Learn about the women who worked hard to bring positive change to Appalachia in a presentation titled “West Virginia History Makers: Black Women’s Activism in the Archives” on Wednesday, Sept. 15, at 6:30 p.m. at the Kanawha City Community Center in Charleston.
Dr. Tamara Bailey, an assistant professor of history and coordinator of Wesleyan Abroad at West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Dr. Sheena Harris, an associate professor of history and coordinator of the Africana Studies Program at West Virginia University, will discuss the lives of Black women activists and educators from West Virginia and their use of women’s archives.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the fourteenth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
My family didn’t have many guests over for dinner. And when we did, it was one of my close friends who felt comfortable enough to sprawl out on the living room floor and chow down on Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza. So, reading about a stuffy, formal, and extremely important dinner in the life of Ruth L. Gaskins, the author of A Good Heart and A Light Hand, was a foreign experience for me. Her family’s esteemed guest is in the name of this post; it’s the Preacher’s dinner.
“No one had to remind us about our manners because it was understood that if you ever wanted desserts again, you’d be extra careful that day.”
Before digging in, the Preacher would say grace for literally everyone. Winston Churchill, random white men, and widows made the list of blessings. I’m serious. The evidence is here:
Apart from dinner at Ruth’s house, the Church held community dinners where they served favorites like chitterlings (hog entrails), greens, potato salad, and trays of dessert. The food was a big operation, and the income was too. Ruth said, “Most churches are big business, but I’ve never known anyone who has ever complained about giving them money. They do so much for us, that we’re more than willing to keep them going.”
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Arlington, VA.
Just by reading the elaborate menus for Church events, I understand that it is a social hub and treasured piece of life’s fabric. I did a bit of research on why the Church took such an important role and learned that enslaved people had no choice but to hold secret meetings for worship. Before emancipation, practicing one’s religion and enjoying a sense of community were strictly prohibited. These freedoms are some of the greatest joys of being human, and necessary for happiness. I understand why freedom from slavery coincided with fierce and public dedication to a social institution that was cruelly withheld for so long. This cookbook told me more about family life, religion, and what mattered than I remember from most history textbooks. Although my memory is somewhat fried, I know these relics of history offer something tasty and special.
Senator Rockefeller was appointed to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) in January 2001. His tenure coincided with some of the most critical years for the SSCI and the intelligence community. Only eight months after joining the SSCI, terrorists carried out attacks on U.S. soil on September 11. The 9/11 attacks thrust the Intelligence Community, and consequently the SSCI, into the limelight in unprecedented ways and changed the nature of the conduct of intelligence oversight.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
September 8th, 2021
Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC
Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It will be a day of remembrance to honor the 2977 immediate victims of the attacks, those who died later, and their families who lost so much. The events of 9/11 are painful memories, but remembrance is important. Many people have their own 9/11 story. The West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) is now preserving an extraordinary one.
WVU Economics Professor Tom Witt was in New York for an academic conference on 9/11/2001. The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) was being held in the Marriot Hotel at 3 World Trade Center located in between the Twin Towers. Witt and his wife, Grethe, were at ground zero during the attacks and narrowly escaped. Their experience has been recounted in local media over the years and now an archival collection documenting it is part of the holdings of the WVRHC. The Tom S. Witt September 11 Collection contains some of Witt’s recovered personal belongings, local and national newspapers with 9/11 content, as well as a number of books in which his story is told. The collection is available for research at the History Center. It will be preserved in perpetuity.
Photographs of selected items from the collection:
A letter from New York City Police Officer Richard Conte returning some of Witt’s belongings.
Dr. Witt’s crushed Palm Pilot (a small handheld computer) recovered in the debris.
Dr. Witt’s NABE conference name badge and meeting documents.
Dr. Witt’s NABE conference bag.
Typed recollections of the day by Tom Witt.
Typed recollections of the day by Tom Witt’s wife, Grethe Myles.
Twenty years later, 9/11 is a day that lives vividly in the memory of many who lived through it. A younger generation has grown up seeing the tragic footage and learning about the events and the aftermath. As strange it seems now, there will come a time when the events of 9/11 are not so close to the hearts and minds of Mountaineers and the American people. Witt’s collection at the WVRHC captures the horror of the day and the resilience of a 9/11 survivor for those future researchers.
Photograph of a white rose placed in a name along the border of a reflecting pool at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York City, July 2021. Photo by the author.
Notes:
In this 2016 MetroNews article, Dr. Witt details his experience. The article also includes audio of his interview with WV Public Broadcasting while the events unfolded on September 11, 2001.
