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CASE STUDY: HANCOCK COUNTY, TENNESSEE

During the War on Poverty days several of us enlisted, with our students, to help this Appalachian county, which was ranked as the seventh poorest in per capita income (1965). (We learned that this ranking was deceptive in that many people there still practiced the barter economy, and so the level of living was higher than the per capita income figure might suggest. For example, a farmer there might have a very low cash income, but he traded commodities and work around with his neighbors and lived rather well.)

The county is shaped like a triangle. It borders Virginia and Kentucky on the north. It is essentially a series of mountain ridges and long valleys running northeast to southwest. Access is difficult. It has no rail service and no US highway. The only industry there in the late 1960s was a zinc mine. The county, including the schools, was the major employer.

We began our work by identifying the persons with a reputation for being community-decision makers. They were pretty evenly divided into two factions of the Republican Party. We interviewed them about their perception of how the problem of poverty in the county might be addressed, what resources they could identify, and who they believed were the persons who might provide leadership in addressing the problem.

The issues identified focused on access, no industry, and poor schools. Resources included a work force that commuted to the furniture industries in Morristown and possessed skills in this line of work, natural beauty, persons with craft skills and the Melungeons, a mysterious race of people, the origins of whom were lost in antiquity.

One of our informants, a minister, shared with us his idea of having an outdoor drama featuring the Melungeons. He knew that there was wide-spread interest in them elsewhere, and prejudice toward them within the county. He felt that the drama could draw from the outside and could reduce prejudice within. It proved that he was right.

Grants for constructing a crude theater and the writing of a play by successful outdoor dramatist Kermit Hunter were secured. College students on "work-study" and locals acted in the play. A VISTA worker put together a craft guild. And a shop in a log house at the theater site became an outlet. The drama was adopted by the state Humanities Commission and this became a "pry pole" that was used to extract appropriations for road development.

The road improvements seemed to be what was needed to get an entrepreneur to move an electric motor plant to Sneedville, the county seat. And this brought a favorable response to a request for funds to further develop an industrial park. This in turn seems to have added some encouragement to two furniture plants headed by Hancock County natives, who had worked in Morristown, to locate in the town.

The state condemned the school, so a new facility was built. And another native who had become dean at the University of Tennessee arranged for the area educational television station to be located in the county. This helped.

We were careful to mix leadership from both political factions on the development committee. And the drama and other development activities seemed to help the county residents become more cooperative.

I wish I could report "and everyone lived happily ever after." However, the mine shut down. So all of the effort netted only a few jobs, mostly at lower pay. The county is still in the top ten in the poverty rankings. (Our efforts may have only deprived the county of being number one.) The bright, highly motivated children still grow up, go to college, and seldom return. The drama ran five seasons and then folded. The enigmatic statue of a World War I Italian soldier still gathers pigeons on the courthouse lawn. And people are still trying to understand the origins of the Melungeons of Newman's Ridge. But we tried. We learned. We are all better for the effort.