Reformers to Radicals (13 page)

Johnson was in high school, however, in 1956 or 1957, when her father lost his job and her personal “great recession” occurred. Though the family was virtually penniless, their financial situation opened the doors to Berea College. Though Johnson entered Berea as a math major, a friend convinced her to take a sociology course from Perley Ayer, who at that point taught one course a semester for the college. So impressed was Johnson by Ayer that she became a sociology major and, by the end of her sophomore year, began attending Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM) conferences. It was as a Berea student, Johnson recalled, that she really learned about “the
mountain culture.” Unfortunately, Ayer missed quite a few classes because “he was very active at that time . . . working in Washington in helping to design the war on poverty legislation.” Still, to his students' advantage was that fact that “he would come back and tell us all the things that were going on.” After attending the CSM's 1963 annual conference, during which she heard “many national speakers, economists, people from Washington, and so on talking about ideas for new programming for Appalachia,” Johnson “really got enthusiastic about that.”
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Toward the end of Johnson's junior year, Ayer, who had just returned from Washington, told Johnson and her class that he and President Kennedy discussed the possibility of a “Domestic Peace Corps.” Kennedy wondered “if there would be students interested” in such a venture. “‘I don't know,'” Ayer told the president, “‘but I'll go ask my students.'” “Talk about being thrilled,” Johnson reported. “That really caught my spirit.” Excited about this domestic Peace Corps, the students “began organizational meetings for [the] Appalachia Volunteers [AVs],” and Johnson was the Berea College student representative at the first AV meeting. Because they were “really devastatingly awful” and “things like plumbing or electricity . . . were nonexistent” in them, the nearly one thousand one- and two-room schools in eastern Kentucky became one focus of the new volunteer organization. On one of her first projects, Johnson reported, her group of volunteers repaired a school that “had a huge hole in the floor, perhaps four or five feet across.” Many other schools, she noticed, had no paper, no books, “nothing for people to use.” Because of both the inadequate facilities and the lack of instructional material, Johnson soon realized that “anything that we did was stop-gap, but anything that we did also made a tremendous contribution . . . a dramatic change,” whether “[shoring up] flooring, . . . patching up windows, having college students talk with kids at the school.” “To me,” she concluded, “the Appalachian Volunteers was a very exciting project and I also can see where young people would be drawn to it. You don't have to wait very long to see the results of your efforts, but I think the projects were also designed in such a way too, to give people that sense of accomplishment very quickly.” Though these efforts were “minimal in comparison to the immense needs,” they “brought people together.” For example, through them college students learned about the conditions in Appalachia, and they “made local people aware of another group of people that they had had no
exposure to, of people who had been at least a little bit in the outside world . . . through college and through other kinds of experiences.”
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As important as school renovation was, the AVs' other focus during its first full year of existence was, as Johnson suggested, the recruitment of soldiers for this grand mission. Not just any volunteer would suffice. According to the bylaws, volunteers had to be “highly motivated people” who could “involve the citizens of the region in the process of meeting community needs . . . in such areas as education, health, recreation, and human welfare.” Moreover, they had to set an example for the nation by demonstrating the efficacy of “a self-help component in programs aimed at improving conditions of life.” The challenge presented to potential volunteers certainly was great. Following the meeting of college officials at Pine Mountain, however, the Council easily recruited college students who met its qualifications. By February 18, 1964, not even one month since the organization's first meeting, the Appalachian Volunteers revealed that it had completed work on ten one- and two-room schools and had organized three hundred volunteers from eight colleges.
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Because the need was so great, and because the geography and topography of eastern Kentucky made the task of locating communities in need exceedingly difficult, the CSM determined to establish “self-sustaining,” semiautonomous campus chapters of the Appalachian Volunteers. Prior to this effort, Council staff members simply contacted both regional and national construction supply companies such as U.S. Gypsum, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and Reynolds Aluminum and solicited donations of material. Whenever they had accumulated enough supplies and identified schools in need of repair, a CSM-AV staff member phoned local colleges and asked for volunteers. Campus chapters would eliminate this step. Located on the campuses of those institutions whose representatives had attended the organizational meeting, these college chapters served myriad functions. Most important, they undertook the responsibility of organizing and planning their own projects. Each chapter did its own recruiting, handled its own finances, “did some of the orientation” of new volunteers, and conducted its own follow-up efforts in those places where the Volunteers operated. This organizational structure allowed the staff to “become stimulators and advisers” to the campus volunteers and at the same time to prepare other eastern Kentucky communities for AV activities. Milton Ogle and the AVs
placed a great deal of time and effort into the organization of campus units, and, by March 1, 1965, twelve chapters operated under the Appalachian Volunteer banner. Of greatest significance, however, was that the AV staff could now build on previous efforts. With the college chapters managing their own programs, the school renovation projects would, the Volunteer leaders believed, eventually pave the way toward “more than the obvious physical improvement” and bring an “immediate sense of accomplishment” to both the volunteers and the local people who helped them.
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Ultimately, however, the goal for the entire Appalachian Volunteer program was the still-undefined concept of community development, but, for the spring semester of the 1964–1965 academic year, AV projects remained focused on rural schoolhouses. In addition to mere repair work, however, the AVs began a program of “curriculum enrichment” as part of the postrenovation follow-up efforts. This decision to augment renovation with educational enhancement adhered to one of the original AV concepts articulated by Boone and Ogle—that college student volunteers would be sympathetic to a program focused on the schools—and, interestingly, embodied a sense of resignation that impoverished adult highlanders were likely not susceptible of improvement. In fact, a form letter designed to recruit additional volunteers explained that, though “the Appalachian Volunteers work with adults, they concentrate their efforts on the children, for [they] can hope to take full part in the modern world someday, whereas their parents can at best learn only to cope with it.”