In 2011, WVU Today interviewed Dr. Witt and remembered WVU alumni Chris Gray and Jim Samuels, who were killed in the attack.
View of lower Manhattan’s buildings behind a bridge spanning a calm river. The Twin Towers stand tall above other buildings, reaching up to a clear blue sky. Photo by David Monderer, provided by the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.
WVU Libraries will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy with “September 11, 2001: The Day that Changed the World,” an exhibit at Evansdale Library that presents the history of 9/11 and its ongoing implications through the personal stories of those who witnessed and survived the attacks.
Told across 14 posters, the exhibition includes archival photographs and images of artifacts from the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s permanent collection. It explores the consequences of terrorism on individual lives and communities at the local, national, and international levels, and encourages critical thinking about the legacies of 9/11.
“During this 20th anniversary year, it is our privilege to share these lessons with a new generation, teach them about the ongoing repercussions of the 9/11 attacks and inspire them with the idea that, even in the darkest of times, we can come together, support one another and find the strength to renew and rebuild,” said 9/11 Memorial & Museum President and CEO Alice M. Greenwald.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the thirteenth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
Given the scraps of the plantation, enslaved people did their best to tast-ify undesirable and spoiled food. I knew very little about how they transformed leftovers into something edible, or how they creatively discovered natural supplements.
Tell me if this sounds familiar: a few lessons on slavery in high school that focused on important rebellions, brutality and punishment, and maybe the Underground Railroad. Or, it could be that my education didn’t hit the minimum. Either way, I was intrigued and impressed by Ruth L. Gaskins’ description of adapted food from times of slavery in her cookbook, A Good Heart and A Light Hand. I’d kill to taste the slow-moving molasses and creamy buttermilk she writes about.
The right side of this chart shows recipes that Ruth makes from ingredients that were staples in the diets of enslaved people in Virginia.
Common foods eaten by enslaved people (according to Ruth)
Selected cookbook recipe(s) using this food
Corn
Hoe Cakes – Corn Meal Method Raised Cornbread
Pork
Chitterlings (Hog entrails) Pork Cake
Wild Game
Muskrat, Squirrel, Rabbit – Caught and Skinned Casserole of Possum
Fish
Fish Baked in the Ground
Why focus on the metamorphosis of plantation food to Ruth’s cookbook?
Understanding the historical processes that shape dietary habits, especially those as profound and cruel as slavery, helps you grasp today’s patterns, customs, and even health outcomes.
I traveled to Baltimore, Maryland a few summers ago to a food festival dedicated to Black culinary traditions. I heard people shout, “Soul food is not plantation food!” I was confused for a while, then a speaker at the event explained that the dietary habits of Black Americans are heavily stereotyped. Fried, greasy, and barbequed are words that stick to society’s vision of “Black food,” and the root of the issue dates back to slavery. With nothing but leftovers, enslaved people did what they could to make scrape palatable, whether that meant frying undesirable meat or adding fat to supplement calories.
This article by Christina Regelski says that “Slaves depended on salty, fatty foods to survive demanding work.” It also discusses what enslaved people were provided during transit from Africa or elsewhere: “Rations were scientifically calculated to provide the cheapest, minimal nutrition to keep enslaved people alive.”
Even so, I learned that small plantations permitted higher quality food to be eaten by enslaved people, sometimes the same meals as the owners. Chef Thérèse Nelson, the founder of Black Culinary History, said “It’s not always the slop leftover narrative,” she added. “We saw value in these parts, and made them delicious.”
With a simple Google search, I found that African food is full of vitamins and minerals, a plant-based diet that supports longevity and health. If you look around at trendy Black-owned restaurants, you’ll notice a resurgence of traditional “Black food” in a way that is directed by Black cooks themselves.
As an aspiring doctor, I care about health inequities. I want to understand why certain groups suffer more than others from diet-linked diseases like obesity or diabetes. Taking time to read about the history and subjugation of not just bodies, but diets, unveils current health issues in a new light. It’s not so much “Black food” as “Forced-on-enslaved-people-by-white-people food.”
“These basic ingredients- corn, pork, chicken, greens, seafood, sour or buttermilk and molasses have stayed with us for 300 years, and still form the heart of Negro cooking.”
