Uneven Ground (10 page)

Given these assumptions, it is not surprising that improvements in roads and other physical infrastructure quickly became the priority for
the commission. Whisman launched a series of town meetings with local officials to establish an agenda for action, and roads emerged as an overwhelming priority, followed by industrial sites and flood protection.
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In September 1959 the commission issued a comprehensive plan for eastern Kentucky that it hoped would influence the candidates for governor in the campaign then underway and set developmental objectives for the next decade. Program 60, as the plan was called, outlined an integrated strategy of improvements in planning and zoning, education, housing, transportation, job training, health services, flood control, and economic diversification. The plan recommended “a range of action projects in various fields, suggesting something to do for federal, state and local government, organizations, firms and private citizens,” but the heart of the proposal was the construction of a system of regional highways and water facilities that would provide a basic foundation for development.
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Whisman and the commission believed that highway construction would not only address long neglected regional transportation needs and provide immediate jobs but also strengthen public morale and increase public participation in other projects at the local level. If people believed that their community activities were related to larger accomplishments, he reasoned, they would maintain their enthusiasm for cooperation and local involvement. Thus highway projects would provide both the essential framework for economic development and a visible symbol of regional progress that would sustain enthusiasm for long-term planning. Mountain communities had always vied with each other for limited state highway construction funds, but Program 60 proposed a regional system of improved arterial roads connected to new limited-access highways that would provide outlets for mountain products and incentives for industrial expansion, tourism, and other development. In contrast to the traditional competition for local roads, a comprehensive “development highway system”—a network of roads designed specifically to foster development—would break down the region's isolation, increase cooperation, and open up the entire economy to expansion and growth. In addition to the construction of a developmental highway system and other forms of physical infrastructure, Program 60 called for changes in public policy and a new system of development organizations that would encourage cooperation in local,
state, and federal programs for the region. Recognizing that eastern Kentucky's problems could be treated only within a comprehensive, long-term Appalachian regional development program, the commission joined the CSM in calling for the creation of an Appalachian state development authority that would work closely with a proposed new federal agency for regional development. At the local level, the report encouraged the establishment of multicounty area development councils that would bring together community leaders to cooperate in planning and project implementation.
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Unfortunately, the Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission's ambitious proposals, like those in other states, quickly ran into a quagmire of bureaucratic and funding barriers. At first planners for the Kentucky Department of Highways, for example, were reluctant to endorse the idea of an Appalachian development highway system capable of carrying industrial and commercial traffic because state funds were inadequate to build the roads at the high standards set by federal and state engineering guidelines. As early as 1958, the Kentucky commissioner of highways informed the eastern Kentucky commission that significant federal funding would be needed to finance such a system, and when the highway department finally approved the recommendations and sent the mountain highways plan to the federal Bureau of Public Roads, the Washington agency rejected the plan as failing to comply with its standards.
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The challenge of acquiring federal funds for building a new network of mountain roads was complicated by both procedure and politics. Not only were roads in Appalachia more expensive to build, but the federal highway funding plan was unchangeable for the next three years. The federal interstate highway system that connected major urban centers all but bypassed distressed rural areas such as Appalachia, and the method of allocating funding for highway locations based on traffic count assured that Appalachia would have little likelihood of success, since the poor mountain roads thwarted high traffic volume. Increasingly Whisman and other mountain leaders recognized that if their plans for highway development were to be accomplished, they would have to find ways to circumvent federal criteria and come up with special federal aid not currently allocated to the Bureau of Public Roads.

The eastern Kentucky commission experienced similar frustration in attempting to implement its strategies in other areas. The commission found that existing federal programs in flood relief, small-business development, housing, and urban renewal were underutilized in Appalachia because local communities were unaware of the programs or lacked the technical assistance necessary to apply for them. Even when applications were forwarded to Washington and when federal officials and members of Congress sympathized with local needs, mountain communities often failed to meet the legal criteria for federal assistance. Most Appalachian counties, for example, were ineligible for assistance from federal housing and urban renewal programs because the programs were designed for urban areas. Other mountain communities were ineligible for federal aid to build water and sewer projects because they could not raise the necessary matching funds or could not meet the cost-benefit ratio for the construction of dams, flood walls, and highways.
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Whisman described the challenges facing Appalachian development efforts as a “revolving impossibility.” The greatest need in the region, he noted, was for basic facilities for development, but the lack of development prevented access to the federal resources needed to build these facilities. The dilemma, he wrote, was like a mountain roundelay: “What east Kentucky needs is one good road to join us up with the rest of the country. . . . How do we justify the building of such a road? We know there is not enough traffic count now to justify the new road. But the roads we have are so poor the people won't drive them. Without people coming into our region, we have little commerce. Without commerce, we have no traffic on the road. Without traffic, we can't justify the new road. But the roads we have are poor.”
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Increasingly frustrated by inadequate funding and bureaucratic barriers, Appalachian state leaders were convinced that special federal assistance was necessary to accomplish their goals for the region. Appalachia's problems, they argued, were severe and unique, and they were beyond the capacity of local communities and state governments alone. Even the federal policies being proposed by national Democrats to aid industrial communities distressed by unemployment promised little assistance to rural areas like Appalachia. The Area Redevelopment Act, which reappeared in Congress in 1959, targeted urban industrial
communities hit hard by recession and unemployment rather than chronically depressed rural areas in need of the basic infrastructure for development. “The Douglas-Payne Bill,” reported the
Louisville Courier-Journal
in February 1959, “would not, for an instance, make significant headway towards mitigating those all-important economic factors affecting Eastern Kentucky: lack of modern transportation networks, vulnerability to floods, and the decline of coal-mining.”
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Frustrated, Whisman and other leaders of the eastern Kentucky commission launched a campaign to change federal policies in favor of “underdeveloped areas” and to make government and industry leaders more aware of Appalachia's plight and potential.

