Riding Around in Harlan County: Appalachian Broadcasts & Podcasts

Last summer, we spent quite a bit of time in different counties in Eastern Kentucky conducting interviews for a couple of research and oral history projects we were working on. Because of Timi's family roots in Harlan County, we spent a couple of days at a time so we could interview several people in Cumberland and Harlan and drive around some of the communities and neighborhoods where she spent time as a child. 

Site of Timi's maternal great-grandmother Gigi's homeplace in Coxton (August 15, 2018)

We stayed at the Benham Schoolhouse Inn and were fortunate to see friends and conduct some interviews at the Godbey Appalachian Center at the Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College (SKCTC) campus in Cumberland. One day, Timi unexpectedly ran into Theresa Osborne, who she had interviewed for another project several years before. 

Osborne is a member of the Kentucky Oral History Commission, and she has participated in the well-known Higher Ground series of community-based plays, which is a project of the SKCTC Appalachian Program and includes oral history methodologies. Timi spent time in Harlan County during some of the early productions, and Higher Ground was one of the hosts for the Knoxville/Harlan County Micro-Fest gathering organized by the Network of Ensemble Theaters in 2012. As follow-up to this event, Timi produced an "Appalachian Mixtape” with MicroFest participants, which included recording interviews with selected regional artists, collecting music by participants, and editing/mixing content for the final single-track digital production. The feature-length production features interview excerpts with Higher Ground participants like Osborne, executive producer Robert Gipe, and others.

 
In 2016, several Higher Ground participants also produced a radio/podcast program called, "Shew Buddy!" that explored the theme of young people struggling to stay or leave the region by using "monologues and dialogues from past plays, interviews with actors who played those characters, new oral histories collected specifically for the show, songs that reinforce the themes of the stories, and poetry readings by local authors."

In Timi's conversation with Osborne last summer, she mentioned a radio program that she co-hosted/co-produced called, "History Alive." The show began with early technical support in the form of "the loan of a digital recorder from the Kentucky Oral History Commission" and was part of the SKCTC Appalachian Program's "long tradition of collecting and preserving local history through the use of oral history interviews." The show was broadcast on WCPM, a local radio station, for six years.

WCPM Radio Station, Cumberland, Kentucky (September 8, 2018)

One sunny afternoon, we were driving around Cumberland before an oral history interview, and we rounded a curve in the road and came upon the WCPM radio station, which is also one of several radio stations where Frances and John Reedy also had a regular program in their early musical career.
 

Source: The One Year History of 
The Tri-State Broadcasting Company 
and "Heaven's Radio Station" - WCPM

In 1949, WCPM began broadcasting in Middlesboro as part of the "Tri-State Broadcasting Company," which apparently dissolved in 1950. During that brief time, Frances and John Reedy had a regular show as the Stone Mountain Hillbillies and performed every Monday through Friday afternoon at 4:00 p.m.

In 1950, WCPM was purchased by the Cumberland Gap Broadcasting Company and merged with another local station WMIK. WCPM was apparently bought out again and then relocated to Cumberland by 1951. The "Good Coal Network" included both WCPM and WHLN in Harlan where the Reedys also had a show for more than 17 years. It seems likely that their show would then have been broadcast on both stations after WCPM moved. According to most recent news, WCPM stopped broadcasting in 2016 after 65 years, so it was not an active radio station when we drove by last summer, though the grounds were mowed and well-kept. 

Several online archives, such as American Radio History and the National Radio Club, include some digitized artifacts from WCPM and WHLN, and the early history of the station in Middlesboro includes some digitized documents and other primary research. However, there does not appear to be any audio documentation of either the original radio broadcasts or interviews with people who were involved with or listened to WCPM. We're sorry for all the voices that are lost over time as technologies change and people pass on, but we're glad to have stumbled upon WCPM while rambling through the mountain landscapes of Harlan County.