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Because local teachers—those charged with the burden of bringing mountain children into modern America—were “handicapped by poor education, inadequate teaching materials, and limited experience of the world,” the Volunteer curriculum enrichment program brought “to the rural youth a wide variety of personal experiences as well as educational demonstrations employing the most modern materials available.” Included in these demonstrations were science projects, world cultures lessons, art, and music presentations. Arguing that the “education provided in one-room schools [was] usually limited to rote memory work” and that the “children [had] little opportunity to exercise their minds creatively,” the planners of this endeavor hoped to make school fun while stimulating in mountain children the desire to continue their education. For example, the Volunteers wanted science majors to construct simple tools (such as inclined planes
and levers), demonstrate their use, and then explain how they worked. In addition, they hoped that lessons in animal anatomy (via frog dissections) and the basic principles of electricity would “introduce the children to the joys of logical analysis, . . . [of] learning what lies beneath surface appearances.” More important, the demonstrators could impress on the youngsters that these exhibitions were only a “preview” of what they could learn if they continued their education through high school.
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By bringing foreign exchange students from local college campuses to the hollows of the central Appalachians, the world cultures presentations aimed to expand the culture and educational horizons of the mountaineers. Notified beforehand, teachers could prepare their students for these expositions by orientating their regular classroom work around the country or culture scheduled for presentation. In return, the CSM reasoned, the exchange students would get the chance to “see a side of American life they seldom meet.” This part of the program, then, was as instructive for the foreign students as it was for the children.
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Unlike the science and world culture programs, the art and music lessons were more about entertainment than academics. For the AVs, nevertheless, this was fun with a purpose. Because they saw the lives of mountain children as dull and expressionless, they anticipated that drawing and making clay models would “stimulate artistic self-expression.” In addition, puppet shows would “introduce an element of the fantastic into lives that are all too close to the grimmer aspects of reality.” Equally important, the AVs believed that they could instill proper conduct in the children through these productions. According to the curriculum enrichment plan: “Some skits could be designed to teach elements of good health practices, courtesy, and other
desirable
behavior.”
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In many ways, these first few months of school refurbishing and curriculum enhancement projects represented an early apex of the Appalachian Volunteers program. First, these efforts adhered to the overarching Council philosophy of cooperation. Successful renovation projects depended on college students for labor, local businesses for donated supplies, local people for aid and support on the job site, and local officials for advice and guidance. The Appalachian Volunteers' first report indicated that “the county superintendent of schools and the teachers themselves” were “among the most effective agents for establishing contact with local citizens.”
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Just as important, the Council of the Southern Mountains made a considerable effort to implement the idea of local people helping each other. In short, it wanted to make sure that its volunteers were truly
Appalachian
volunteers. Because it was drawing those volunteers from college campuses—which, even in eastern Kentucky, attracted students from outside the region—this was, of course, easier said than done. Still, a late 1963 recruitment campaign targeting students “who live in mountain counties” was remarkably successful, yielding 253 volunteers: 243 from Kentucky, 2 from Virginia, 7 from Tennessee, and 1 from Ohio. Clearly, the CSM attracted “native” volunteers.
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Armed with an army of eager native volunteers and a grant from the Area Redevelopment Administration (ARA), the Council-sponsored Appalachian Volunteers program marched into battle against the dilapidated conditions of eastern Kentucky's mountain schools. That winter, in addition to Ogle, the CSM added two more individuals to their staff to work exclusively on the AV program. Flem Messer, a Clay County native and Berea College graduate, and his fellow Berea alumnus, Philip Conn, planned and coordinated the activities of the Appalachian Volunteers in the field.
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Because they relied on students to make the actual school repairs, Messer and Conn planned projects for weekends and semester breaks, periods when, of course, students' volunteer work would not interfere with their class schedules. With the surprising number of willing volunteers at the ready, the first couple of months of Volunteer activity proved extremely fruitful. Despite the difficult terrain and the unfavorable weather conditions offered by the late winter months, the AVs' most significant obstacle seemed to reside in Frankfort, the state capital. Evidence suggests that John D. Whisman, the director of the Kentucky Area Program Office and a leading figure in the nascent Appalachian Regional Commission, opposed the Council's Volunteer program. In a letter dated in late December 1963, Ayer informed Whisman that a volunteer-orientated program was not one that could be “structured within, and controlled by, state and federal agencies.” Though this letter was not clear as to Whisman's position, it implied that he wished for a greater degree of government control over the emerging Volunteer program.
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Council intraoffice communications, however, help clear up some of the mystery. In a memorandum written just prior to the first project, Ogle, the AV director, and Mark Furstenburg, a CSM staff member, discussed ways
to generate “local
pressure
against Whisman.” This document stated (quite possibly revealing Whisman's take on young volunteer workers) that college students are “an extremely important part . . . of the volunteer effort” and that “any image of students as immature children is detrimental to valuable resources.” Finally, it suggested that all Council members and colleges committed to the AV program join “together in a way that will make known the dragging of feet by Whisman.”
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Whisman did not object entirely to the use of volunteers. But he did favor the use of professionally trained, “technical specialist” volunteers placed “within working state programs of assistance.” These technical assistance specialists would meet with county area development councils, created by Whisman's Kentucky Area Program Office, in workshop-type sessions that concentrated on “priority development problems.” They would, Whisman argued, help tap local sources of support that were “already committed to action” but “limited by a lack of such technical assistance.” This type of volunteer, as opposed to the CSM's college student volunteer, would prove to be of greater help to eastern Kentucky as the region dealt with its “key need,” the “shift from traditional small farm and mining communities to the more complex industrial, commercial, and community development patterns required for viable economic growth.”
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