Not to say that things haven’t changed. Innovations and regional adaptations took place. However, noticing the ingredients and where they came from fosters awareness of why Black food is often misunderstood and misrepresented.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
August 27th, 2021
Blog post by Rachael Barbara Nicholas, WV National Digital Newspaper Project grant assistant, WVRHC
Nathaniel Willis was the first of several great literary men in his family, including his grandson, author and poet, Nathaniel Parker Willis. Willis published the Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser in Boston during the American Revolution. He also participated in the Boston Tea Party and served as an adjutant in the Continental Army. Willis sold his interest in the Chronicle in 1784 and relocated to Winchester, Virginia, as the editor of Willis’s Winchester Gazette & Public Advertiser. He moved to Shepherdstown in 1790 and began to print the Potowmac Guardian and Berkeley Advertiser before moving a third time to Martinsburg, where the paper underwent two name changes (the Potomak Guardianand Berkeley Advertiser in 1795 and the Potomak Guardian in 1798). Willis presented his paper as a source of national and international news that curious readers could comment on through letters to the editor. Although the content on the first page varied, the second and third usually contained articles on major events and speeches from significant political figures. The fourth concluded with poetry, titled the “Seat of the Muses,” and a series of advertisements.
A “patriotic song” commemorating the French Revolution
The Early Republic was a fruitful era for newspaper content. The Age of Revolutions could be felt in France, Haiti, Greece, and Latin America. Anglo-Americans watched with interest from the United States in the aftermath of their own revolution. The adherents of Jeffersonian Republicanism who patronized the Potowmac Guardian and Berkeley Advertiser scanned its columns for the latest updates from France. They praised the French Revolution and celebrated “the cause of democratic republicanism” in France, drawing comparisons between the French and American Revolutions. The Seat of the Muses published a poem “by a citizen of Belfast” echoing the sentiments of Jefferson’s adherents: “Should France be subdu’d—Europe’s liberty ends/if she triumphs—the WORLD will be free.” So “let ev’ry true Patriot unite in her cause/a cause of such moment to man/let all whose souls spurn at tyrannical laws/lend her all the assistance they can.” Although the poet was presumably writing for an Irish audience, Jeffersonians recognized the call to “spurn at tyrannical laws” as their own.
Willis and his Jeffersonian audience used the press to denounce laws that seemed tyrannical. They had to remain vigilant against tyranny if they wished to maintain their republican identities. The Jay Treaty (1794) and the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) afforded several opportunities for protesting tyranny and defending political virtue. The Jay Treaty mitigated the threat of war and promoted peaceful trade between Great Britain and United States during the French Revolutionary Wars. Jeffersonians believed the treaty would undercut republicanism at the expense of France, America’s would-be ally, and strengthen aristocracy. More than that, many felt it was a betrayal of France, who was at war with Great Britain. Willis published a letter that he attributed to the Minister of the French Republic, which lambasted America for scorning her friends in France. “Those who went to brave tempests and death upon the ocean, forgot all dangers in order to indulge the hope of visiting that American continent where… the French colours had been displayed in favor of liberty,” the author asserted. “Under the guarantee of the laws of nations… they expected to find in the ports of the United States an asylum as sure as at home.” Instead, they found a British-American alliance. Indignant Jeffersonians sympathized with the French and burned effigies of John Jay in contempt.
The Alien and Sedition Acts impacted Willis personally as a newspaper editor. The Sedition Act criminalized the making of false statements directed at the federal government during the Quasi War, an undeclared naval war with France. Critics of the act argued that Federalists were using the Quasi War to justify the suppression of dissent from Democratic-Republicans. Willis announced his opposition to the Sedition Act when he changed the header of the Potomak Guardian in 1799. The new header read, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The audience of the Potomak Guardian agreed, sharing their opinions with Willis. A reader calling himself “A True Republican” condemned the publication of “impudent and scandalous falsehoods” and believed Congress could “restrain by law the writing and publishing [of] any thing which tends to prevent the execution of any power vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States.” Those stipulations aside, he could not accept the Alien and Sedition Acts, which he deemed “dreadful.”
Willis remained the editor and publisher until October 30, 1799, when Armstrong Charlton succeeded him, publishing the last known issue of the Potomak Guardian on January 8, 1800. Willis professed his intention to leave Martinsburg on December 4, 1799, and subsequently moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he established the Scioto Gazette.
West Virginia University Libraries’ “Appalachian Futures” exhibit has made its second stop on its tour of Appalachia. The exhibition will be on display at Appalachian State University’s Belk Library through December.
