I Pledge Allegiance to Affrilachia

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• I Pledge Allegiance to Affrilachia
• Marie T. Cochran (bio)

Being a Black person from Appalachia can be summed up in that old Facebook relationship status: It's complicated.

During my childhood, I enjoyed The Waltons, a popular 1970s TV show about a hardscrabble white family in the Virginia mountains, as much as I enjoyed Good Times, the story of an irrepressible Black family in Chicago's Cabrini-Green public housing community.

My Black friends from Atlanta and other cities look askance when I mention I had simultaneous crushes on the sensitive aspiring writer John-Boy (the eldest Walton son) and Michael Evans, the smart, politically conscious youngest child on Good Times.

I'm used to this reaction. I've always been teased because I was born and raised in the foothills of Georgia's Appalachian Mountains—a place not known for having Black communities or Deep South "chocolate cities."

But Appalachia is a crossroads—where African, European, and Indigenous people collided and co-existed. As a friend recently remarked, "We were 'intersectional' before the word existed." In the best of times, the regional camaraderie flows in an easy familiar manner 'cause everybody knows 'your momma and them. In the worst of times, I've despaired of finding better ways to co-exist on this land. As I'm crafting these emotions into sentences—and this native daughter returned to Georgia after many years away—I am still sorting out how I feel about this place called home.

I was born in Toccoa, in Stephens County, Georgia. Even these place names express the dissonance I feel about my geographic roots.

"Toccoa" is a word of Cherokee origin; almost every local Chamber of Commerce brochure claims that translated into English it means "the beautiful," though it was probably derived from "tagwahi," meaning "Catawba place." My high school mascot is still the Indians, boldly and inaccurately adorned in Plains Indian headgear. There was hardly any mention in our history classes of the "Trail of Tears" that removed Indigenous people from this area of northeast Georgia, nothing about the reasons why, and no thoughtful contemporary attempt to connect with the culture we claim to honor on the athletic field.

The county is named after Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy during the Civil War. He is commemorated with a bronze plaque on the grounds of the county courthouse. This official marker does not refer to his infamous "Cornerstone Address," delivered in Savannah in March 1861. There, he stated the logic behind the Confederacy's creation: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition." [End Page 2]

Clearly, there was no place in Stephens' vision for me, but the Confederacy did not prevail. I am a Black female who was a first-generation college student. My parents spent their teens being "the help" and then labored in the textile mill as adults. I am the grandchild of sharecroppers and the great-grand of enslaved people. As an heir of the Civil Rights Movement, I claimed the freedom to become an artist, curator, and educator. I also embraced the role of cultural pollinator and mentor to many. I've earned two degrees, and much of my work connects colleges to grassroots communities. I am a Black Southerner, and my experience, though it defies the white hillbilly stereotype, is assuredly Appalachian.

The inhabitants of Appalachia are as diverse as its terrain—which ranges from soaring peaks to gentle hillsides, and from rural agricultural communities to bustling metropolitan municipalities. Yet when we talk about the region, Appalachia is narrowly defined and caricatured. Very little attention has been paid to the Black individuals and communities for whom this place has been home for generations.

Responding to the persistent erasure of our presence, I often say: "Small numbers, tremendous impact." The historic impact of grassroots Black folks upon these ancient mountains can be found in a range of examples: from inmates who constructed the railroads of western North Carolina to the Highlander Center in East Tennessee, where multiracial civil rights allies strategized...