If you are interested in learning more about themes introduced in Portraits and Dreams, or about Appalachia, please visit our Delve Deeper Reading List where you will find an extensive list of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry resources for all ages.

A Culture of Resistance: The 2018 West Virginia Teachers’ Strike in Historical Perspective
An article written by Charles Keeney connecting contemporary labor struggles led by teachers in West Virginia in 2018 to a long history of organizing and resistance in the region. Explaining the historical roots of the term “redneck,” which was originally donned in 1921 as a symbol of solidarity and resistance amongst striking miners who were resisting abusive corporate power and corrupt politics.

Appalshop
Appalshop is a non-profit media, arts, and education center located in Whitesburg, Kentucky, in the heart of the central Appalachian region of the United States. Now in its 50th year, Appalshop's mission is to challenge stereotypes with Appalachian voices and visions; document the lasting traditions and contemporary creativity of rural America; support communities’ efforts to achieve justice and equity; and celebrate cultural diversity as a positive social value.

Beyond Measure (documentary)
A 1994 film by Herb E. Smith, that documents the efforts of coal communities to find stability in an ever-changing coal economy. People describe the importance of mutual aid and support in places where attachments to the land are more important than the things economists usually measure, prompting questions about the true costs of economic and technological change.

Black in Appalachia
Black in Appalachia is working to highlight the history of African-Americans in the development of our region and its culture. Through research, local narratives, public engagement and exhibition, this project aims to raise the visibility and contributions of the Black communities of the Mountain South. This project is a community service for Appalachian residents and families with roots in the region.

Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (documentary)
A 1975 film by Mimi Pickering that chronicles the 1972 disaster which killed 125 people and displaced 4,000 others when a coal-waste dam collapsed at the head of a hollow in Logan County, WV.

Charron, Katherine Mellen. Freedom’s Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark. Chapel Hill,NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009. To learn more about Septima Clark’s formative influence on grassroots education and activism that laid the foundation for Freedom Schools (you can also learn more here).

Harlan County, USA (documentary)
A 1976 film by Barbara Kopple that documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Duke Power-owned, Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. The miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America and started a strike which lasted more than a year and Eastover hired scabs to fill the jobs of regular mine employees. The tensions between the workers and the coal company often became violent, and resulted in the death of one of the miners.

Hazel Dickens: It’s Hard to Tell the Singer From the Song (documentary)
Mimi Pickering profiles the pioneering bluegrass artist and labor activist whose life as a working class woman found powerful expression through her music. Released in 2000, the film features interviews with Dickens and fellow musicians Alison Krauss, Naomi Judd, and Dudley Connell, as well as live performances of songs including Mama’s Hand, Working Girl Blues, and Black Lung.

Highlander Folk School Audio Collection (archived at the American Folk Life Center)
Horton, Myles; Kohl, Judith; & Kohl, Herbert. The Long Haul: An Autobiography. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1997.
In his own direct, modest, plain-spoken style, Myles Horton tells the story of the Highlander Folk School. A major catalyst for social change in the United States for more than sixty years, this school has touched the lives of so many people, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Pete Seeger. Filled with disarmingly honest insight and gentle humor, this is an inspiring hymn to the possibility of social change.

Justice in the Coalfields (documentary)
This 1995 film by Anne Lewis documents the 1988 United Mine Workers strike against the Pittston Coal Company and the community-wide outrage ignited by Pittston's termination of the medical benefits of 1,500 pensioners, widows, and disabled miners. The film captures the mass civil disobedience that resulted in over 4,000 arrests and features interviews with rank-and-file union members, a federal judge, a public interest lawyer, the coal company president, and the public affairs director of the National Right to Work Committee. Through the lens of the strike, Lewis explores how weakened labor laws cripple the collective bargaining power of unions and weigh the scales of justice against working people.

Razing Appalachia (documentary)
A film by Sasha Waters that explores the controversial issue of mountaintop removal mining by following a grassroots fight to stop the process in West Virginia. Set in Pigeonroost Hollow, a valley in the town of Blair in the misty folds of the Appalachian Mountains, the film follows the journey of several families as they struggle to protect their land. Pigeonroost, with its narrow creek and crawdads, its wild ginseng and raccoons, looks as it might have a century ago — a woody haven tucked away from the march of time and technology. But for how long? And at what price?

Sludge (documentary)
A 2005 film by Robert Salyer chronicling the Martin County Sludge spill that happened on October 11, 2000 when a coal sludge pond broke through an underground mine propelling 306 million gallons of sludge down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River. The Martin County sludge spill killed all aquatic life along 30 miles of river, damaged municipal water systems, and caused millions of dollars in property damage. This movie follows government agencies and community members through their clean up efforts and their attempts to understand the causes of a disaster 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Filmed over four years, the documentary chronicles the aftermath of the disaster, the Mine Safety and Health Administration whistleblower case of Jack Spadaro, and the looming threat of coal sludge ponds throughout the Appalchian mountains.

Southerners On New Ground (SONG)SONG is a national, chapter-based organization that envisions a sustainable South that embodies the best of its freedom traditions and works towards the transformation of our economic, social, spiritual, and political relationships. We envision a multi-issue southern justice movement that unites us across class, age, race, ability, gender, immigration status, and sexuality; a movement in which LGBTQ people – poor and working class, immigrant, people of color, rural – take our rightful place as leaders shaping our region’s legacy and future. We are committed to restoring a way of being that recognizes our collective humanity and dependence on the Earth.

Stranger With a Camera (documentary)
"A camera is like a gun," says filmmaker Colin Low of the National Film Board of Canada in the upcoming P.O.V documentary Stranger With a Camera. The program investigates the 1967 killing of Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor, who was shot while documenting poverty in the Kentucky coalfields. Director Elizabeth Barret looks at the death of O'Connor and the motivations of Hobart Ison, the irate property owner who shot him. Through her exploration of the tragic incident and its aftermath, Barret reflects on the power of media representations.

Strip Mining in Appalachia (documentary)
A 1973 film by Gene DuBey, and an early Appalshop examination of the desecration of land and communities through surface mining of coal. A mine operator’s opinion that environmental impact is minimal is contrasted with statements from people whose homes have been ruined by bad mining practices. Aerial footage is used to show strip mines, while a biologist provides a scientific explanation of what this mining method does to the land.

Strip Mining: Energy, Environment, and Economics (documentary)
A 1979 film by Frances Morton and Gene DuBey that looks at the history of the controversial method of strip mining which accounts for over half of the coal produced in Appalachia and is the region’s most conspicuous environmental problem. The process of strip mining forces local people to choose between jobs and the beauty, ecology, and in some ways, the very existence of the mountains upon which they live. This film examines strip mining as a method, the citizens’ movement organized to stop it, and the battle to regulate strip mining that culminated in the passage of the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Digital Gateway to learn more about the role and evolution of the Highlander Folk School in the Civil Rights Movement

The Stay Together Appalachian Youth Project
A network of young people, aged 14-30, who are committed to supporting one another to make Appalachia a place we can and want to STAY.

United Mine Workers of America (History)
The United Mine Workers of America is a diverse union with membership that includes coal miners, manufacturing workers, clean coal technicians, health care workers, corrections officers, and public employees that has been organizing for over 125 years.

You Got to Move (1985, documentary)
A film by Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver that follows people from communities in the Southern United States in their various processes of becoming involved in social change. The film’s centerpiece is the Highlander Folk School, an 80-year-old center for education and social action where each person featured in the film learned to organize and work on the frontlines of social change.

Wendy Ewald
For educators interested in learning more about Ewald’s approach to participatory arts education, you can visit her website and see her full bibliography that includes educational publications.