“Appalachian Futures” is the Art in the Libraries’ second annual collaborative, multidisciplinary project advancing important conversations in the region. The exhibit addresses the dominant contemporary narratives about Appalachia in a new way — how the people of Appalachia have worked and will work to rewrite their own narrative and transcend limiting definitions of what it means to be Appalachian.
“’Appalachian Futures’ takes us beyond the stereotypes to paint a rich and multi-layered picture of what it means to be Appalachian,” Libraries Exhibits Coordinator Sally Brown said.
“These covers reflect not only past US history, but also current practices regarding twenty-first century immigration policies and discourse in both political and popular culture,” Caronia said.
Farina researched the early conceptualizations of botanic life in the pre-modern medicine world, as well as its effect on philosophy, art, and literature. She will discuss the categorization and naming of plants in ancient and medieval cultures, with a special focus on herbals.
The exhibit should present an evolution of one’s work by visualizing research, influences, and findings. The goals of these awards are to provide a multidisciplinary platform for deeper learning, while fostering intellectual discourse, in order to demonstrate the breadth of WVU’s creative and innovative activities.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the twelfth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
If my parents started acting like social butterflies, they’re either sick or about to win a lot of money. Unlike me, Ruth L. Gaskins, the author of A Good Heart and A Light Hand, had the most social parents under the sun. They belonged to more clubs than I did freshman year of college (when I signed up for EVERYTHING at club fairs). I’d never heard of these organizations: the American Legion and the United Order of Tents. A bit morbidly, the Order of Tents paid for your funeral if you sent them fifty cents a month, like an insurance company for funerals. If you want a fancier funeral, you’d pay a dollar a month.
“My Grandmother was a Tent, Mama is a Tent, and so am I. I was signed up for the Junior Division when I was nine…” Ruth was not an active member, but she was required to attend every club supper in the winter and summer with her family.
This cookbook was the most detailed description of daily life I found during my dive into the Ebersole Collection. Ruth didn’t focus on an extensive ingredient list, but rather to immerse the reader in a day in her life. I learned something special: what matters to her.
When Ruth mentioned the Luncheon Club, her tone lurched downwards. In this club, her mother and friends would dress up, set an extravagant table, and cook intricate meals that “would really get away from the traditional foods.”
“Playing White” meant diverging from tradition. I understood it as behaving in a ridiculous and impractical manner. At the same time, I was served a tray of “check your privilege.” I don’t have to justify having a fancy dinner with friends, but I suspect that some disadvantaged groups still do not share that privilege.
Published in the transformative and rough years of the Civil Rights Movement, A Good Heart and A Light Hand reiterates that many Black women had a double responsibility to the family and to further social progress. All things considered, I don’t blame Ruth for rolling her eyes at the extravagance of Luncheon Club activities.
Making these opinions even more magical, Ruth’s bombs of truth are innocently tucked away in a spiral-bound notebook, only a few pages away from a hot cocoa recipe.
Blog post by Jane LaBarbara,Assistant Curator, WVRHC.
Since we are a week away from the anniversary of her birth (August 16, 1913), I’d like to celebrate Helen Louise (Froelich) Holt. She was the wife of Rush Dew Holt, who was generally credited with being the youngest popularly elected senator in the U.S. Senate, and she was a very educated woman and a public servant in her own right. The WVRHC houses a collection of her papers.
Helen Holt was more academically accomplished than most women of her day, and had a career in education before moving into politics. She received an AA degree at Stephens College, and then a Bachelors degree and an MS in Zoology at Northwestern University by 1938. (For contrast, only 4% of women in 1940 had completed four years of college.) From 1938-1941, she taught science courses at National Park College.
According to an obituary, Mrs. Holt first attracted her future husband’s attention when she was included in the February 12, 1940 issue of Life, where a photograph of her appeared as one of a selection of pretty schoolteachers. The two-page spread was allegedly prompted by mass retaliation to a letter from a reader claiming that many schoolteachers were ugly.
Headshot of Helen (Froelich) Holt, 1940, from Life magazine
There was a brief article accompanying the pictures that pointed out the average salary of schoolteachers (presumably K-12) was $1,200 per year and suggested that teachers lost their jobs when they married, though it wasn’t noted whether this was the result of transitioning to the role of wife and homemaker or if marriage was generally cause for termination of a teaching position in 1940. (I have heard rumors that women who married were terminated from teaching jobs – if anyone has facts to share about this practice, please feel free to share them in the comments!) Regardless of how they met, Helen and Rush married in mid-June of 1941 and moved to West Virginia.
