IMAGES OF THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN IN AMERICA FROM 1920 TO 1940 by Clyde H. Ray During the years between the First and Second World Wars, the American nation knew both the prosperity of the Twenties and the deprivation of the Thirties. It was during this period of the flapper and Hooverville, of the speakeasy and the breadline, that the culture of the nation became increasingly aware of a smaller sub-culture in, its midst that marched to the beat of a different drummer. In the mountains of Southern Appalachia, there lived a minority for whom the national experience of most Americans during the Twenties and Thirties was as far removed from their own particular realities as if they belonged to another century. The national media, scholars, and social scientists—indeed, the greater American public at large—viewed this minority with open curiosity and increasing dismay rather than as the product of their own time and place in the nation. Perhaps we now have the perspective to examine the contrasting views with which the Southern Appalachian was seen by his fellow citizens during the Twenties and Thirties. We can balance the positive and negative images with which he was presented to the average or educated reader of his day. The proposed methods by which the Southern Appalachian would be brought into the modern world and how he would be altered to fit the mold of the average American citizen of that day and time can now be viewed from a better vantage point. A Southern Appalachian native, by modern definition, is a resident in that highland area of a southern state which includes a section of the Appalachian Mountain range. He is generally distinguished from residents in the surrounding piedmont area by his culture, folk art, dialect, and life style. During the Twenties and Thirties, this definition of the Southern Appalachian native was not all that different from this modern concept. His home was seen to be located in the Cumberlands, Alleghenies, or Blue Ridge Mountains of eight southern states: Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, andAlabama.1 A contemporary observer found that the residents of this region regarded themselves less as Carolinians or West Virginians than as simply "mountain people."2 They appeared to be a remarkably homogeneous people, with a strong similarity in speech, manner, experience , and ideology.* A tradition and way of life set them apart from other Southerners ;^ their speech and character alike seemed different to the average visitor from the Low Country.5 Most outside observers agreed that there were three principal groups of Appalachians . First, there was a small class of relatively wealthy valley farmers and a substantial number of urban residents gathered into the somewhat isolated cities; there was a large middle class of small farmers; and finally there was a small lower class of 35 *l· r the poor, many of whom lived on subsistence level." The tragedy of the Southern Appalachian during this period was that this third class, in all its perceived poverty and ignorance, was viewed by the greater America as generally typical of all Appalachian people. ' The mountain people were seen as a race predominantly Celtic in origin, with a strong trace of an English and German background.^ Other observers perceived in them the pure bloodline of the Anglo-Saxon, "uncontaminated" by other European strains.^ Physically, the people were viewed as being lean faced, level browed, and "sallow."^ They moved across the land with a grave and deliberate bearing in which all emotion was hidden. When they turned their gaze upon the visitor in his new Ford, it was with a direct, fixed stare somewhat disconcerting to a city man. Naturally reserved and with obvious self pride, they spoke in an easy dialect that fell strangely upon the ears of the cosmopolitan listener. The occasional scholar who penetrated their mountains often found flourishing there signs of a unique folk culture. One noted sociologist found a counterpart to this Appalachian culture not in this country at all, but rather in the Bulgarian peasant; others felt that the Appalachian resembled the "gillies" or servant classes of the Scottish Highlands, but that there were substantial differences between them and...