Coal Towns, Their Past and Present

By DON ROLLINS

Despite the wind and snow flurries of a fickle hill county spring, dozens were lined up in tiny McArthur, Ohio last month to pick up a two-week supply of fresh produce and staples. A local paper described a food line reminiscent of the former coal town’s Depression era, as singles, couples and families waited in queue.

The items were distributed by the shoe-lace budgeted social welfare agency, Indivisible Appalachian Ohio, with an aim to reach hungry people at or 200% below the federal poverty rate. In other words, put food in the bellies of some of Ohio’s poorest, most underserved residents.

McArthur is typical of post-coal poverty in rural Central Appalachia. Although by no means the land of one-dimensional hillbilly stereotypes (a place to be “fixed” at best) the reality is much of the region is struggling mightily in face of closed or closing mines.

Poverty was sure to rise once the layoffs started, and it has. In West Virginia alone, mining has fallen to 1.4% of the workforce, representing a 90% decline since peaking in 1940. As these well-paying jobs are cut or eliminated, the ripple effect is being felt in related industries and local economies: orders for machinery are plummeting, and property values in those areas are declining, lowering the tax base for schools and services.

These forces conspire to present economically vulnerable Appalachians with the choice to leave or scratch out a living on mostly service industry jobs. Some who stay are making it on their own; others are waiting in line for something to eat.

Yet there’s good news to be had on both the macro and micro levels, starting with the macro where coal country’s suffering has become a topic of research and discussion. Case in point, a much-cited 2012 study of deep poverty in Central Appalachia done by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville provides a systemic approach for change. Drawing from 10 counties up and down the Appalachian chain, researchers identified a number of ready-to-go, best-practice strategies for honoring history yet confronting the lingering “culture of coal” that contributes to chronic poverty.

For community leaders who get the link between economic health and lifting people out of at-risk circumstances, there are plenty of evidence-driven templates like the one above. But sometimes it’s about the small scale.

Whitesburg, Kentucky (population 2,000) has for decades been a case study for what happens when the mines close. Broken buildings, broken schools, broken people. And no compelling vision until a coalition of oldtimers, millennials and artsy types decided to take some calculated risks by starting and courting mostly funky businesses.

Eschewing most outside funding, the locally focused business model has revived the town, and consequently raised the standard of living for those on the margins. Not all has been smooth in Whitesburg’s second coming, and the local economy remains fragile in some key areas. But the progress is testament to what small community life could be like once the coal mines go silent.

McArthur and Whitesburg make clear there can be no one model for how Central Appalachian communities can survive the end of coal. Each has it’s own challenges, its own resources. But like the coal industry itself, time is running out for hundreds of those hamlets. Those that survive will continue to honor their pasts, but forsake trying to live there.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister and substance abuse counselor living in Pittsburgh, Pa. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2019

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