Between 1941 and 1955, Mrs. Holt cared for three children and supported her husband’s campaigns and political work. In 1955, her husband died, and she was appointed by the governor of West Virginia to fulfill her late husband’s term in the West Virginia House of Delegates. She then was elected as a delegate to the 1956 Republican National Convention, accepted a short-term teaching job at Greenbrier College, and followed that with a history-making appointment.
Articles from various West Virginia and Washington D.C. newspapers announcing Mrs. Holt’s new position, 1957
According to the above articles, Helen Holt was the first woman ever to serve on the Board of Public Works AND the first woman to ever serve as secretary of state when she was appointed to that position following the death of the long-serving D. Pitt O’Brien. Based on the articles, it sounds like she moved her family from Lewisburg to Charleston in a matter of days, and started the position earning $11,000 per year to support herself and her children.
Secretary of State Helen F. Holt holding up West Virginia state flag, ca. 1958
Her work as secretary of state allowed her to show more of her skills and make additional political contacts, which helped bring her to the attention of the President Eisenhower. He appointed her to serve as Special Assistant to the Commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration for Nursing Homes Program in 1960. From there she transitioned to assistant to the secretary for programs for the elderly and the handicapped in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1974, and she continued her federal service until 1983. Her time working for the federal government spanned the careers of seven presidents, and she helped develop and implement a federal nursing home program from the ground up, advocating for quality care across the U.S.
Barbara Bush, Helen Holt, and Nancy Reagan, undated
After concluding her career, Mrs. Holt continued to participate in volunteer work, including in a variety of women’s organizations and church groups. She lived to be over 100 years old, passing away in 2015. Please join me in celebrating this remarkable woman!
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the eleventh post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
After a busy day at North Elementary School, I used to knock on all my friends’ doors to see who was home and ready to play. One of them would pull me inside and say, “My mom says we can play after dinner. Eat with us!”
I’d always get nervous and say, “Are you sure? I don’t wanna invite myself!”
To young me, inviting oneself over was rude and invasive. My family told me not to be a burden, to respect privacy. Reading another cookbook at the West Virginia & Regional History Center, I learned that my upbringing differs from that of a community-oriented woman named Ruth L. Gaskins. She taught me to embrace any opportunity, maybe just more than before, to invite myself over and share a meal with a friend.
A Good Heart and A Light Hand by Ruth L. Gaskins was published in 1968 in a world where family extended beyond the nuclear definition of mother, father, siblings, etc. Ruth describes a tradition of welcoming guests as “the Negro Welcome.”
Here it is:
Ruth contextualized this Welcome through slavery: “For over 200 years we were told where to live and where to work… The only real comfort came at the end of the day, when we took either the food that we were given, or the food that we raised… and we sat down with our own kind and talked and sang and ate.”
Restaurant food isn’t a big deal when you cook all day for a family reunion in your own home. However, the Welcome can travel, and does so mostly to the Church.
We’ll talk more about the significant role of the Church later; I’ll wrap up this post with a reflection on inviting yourself to another’s home.
Boundaries and etiquette should always be considered, but this spiral-bound cookbook introduced me to a different way of life. “Tight friends” understand their automatic invitation to come over and share a meal. My childhood buddies didn’t hesitate to pull me inside. It took years of social conditioning in middle and high school to make me believe that I should mind my business or avoid being a bother. If someone is bothering me, I’d probably let them know! For too long, I incorrectly assumed that I was a nuisance or that an invitation wasn’t genuine.
When I extend my home and kitchen to you, I mean it. Ruth and her community meant it. Traveling abroad during college revealed a multitude of cultures and families that love having new guests over for dinner. Food takes on a new role: a way to welcome, display affection, and become part of a community.
“A Negro kitchen belongs to any woman who wants to use it.”
Blog post by Linda Blake, University Librarian Emerita, WVRHC
I continue to enjoy histories related to areas where I grew up, the Appalachians, West Virginian specifically. In this blog post I describe three novels set here. All the books are available in the West Virginia University Libraries as well as in many West Virginia public and college libraries.
The first book, Mud and Money, delivers a multi-generational family saga set during the gas and oil well boom in Gilmer County. The second and third books, Clay’s Quilt and The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake, are firmly about masculinity. The characters are males in their twenties and the novels are about their coping in Appalachia. Strong women characters are not absent from these two books, but the stories really revolve around men.
