Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 28, 1993 TAG: 9303260269
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: EMORY LENGTH: Medium
The region has been plagued by unemployment and poverty. Media coverage and perceptions by people outside the area perpetuate the idea that its people "are gun-happy, illiterate bumpkins who are culturally incapable of rational resistance to unjust conditions, ' he says.
Fisher, a professor of political science at Emory & Henry College, has put together a book to prove otherwise.
"Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change," published by Temple University Press in Philadelphia, contains 16 original essays by Fisher and others on specific examples of community organizing, citizen protest and political expression in Appalachia.
Examples range from people in Kentucky lying down in front of bulldozers to keep them from stripping land to the 1989 occupation in Southwest Virginia of a Pittston Coal preparation plant by striking United Mine Workers.
The book is available at the Emory & Henry College Book Store and at Main Street Books in Abingdon in hardback for $49.95 and trade paperback, $19.95.
Fisher felt there was a void in this aspect of Appalachia's history. Examples from this region are hardly ever used in histories of citizen activism. He wanted to reach a national audience to convince people there are notable instances in this part of the world, he said.
It took about three and a half years from the time Fisher began seeking contributors to completion of the project.
"I sent out a general call, and when I found out where the holes were I sort of went and looked for people," he said. He tried for an even mix of academics and activists.
Richard A. Couto, professor of leadership studies at the Jepson School of the University of Richmond, contributed a chapter on the UMW strike against Pittston. He emphasized its use of "free spaces" like the Binns-Counts Community Development Center in Dickenson County and a former recreation facility in Russell County converted to "Camp Solidarity," where strikers and their supporters lived, learned and planned.
A joint first-hand account of the takeover of Pittston's Moss 3 plant by strikers is provided by Jim Sessions, coordinator of the Commission on Religion in Appalachia who accompanied those who occupied it, and his wife, Fran Ansley, a teacher at the University of Tennessee College of Law, who gives an account from the vantage point of strike supporters outside the plant.
Other chapters cover community resistance to pollution from a tannery in rural Kentucky, the fight for "black lung" benefits, how various activist groups such as Tennessee's Save Our Cumberland Mountains was organized, and the roles of women in these efforts. They also show the strengths and weaknesses of activist movements in Appalachia and what lessons can be learned from them.
Fisher, a West Virginia native, has a bachelor's degree from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. from Tulane University. He has taught at E&H since 1971, where he has been designated for the endowed Hawthorne Professorship in Political Science.
by CNB