It is the birthplace of literature Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck, and hosts Allegheny Echoes, a local annual Bluegrass and Old-Time music institute to which people from all over the world travel to study under local teachers, one of whom now performs with Old Crow Medicine Show. In the mid 1970s, it was home to more than 200 Back to the Landers, and it was twice the host of the annual gathering of the Rainbow Family of Living Light. The county holds within its borders the Gesundheit! Institute, a hospital combining traditional and alternative medicines founded by Patch Adams, and the artist colony Zendik Farm. It has a thriving farmer’s market, where people can purchase fresh vegetables with food stamps. Since 1978 [sic], it has also been the headquarters of the National Alliance, the white supremacist group headed by William Pierce. Pocahontas County is spectacular. Pocahontas County is isolated. Pocahontas County is conservative. Pocahontas County is radical.
Much of Pocahontas County is steeply inclined forest and unsuitable to farm. West Virginia split from Virginia in 1863 to form its own state, voting against secession and joining Union forces. Most of West Virginia never formed the massive plantations of its mother Commonwealth and had little interest in, not to mention ideological objections to, slavery. “Let’s talk about the fact that that West Virginia was created as a state because of race issues,” Campbell says “Race is a really big part of our history.”
Pocahontas County is 96 percent white, 1 percent black and another 3 percent Latino or mixed race. According to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, “The first white settlers to the Pocahontas County area arrived in 1749 … By 1830 the US Census recorded 2,542 residents in the county, including 244 African Americans.” While most African-Americans arrived in the region as slaves, some were free, and others were granted their freedom upon the death of their owners. In the late 19th century, nearly 20 percent of West Virginia’s coal miners were black. In 1900, when railways reached Pocahontas County, African-Americans arrived in large numbers as part of rail line crews; still others worked in the industries of timbering or tanning.
After public schooling was mandated in 1863, one-room schoolhouses were built throughout Pocahontas County, including several schools for black children. According to annual reports from the state superintendent of schools, for the school year 1866-1867, there was one school owned by the county, which educated 888 white children. No black school was listed for the reported 88 black school-aged children. An expense report from the following year recorded expenses of $3,022.40, including $50 in salary and $6.34 in “other expenses” for one African-American school. By 1890 there were 72 schools including three for black students, and the report also mentions 38 male teachers, four of whom were African-American.
The West Virginia Division of Culture and Heritage again reports, “By the early 1900s, the public elementary level education system was well established in Pocahontas County. However, high school was not offered. For that, students had to leave the county or attend one of the several private schools which had opened in Pocahontas County in the late nineteenth century. There was no provision in the area at this time for African American students to obtain a high school education. Their education was limited to grades one through eight. If an African American student wished to pursue a high school education, they had to travel in order to attend Riverside High School in Elkins in Randolph County.”
When the Penny was vandalized, some residents were reminded of the county’s unequal history. Mike May, who grew up in town, responded to the incident by writing, “I was born and raised in Marlinton and left at age 18 simply because of the racist, sheltered, and uneducated thought process of more then half the county … Have you forgotten about William Pierce and the National Alliance? I haven’t forgotten being called nigger, coon, or half breed HUNDREDS of times throughout high school.”
In 1978 [sic], the National Alliance, a white supremacist group with Nazi ideologies, moved its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Hillsboro, for reasons unknown. The organization has been largely defunct since 2009, most people say, and recently the compound has gone up for sale. Its official website asks all correspondence to be directed to an address in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee.
“We grew up in a fearful place,” says Sarah Riley, friend of Blair Campbell and director of High Rocks Educational Corp., an innovative leadership program for young women from southeastern West Virginia of which Campbell is an alumna. “There are families in Greenbrier County who won’t send their kids to High Rocks because they’re afraid for their safety.”
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“I had nightmares about the National Alliance”
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“I had nightmares about the National Alliance”
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“I had nightmares about the National Alliance,” she continued. “When they showed up, there was nothing we could do. We didn’t want to mess with them, we were scared of their retaliation.”...
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/19/this_mo ... came_true/
Emma Eisenberg describes herself as "a New York City-born, liberal arts college-
educated, Jewish, queer, social justice-minded feminist."
Miss Eisenberg primarily writes fiction: http://cvillepeople.tumblr.com/post/349 ... around-the but also writes for Autostraddle, a website about queer female culture, thought, and literature. She received her B.A. in English and Gender and Sexuality Studies from Haverford College in Haverford, PA. She has lived in Hillsboro, West Virginia, where she was an AmeriCorps VISTA with High Rocks Educational Corporation,