Mud and Money centers around the oil and gas boom in Gilmer County, West Virginia, before, during, and after the WWI years. Ellyson writes about the impact of the oil and gas industry on the lives of the people. She details descriptions of the functioning of the wells and drilling and provides an historical record of the industry’s early days. This passage in the first pages of the book, gives the reader a portent of the impact of the oil and gas industry on farming communities.
Bed clothes were sunning in the yard, while downy little chicks peeped contentedly in the sun in the wake of the proud mother. When the deafening roar filled the little universe, it was changed for ever [sic] more. Immediately everybody stopped work and listened, fear chilling their hearts, for always sounds that are unfamiliar have brought great fear to the human race.
Central West Virginians will particularly appreciate the descriptions of the hardships, family life, struggles, and culture of early 20th century farm life as well as the vivid descriptions of the beauty and peace in the mountains. Through the story of the Mills family and others in the small community of Tanner, the novel personalizes the impact of industrial development.
While many characters are stereotypical in Mud and Money, such as the self-sacrificing mother, the wise old granny, the plodding father, the characters are also likable, despicable, and human. The reader will find herself cheering them on, except for the despicable fellow. The plot lines will keep you reading as you follow the struggles of the Mills family and their neighbors through generations.
The early oil and gas industry in West Virginia is well documented in the WVRHC through books and archival collections. To search the archives as well as for books, photographs, and printed ephemera, visit the WVRHC web page.
Clay’s Quilt, the first of three companion novels by Silas House, are all set in rural Kentucky and include some of the same characters. The other two books are A Parchment of Leaves and The Coal Tattoo.
Clay is Clay Sizemore, a coal miner. The book demonstrates the quilt of his life made up of the squares of his relationships with family and friends. At the root of the story is the impact of his mother being killed when he was four years old and how that tragedy reverberates through time. Other central characters in the book include Aunt Easter who raised Clay; the wild Evangeline, his friend since childhood; Alma, the troubled fiddle player; and Cake, another long-time friend. All of these contribute to the uniquely Appalachian story of growing up in coal country.
One of Silas House’s best talents is scene description, and although he sets a mood with his lovingly crafted descriptions of nature and the mountains,
The top of the mountain was lit with a silver glow, and the clouds above the moon were streaks of white, liquid light. He considered the mountain and felt like climbing it. He hadn’t been up there at night in ages. He heard it calling to him, telling him that if he would go up those old paths, he might see something that would answer one of his many questions, but he turned away…
I particularly identified with this lively church scene:
God was loose in the church house, and the Holy Ghost ran rampant among the people, sizzling through the air and hitting the women until they were forced to shake with wild abandon, succumbing to the spirit, throwing their heads back and speaking in unknown tongues, dancing out into the pews and rushing round and round the church, swaying like waterless swimmers in front of the alter, screaming loudly and taking off to run up and down the aisle.
Give House’s books a try for vivid descriptions of our mountains and for a good story with readily identifiable Appalachian characters.
Breece D’J Pancake was just a fabulous writer. His stories are also steeped in maleness and coal country and offer an unquestionable and impactful literary style which continues to be read and studied since Pancake’s death at 26 years old in 1979. The West Virginia and Regional History Center holds the papers of Breece Pancake.
Pancake vividly uses strong metaphors and analogies to describe the West Virginia of those caught in despair. For example, the search for trilobites in the first story symbolizes the unfruitful search through layers for answer to the Colly’s problems, and Prince Albert, who is both royalty and an image on a tobacco can is trapped just the same as coal miners underground. He excels at setting a tone with each word brilliantly chosen. Here he describes a fall morning before a fox hunt.
The passing of an autumn night left no mark on the patchwork blacktop of the secondary road that led to Parkins. A gray ooze of light began to crest the eastern hills above the hollow and sift a blue haze through the black bowels of linking oak branches. A small wind shivered, and sycamore leaves chattered across the pavement but were stopped by the fighting-green orchard grass on the berm.
While “Trilobites” is the most anthologized story, another one resonated the most with me. “The Honored Dead” is about the conflict in men who continue to be at war even after leaving service. The narrator has opted out of going to Vietnam, but the story is mostly about his friend who died there and the guilt and distress of taking his place in some ways. This survivor’s guilt affected a whole generation. In addition, there is the narrator’s father who still suffers from his WWII experiences and his grandfather who fought in the Mine Wars, which to West Virginians was just as impactful as any declared national conflict.
