Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia by Karida L. Brown

Abstract

Reviewed by: Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia by Karida L. Brown Kelli Johnson Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia. By Karida L. Brown. (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 264.) Dr. Karida L. Brown's book is a thoughtful journey from the Deep South to the coalfields of Kentucky and beyond. Reading it feels like you are sitting on the porch with your grandparents and your aunts and uncles as they regale you with stories of their growing-up years as you sip on homemade sweet tea. In this volume, Dr. Brown explores the lived experiences of Black women and men who grew up in coal country. The tri-city area of Lynch, Benham, [End Page 56] and Cumberland is located in Harlan County, a mountainous region in the southeastern corner of the state of Kentucky. Both Lynch and Benham are coal company towns. Dr. Brown weaves together research with the voices of Lynch and Benham natives utilizing over 150 oral histories she gathered, which let the reader "hear" the true lived experiences of the Black residents of the towns during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Oral histories add a vibrancy and depth to most narratives, and Dr. Brown's use of these first-person accounts does not disappoint. This book provides a thoughtfully researched conversation on race, racial violence, de jure segregation, geographical racism, skin color, and class differences, all the while paying particular attention to detail. She takes the time to note the sartorial differences between Blacks and whites in a photo of men, Black and white, receiving their physical examinations to become coal miners. The first two chapters of the book set the stage for detailing the making of coal towns and the Black migration to those towns; or alternately, the Black man's escape from the Deep South. The subsequent chapters detail the lives and lifeworlds of the Black coal miner and his family in Lynch and Benham. We learn about home and the family. We learn about the children. We learn about pigmentocracy in the coal fields, as well as the spectrum of whiteness. We learn about that "moment in every black person's life when they discover what their blackness means to the world." We learn about the Black school as a place of pride and discovery and majesty. We learn how Blackness in the coalfields mirrored Blackness across the country, though covered in layers of coal dust and paid for in company script. Other books have been written about Appalachia and Appalachians that paint the area as monochromatic and destitute. Dr. Karida L. Brown's work helps fill the gaps that those narratives leave behind. Her thorough research, amplified and highlighted by the many oral histories she conducted, results in a highly readable, academically sound, and very enjoyable book about the lives of Black coal miners and their families. The stories of Affrilachians (this term was coined by Frank X. Walker) are finally being told. [End Page 57] Kelli Johnson Marshall University Copyright © 2022 West Virginia University Press