Black power comes to Appalachia Bereans create the Black Appalachian Commission, a documentary history, 1969-70 Edward D. Smith ; foreword by Claudette Schmidt Smith
ANAC copy purchased with funds from the S. Dillon Ripley Endowment
Summary:
"The movement (to create the Black Appalachian Commission) began in April 1969, when two black students who were attending the Council of the Southern Mountains Annual Conference at Fontana Village, North Carolina, arose and successfully persuaded the assembled body to vote to create a Commission on Black Appalachia, or Black Appalachian Commission (BAC). The two black students, Edward ("Ed") Smith and Homer Williams, were members of the recently formed Black Student Union at Berea College. They were heavily influenced by the emerging "Black Power Movement" with its philosophy of black pride, black culture, self-help, economic uplift, and political empowerment. They urged the Council to discard the myth that there were no blacks in Appalachia. Their attendance at the Conference and their enrollment at Berea College, a school for "mountain youth," was evidence that black communities did indeed exist in Appalachia." -- page xi of Preface
"Black power comes to Appalachia by Edward D. Smith, tells the story of a student-led movement to organize a commission within the Council of the Southern Mountains to address the needs of overlooked black communities in Appalachia. The author was a participant in that movement, so with the aid of over 120 pages of historical documents and more than 20 historical photographs, he has attempted to narrate its beginnings objectively. It is fitting that these once overlooked documents and pictures be made available in this book to mark the 50th anniversary of the Fontana Conference and the creation of the Black Appalachian Commission." -- Back cover
