continuous debt to the company by establishing a captive town system in
the areas that the miners were living. This means that the miners can buy their supplies only
from the company stores and they have to live in properties owned by the company itself.
Furthermore, the company paid their workers with no real money instead it paid them with
the Scrip which is a currency that could only be used in the company stores. In addition, the
company made all the miners sign the yaller dog which is a contract to insure that the
miners will not be associated with the union in any fashion and if they did they will
immediately lose their housings and jobs. Other factors to control the miners include hiring
gun thugs, bribing the local politics and segregation between different races of the miners.
Due to all these facts, miners in Mingo County in Matewan decided to join the union because
it would be the only way to get freed from the company captive system and to get higher
wages as in the rest of the States. In 1920 in Matewan town miners decided to stop working
for the company and they joined the union in a hope that their situation becomes better in the
near future. As a result of this strike the company evicted all the miners from their housing
and made them live in muddy tent encampments a movement that intended to make the
miners break their strike and get back to work with the company. Sid Hatfield who was the
Matewan Chief of Police order to arrest the gun thugs who evicted the miners from their
housings and he confronted the gun thugs with couple of miners at the Matewan train station
with what is called after that as the Matewan Massacre. Most causality in the Massacre was
from the company side. This Massacre helped Matewan miners to get unionized and gain
better wages in 1935 after series of battle and rebellious wars.