While these stories are intellectually illuminating, they are also deeply dark. Most jolting to me is the raw edge Pancake gives them using unseemly acts of violence such as hunting and killing animals, rape, and imagined murder.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the tenth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
What women were expected to do, how to do it, and why they should do it is spelled out word for word in Freda de Knight’s cookbook. I felt like I was studying a women’s manual for proper household management, subscribing to a cooking tips blog, and learning a history lesson all at once.
A Date with a Dish is packed with “women’s advice and tips.” Written for women by a woman, I felt an intimacy created by mutual understanding of strictly female responsibilities at the time. Here’s a few of her strong suggestions for women:
Freda’s recommendations jumped out at me for different reasons. I resonated with some and went pffffft at others. I was not expecting a cookbook to instruct me on color schemes, silverware placement, calorie counting, or how to raise children.
Some of the most interesting tips from Freda:
“If your room is dark, make your table bright; add your sunshine”
“Create a picture when you set a table… give your table personality”
“And if you want to keep your weight down along with your doctor’s advice, eat regularly, wisely, and well. Eat sparingly of starches, sugars and fats.”
When I read about the correct method for candle placement, I had to take a break and close the book. I thought, why does this matter? Is it getting ridiculous?
It did matter to Freda and the women who purchased the book. I realized that cookbooks share values and lifestyles. As ridiculous it sounds to a college student in 2021, Freda believed these tips would uplift and refine her readers’ household.
My favorite bit of advice from Freda:
“Don’t save the best for company, continually be your own guest.”
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the ninth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
How ridiculous and insulting! My happiness does not depend on feeding my future husband good, “manly” food!
Calm down, Christina. This was written 80 years ago…
There were some elements of Freda’s book, A Date with a Dish, that disgruntled me, even though the cookbook is overwhelmingly supportive of Black women and their liberties.
Entries like this took a minute of reflection to come to terms with:
In no attempt to justify this philosophy, I engaged in a practice of empathy building after reading sections that labeled women as dependent. My college friends and I would all benefit from this sort of mental gymnastics. Yes, it’s uncomfortable to read about keeping your husband happy by cooking great meals, but how did this reality shape women’s status? How does it still influence parts of the world and our region of Appalachia? Answering these questions help us understand the context and roots of modern sexism.
With that in mind, there is an entire section dedicated to men’s recipes:
Freda playfully mentions the reward for a manly meal: a diamond bracelet or kiss. In one minute, Freda is a champion of Black representation. The next, she echoes traditional gender roles that hurt my feminist heart. Freda was a powerful female icon, the editor of Ebony magazine, and at the same time, telling readers to avoid making “dainty” sandwiches for their husbands.
I had to remind myself that her steps forward are not erased by values I don’t agree with. It’s possible and important to appreciate her work and bravery in other areas, as she broke ground in terms of Black culinary representation. If you open a page of a book like this and immediately feel attacked, maybe see what else it has to offer. Absorb its message as a whole.
Blog post by Stewart Plein, Associate Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian
International Kelmscott Press Day will be held this year on Saturday, June 26, 2021. This day celebrates the 130th anniversary of the Kelmscott Press, founded by the British artist and printer, William Morris, in 1891. It also marks the 125th anniversary of the publication of the Kelmscott Press edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. This edition, published in 1896, is considered to be one of the most beautiful books ever printed. Morris, along with his friend and colleague, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, labored over every detail for a period of four years. Both were members of the group of artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, along with fellow artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and others.
While WVU does not own the Kelmscott Press edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, the rare book room holds an earlier copy of the book printed in 1561. This edition is titled The Woorkes of Geffrey Chaucer: Newly Printed, with Diuers Addicions, Whiche Were Neuer in Printe Before. Note the Old English spellings of the words in the title. This is a later edition of Chaucer’s Works with the addition of new material never printed in earlier editions. Chaucer may be best known for his work The Canterbury Tales. This volume contains the collected works of Chaucer, including the Canterbury Tales and other writings.
While WVU owns a facsimile edition of Chaucer’s Works, the rare book room also owns one of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press publications, The Wood Beyond the World, published in 1894, two years before he published The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. This novel, written by Morris, is considered one of the first works of fantasy every published. According to Wikipedia, Morris can be considered the first modern fantasy writer to bring together the twin themes of an imaginary world with the supernatural. Long before Tolkien published The Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, Morris wrote and published The Wood Beyond the World.
Morris developed a fascination with medieval printing and he strived to recreate the lettering and illustrations of the medieval period in the works he published at the Kelmscott Press. Books printed by Morris at his press were designed to replicate the medieval fonts and printing styles he loved and are heralded to this day as beautiful examples of the printing art.