Oral History & "Appalachian Understories" of the Forest

We have been working on the "Remembering the Reedys" documentary project for almost 10 years, and we owe its origin to the forethought of Frances Reedy who kept so much valuable family history and memorabilia and to Appalachia--Science in the Public Interest (ASPI) for including her story in an oral history project on experiences of the Appalachian forest with elder folks in the 1990s. This interview inspired a follow-up oral history with Frances about her and her husband John's Bluegrass music history, which ultimately spawned the ongoing research and documentation of their stories on this blog.

Source: ASPI Facebook page photo of forest hike along the
Zalla Trail with Notre Dame service-learning students (2016).

 

Some interesting synchronicities have recently developed around the ASPI oral history project on Appalachian forests. The Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) conference will take place at the University of Kentucky in 2020, and the conference theme will be "Appalachian Understories." The deadline for the preliminary call for proposals is October 7, 2019, and the conference description emphasizes forest commons, oral history, and gender, all of which are important themes and understories of the Reedy project.

"We human Appalachians are fortunate to have the world’s richest temperate forests grace our region. Inspiration for the 43rd Annual ASA Conference is rooted in these forests, and particularly in the easy-to-overlook portion of the woods known as “understory.” In the forest understory, plant and animal life grows between the earthen ground and the more visible canopy, in both shade and sunlight. Recognizing that forest understories are places of beauty and strength, the 2020 ASA Conference will bring to light the many voices of Appalachia that are often obscured. In the understories, people confront stereotypes, myths, marginalization, and violence and meet them with resilience and hope. In addition to native forests and forest-based human experiences, this gathering will highlight stories of Black Appalachians, women, gender, and sexuality, health and healing, and hope spots. Oral history and film-making, along with literature, music, photography, and other art forms, will be among our featured “understories” exploration methods. We also celebrate Appalshop’s 50th anniversary, revisiting the Whitesburg studio’s important documentary legacy and learning about the “understories” it continues to produce today. Like the forest that inspires us, and like the 42 previous ASA conferences, this gathering offers growth, beauty, hope, and nourishment."

The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky includes the “Appalachian Simple Lifestyle Expression and Experience Oral History Project,” which was an ASPI project conducted by Mark Spencer with whom Timi worked on the forest project. We are currently researching the status and location of these oral histories, which were recorded on VHS cassettes, and exploring the possibility of digitizing some or all of them to include as part of the ASA 2020 exhibits and collections related to the forest commons. We actually have a digitized copy of Frances Reedy's forest oral history, so we are also working with ASPI to share this with the broader public in the near future.

Source: ASPI Facebook page 
(Mark Spencer, Calendar Guru)

We recently discovered an interesting and prescient historical document about a "Forest Commons Conference" that ASPI sponsored in 1995. Father Al Fritsch is the original founder of ASPI, and he also self-published a book called Reclaiming the Commons that he wrote in 2007 and has updated several times since. Father Al is still doing really awesome "Earth Healing" work in the region, so we hope to connect the overlapping understories of ASA, ASPI, and the Reedy family in new and exciting ways over the next year!

Meanwhile, today also marks the day that Timi and Tammy assume primary leadership of the ASPI board along with long-time volunteer Father Jack Kieffer. We are grateful to outgoing ASPI board President Shane Barton and director Suzi Van Etten for their near decade of service and their commitment to ASPI's mission of practicing and promoting simple and sustainable living and livelihoods in Appalachia. 

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UPDATE: 
(31 March 2020 1:20 pm)
 
Unfortunately, this year's ASA conference was cancelled. However, we have two other positive pieces of news to share. First, Father Al Fritsch made the excellent suggestion that we convene our ASPI panel at a later date for a YouTube discussion about the past, present, and future of the organization. Second, is that ASPI partnered with Berea College Special Collections to apply (successfully!) for a Preservation Grant from the Kentucky Oral History Commission to digitize the "Appalachian Historic Forest Conditions" oral history collection, which consists of 14 Hi-8 video tapes, one VHS tape, and one audio cassette tape.