Brother Clark, You Have Taken a Mouse and Rendered Forth an Elephant Mike Clark To say that Night Comes to the Cumberlands was a defining statement about Appalachia in the 1960s is to state only the obvious. Harry Caudill's prophetic vision ofhis homeland was insightful, revealing, shattering , and provocative. Few people who read the book ever looked again at the region in quite the same way as they had before coming across his passionate, thundering exposé of a region smote asunder by America's modern industrial system. I first encountered the book while attending Berea College in the mid-sixties. A student from Eastern Kentucky loaned me the book. A few days later, my entire dorm was sprinkled with leaflets about wildcat coal-mining strikes in Eastern Kentucky, which claimed that thousands of mining families were threatened with starvation and deprivation because of the coal industry. I picked up the book and skipped classes for the next two days until I had finished it. Having grown up in Western North Carolina, deep in the heart of a vast forest, I had no experience with the coal industry, but I could relate to Caudill's description of the settlement of the coalfields and the coming ofthe railroads—a sequence of events similar to my own home valley which had been deeply impacted by the logging industry and later by the textile industry. What struck me most about the book was his ability to see beneath the cultural and political veneer and to lay bare an economic Mike Clark is on the senior staff of the Management Assistance Group, in Washington , D.C., which provides services to nonprofit social-changegroups throughout the United States. He has published numerous articles and photographs dealing with Appalachian issues. 34 system which was draining the region of its health and future. It was Caudill's passion for the land, his rage at the destructive forces arrayed against nature, his eloquence in expressing these outrages with a combination of anecdotes and factual material which was so compelling and which created such a furor in the region. Night Comes to the Cumberlands was a powerful indictment ofjustice delayed or derailed. His impact upon the intellectual life of Appalachia was magnified by his presence in person. Harry was unique on many levels, in part because his public persona was just as powerful and compelling as was his writing. Harry combined the elements of a superb mountain raconteur with the discipline of a polished writer (with his wife Anne's firm editorial hand), and when he rose to speak before a crowd, or entertained a circle of friends in his living room or in a courtroom drama, there were few who could match him. I first met Harry in 1966 during a trip to Eastern Kentucky to visit some strip mines—a trip which was to have a permanent impact upon my life. Harry and members ofthe Appalachian Group to Save the Land and People (an organization of small landowners who were fighting strip mining and who used Harry as their attorney) took us up on several mines in Knott County. The visit to those desolate, muddy quagmires had a strong emotional impact upon me, as did Harry's swirling commentary , rendered in ornate nineteenth century oratory and full of biting sarcasm toward the mine operators—most of whom he knew personally from his childhood or his legal practice. After graduating from Berea, I moved to Whitesburg and worked briefly for the Appalachian Volunteers and then began to write for the Mountain Eagle, a crusading weekly newspaper published by Tom and Pat Gish, who were close friends with the Caudill family. My work with the paper brought me into frequent contact with Harry when he would drop by to chat with the Gishes or he would call with suggestions for stories. Once he called with a story about how a coal company had stripped across the head of Millstone, a small coal camp in Letcher County, so that mud slides were threatening several homes. The Gishes sent me out to take a look and I came back with a story and photos which were subsequently spread across several pages...