The frontis illustration and the first page of text of the Wood Beyond the World designed and created by the artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
Fellow artist and member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, created illustrations from wood cuts to decorate the book. The printing was set deeply into the hand made paper. If you were to run your finger across the page you could feel how deeply the illustrations and text are printed into the page. The book is bound in vellum, the finely processed skin of calves, and bound with ribbon ties. Vellum is sensitive to humidity, which causes the binding to swell and flare. Silk ties, in pink or green, were used to gently hold the book closed when not in use in order to maintain its shape.
Sir Edward Burne-Jones
Morris also used another medieval device to mark his press. During medieval times, the printers’ information was often found on the last page of the book, rather than on the title page, like books today. This device or press emblem is called a colophon. Morris designed a colophon for the Kelmscott Press and printed it on the last page of every book.
The colophon for The Wood Beyond the World reads:
“Here ends the tale of the Wood beyond the World, made by William Morris, and printed by him at the Kelmscott Press, Upper Mall, Hammersmith, finished the 30th day of May, 1894. Below the device, or colophon, are the words, “Sold by William Morris, at the Kelmscott Press.” By including the address, people interested in purchasing the book would know where to buy it.
While the West Virginia and Regional History Center and the Rare Book Room remain closed to the public, WVU faculty and students can make an appointment to view Morris’s Wood Beyond the World by contacting Stewart Plein at Stewart.Plein@mail.wvu.edu
The West Virginia University Libraries are excited to announce their first transformative Read & Publish agreement with a major publisher of academic journals. This agreement with Cambridge University Press is effective immediately.
Read & Publish agreements offer the opportunity to facilitate an institution’s transition to open access (OA) by repurposing money that would have been spent on traditional journal subscriptions to open access publishing. This affordable and sustainable Read & Publish model will offer the following significant benefits for the WVU community:
WVU will have full-text access to the entire collection of 400+ Cambridge University Press (CUP) titles. Up to now, the university has had a subscription to just 15 of those titles.
WVU will retain perpetual rights to all volumes published in 2021 (and beyond for the term of the agreement) of all titles in the collection.
There will be no article processing charges (APCs) assessed to WVU authors for open access (OA) articles in Cambridge University Press journals.
All WVU-authored articles that are published in a CUP journal that accepts OA articles will be published OA if the author elects to have the article published OA. The journal will highlight this option as the author goes through the process of article publication.
Cambridge will retroactively reach out to WVU authors who have previously published in their journals to let them know about the new open access option they will have going forward.
Articles published non-OA in Cambridge OA journals during the term of the agreement will be eligible for retroactive conversion to open access provided that the request to convert to OA is made within the same year the article was published.
There is no limit to the number of articles from WVU authors that can be published open access in Cambridge journals.
WVU authors who choose to publish OA will retain the copyright to their article and may freely share their work on personal websites and in open access repositories, including the Research Repository @ WVU.
Cambridge University Press publishes journals covering a wide range of subjects across the humanities, social sciences, technology, sciences, and medicine. Since 2017, WVU authors have published a total of 35 articles in CUP journals, for an average publishing output of seven per year. Only three of those articles have been published as open access articles. This new Read & Publish agreement offers the opportunity for WVU authors to greatly increase exposure to their research in reputable peer-reviewed journals with no fee involved.
Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU
This is the eighth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.
The author of A Date with a Dish, Freda de Knight discusses women’s roles in an unintentional, matter of fact way. It’s clear that this 1948 cookbook was written for and by another generation. Today’s college women might not relate to these assumptions; I admit some of them made me cringe.
What is a business-wife? Does she mean microwave meals? Why does reading a cookbook sound like a grueling homework assignment?
To start, the microwave was invented in 1946. This was the dawn of ready-to-eat foods. While homemade meals are still prioritized, Freda recognized the convenience culture that was born with the microwave and shrewdly incorporated it into her book.
Moving on to women’s roles, I was overwhelmed by Freda’s suggestions and tips. I can’t imagine the pressure and societal expectations that Freda and her readers faced. Furthermore, it’s one thing to read about sexist gender roles in a textbook. It’s much more personal and triggering to read them in a cookbook, even though I understand the context was different.
This work allows modern women to better understand the stressors on Black women of Freda’s time. You can read about how they managed the home, meal prepped, and went about teaching dietary habits to kids. First hand records like cookbooks are indispensable pieces of evidence to appreciate the daily existences of Black women in America. I urge you to use one in your next history project!