As the 1950s drew to a close, efforts increased throughout Appalachia to focus the attention of state and national leaders on the burgeoning crises in the hills. Rising welfare rolls and unemployment placed heavy burdens on state resources and spurred even non-Appalachian legislators, journalists, and private citizens to join the call for action. In the elections of 1960, candidates for governor in almost every Appalachian state endorsed programs to reduce poverty in the mountain counties, and in Kentucky, mountain lawyer and gubernatorial candidate Bert Combs promised to implement the recommendations of the Eastern Kentucky Regional Planning Commission. But it would take a national rediscovery of poverty throughout affluent America and the unexpected victory of a New England senator in the 1960 presidential primary to draw the nation's attention to the need for federal assistance to the region. Even then there would be little agreement on the sources of Appalachia's problems or the solutions to its distress. For the post–World War II generation, confident in its ability to sustain growth and to build a better life for everyone, Appalachia remained an American enigma.

I've been preachin' the gospel for 25 years, and I've never seen a time so bad.

—Levi McGeorge, pastor of the Closplint Church of God, Harlan County, Kentucky, February 1959

The winters of 1959 and 1960 were unusually harsh in Appalachia, bringing additional burdens to an already hard-pressed land. The destruction of the record flood of 1957 could still be seen in many mountain communities, and a national recession only deepened the economic crisis in the hills. Throughout central Appalachia, hundreds of displaced coal miners faced the specter of expired unemployment benefits and dwindling food supplies. Heavy snows and subfreezing temperatures resulted in several deaths from starvation and exposure. Kentucky governor Happy Chandler declared an emergency in eastern Kentucky and initiated a modest relief effort, but state resources were inadequate to meet the problem.
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Conditions were equally severe in West Virginia when Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts arrived to campaign in the 1960 Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy's subsequent victory in the West Virginia primary would mark a turning point in his drive to the presidency. Winning in the Mountain State settled the question of whether a Catholic candidate could carry a predominantly Protestant state and smoothed the senator's path to victory in other primaries. For Appalachia, however, the 1960 primary was a watershed of another kind. Events in West Virginia drew the attention of the federal
government and national media to the economic despair that had settled over the region.

When Senator Kennedy came to West Virginia, mountain villages were still digging out from heavy snows and bitter cold, the coldest March on record and the most snowfall since 1914.
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By April the campaign began to warm along with the weather, and the candidates carried their search for votes out of the urban areas and into the rural districts and coal camps of the southern part of the state. Political strategists expected that the issue of religion would dominate the campaign, as it had in other states, and Kennedy was prepared to confront religious bigotry head-on. But the crowds of unemployed coal miners who greeted the senator in places like Welch and Williamson and in dozens of other coal communities along Paint Creek, Cabin Creek, and the New River were less interested in the candidate's religion than in his plans to relieve their economic distress.

Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the only candidate to challenge Kennedy in the Mountain State, had raised concerns about economic conditions in the coalfields as early as January 1960. In a speech before the West Virginia Legislature, Humphrey attacked poverty in affluent America as “a national scandal,” but he failed to reach the people with his message, and he could not compete with the Kennedy money and political organization. Kennedy, who seemed genuinely stunned by the conditions he witnessed in the coal camps, turned the economic issue to his advantage, suggesting that he was the only candidate who could provide relief for the state, if West Virginians would send him to the White House. Tying himself to the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of Democrats who had brought the union and relief programs to the mountains during the Great Depression, Kennedy campaigned alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., who assured hungry coal miners that the Massachusetts senator would follow through on aid to depressed areas. On the eve of the May 10 primary, Kennedy went before television cameras and promised the people of West Virginia, “If I'm nominated and elected president, within sixty days of the start of my administration, I will introduce a program to the Congress for aid to West Virginia.” The next day Senator Kennedy received over 60 percent of the votes of West Virginia
Democrats for their party's presidential nomination, and Senator Humphrey withdrew from the race.
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While Democrats campaigned in West Virginia, state and local leaders in other Appalachian states pressed for federal assistance to the region. In January 1960 newly elected governor Bert T. Combs of Kentucky endorsed Program 60's recommendations as priority objectives for his administration, including the call for a meeting of Appalachian governors. Later that spring, concerned with the special problems of Maryland's Appalachian counties, Governor Millard Tawes invited the governors and representatives of seven Appalachian states to convene in Annapolis to coordinate state development efforts across the region. The first Conference of Appalachian Governors met on May 20, 1960, only ten days after the West Virginia primary and a week after President Eisenhower vetoed another depressed areas bill sent to him by Congress. The governors reviewed a report on economic conditions and population trends in eleven Appalachian states prepared by the Maryland Department of Economic Development.
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They resolved to push for further cooperation among the states, but they were unable to agree on support for federal action.