I park my car beside the old railroad switch that my grandfather threw three times each day. All the conductors loved Gramp--he made passing through Decota a stride easier. They knew that without him they would have to jump from the moving train, throw the switch, then scurry back to the step ladder, swinging their way up to the caboose.
Today it is shocking to stand between the rails, waist deep in weeds. I can still see the faces of the workers who loaded the coal being shipped out of the holler to the Kanawha River for others to burn in steel mills and power plants far away from Cabin Creek. They were good people, hard-working and proud of their heritage. Heirs of the hard-won wars that had torn the coal fields with a cruel bloodletting only decades before, they knew what oppression meant, and they valued the power of collective action.
Now, they are all gone. No smiles from the engineer, no silver rails gleaming in the sun, no one sitting on front-porch swings stringing beans for the evening dinner.
I walk with a friend to the spot where the front door of the Decota Methodist Church used to be. I recall the old stories and moving yarns by inspired country preachers proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. The church had been the center of community life--a gathering place for the women's club and the quilting groups, the men's breakfast circles and union contract discussions, the town playhouse and the funeral parlor.
Now, the church too is gone. When the coal company sold out to another energy corporation, the miners were gradually laid off and soon they were forced to move in order to find work. Before long, the church could not support itself.
We walk from the church yard past the ball diamond to The Grill, where, in my youth, teen-agers carried out the risky rituals of adolescence. At one end of the restaurant was a soda fountain, the counter lined by big round stools with red cushioned tops. The taste of sweet, frothy root beer floats returns to me; the big juke box in the corner beckons. I can almost hear Peggy Lee, Buddy Holly, and the velvet tones of Patsy Cline.
But the floor tiles are broken or missing, exposing streaks of black glue that had once held them in place. The ceiling has given in and paint peels from the walls in scabs and sheaths as if some leprous plague has infected the building.
On the other side of The Grill, I trace the outline of the old company swimming pool in the dirt. I remember the day the company bosses sent the bulldozers to convert it into a giant flower pot. We lost the pool shortly after President Johnson ordered the integration of all public areas. The company bosses decided to fill in the pool rather than integrate it.
The pool became one more weed-infested relic of a time gone by, poignantly symbolic of the sinful tactics of our racist society. Letting a handful of dusty soil sift through my fingers, I remembered the day my older neighbor taught me to swim, dropping me unceremoniously in the deep end. It was traumatic, but I learned--like so many of these mountain people who had to learn early and well what it meant to sink or swim.
We continue on through the camp to find nearly all of the houses gone and the company building nothing more than a shell. The company store where my family had spent our scrip and collected our mail is a large concrete slab beside the road. Only the brick archway that funneled traffic up the holler from Decota toward Carbon stands proudly, defying eradication. Legend has it that union men hid guns in the base of that brick arch when, during the mine wars, federal troops occupied the region and confiscated all the other weapons.
This was Cabin Creek, a wellspring of cultural and historical significance. This was the turf where Mother Jones led thousands of miners in a righteous war against oppression. Here, labor leader John L. Lewis rumbled from a makeshift pulpit and mobilized a disenfranchised people into a force for human dignity and respect. Jerry West practiced his jump shot here long before he would hire a man called Magic to make basketball history in Los Angeles. Here, my mom and dad, my grandparents and their grandparents, lived and died, handing on to my generation a heritage they believed should last forever.
But everything has vanished. There are no people, no homes, no music, no children in the school houses--nothing. Only the whispering of the incessant wind.
THE DEMISE of communities like Decota brings an end to many blatant injustices. Environmental assaults, much of the water pollution from mine runoffs, substandard housing, inadequate health care, racist and classist segregation between the workers' camp and the bosses' camp--all of these evils are now distant memories on the creek, with few left to remember them.
However, the ills were obliterated not because the company considered them evil, but simply because the industry decided to pull out. The company apparently cared little about the people who worked the mines for all those years, who made the operation profitable and the community vibrant. In the eyes of the bosses, only one factor was to be considered when closing down Decota--the profitability of selling other fuels like gas and oil instead of coal.
The company didn't value tradition, the culture, the arts and crafts the people produced, the churches, the clubs, or the people themselves. When the town was no longer of immediate use, the company's interest in it vanished.
Finally, all was lost: the small family stores, the gas stations, the schools, and many of the clinics. Nearly everything was closed down, shut off as if some great and terrible god had thrown the switch on the life of this community. Desolation and ruin displaced this once proud community deep in the West Virginia hills.
Cabin Creek is not at all unique. Scores of small mountain communities have been systematically exterminated by the simple stroke of a corporate pen. Today, ghost town after ghost town dot the hills and valleys. West Virginia is living with an economic and political malignancy that literally feeds on its own kind--a cancerous process that targets the most vulnerable of mountain communities, creating a crisis that I can only call a form of cultural genocide.
This systemic sin should not surprise the astute observer. It was, in many ways, a fait accompli. More than a decade ago, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) published a study indicating that more than 77 percent of the land in West Virginia was owned by out-of-state interests. Worse still, ARC reported that a full 80 percent of the state's precious mineral rights were controlled and owned by out-of-staters.
Since that time the situation has worsened. A regressive tax system that often failed to assess unmined minerals opened the way for large corporations to gobble up thousands of acres of mineral-rich lands for next to nothing. For more than a decade these holdings were taxed at only 60 percent of their actual value. State coffers quickly dried up as profits soared across state lines, landing squarely in the pockets of the owners who were far removed from the systemic poverty they helped to create.
The crisis intensified when oil companies were allowed to call themselves "energy corporations," enabling cross-commodity acquisitions of multiple energy resources. The folks back home in the hills suddenly became faceless pawns in a high-stakes game of greed.
But they are not faceless. They may be disenfranchised and oppressed, they may be poorer than most citizens of this nation, but they are real people, families with dreams unfulfilled, families in search of a home. West Virginia's official poverty rate last year had risen to 21 percent. While that is alarming, most sociologists would call the figure egregiously low, given the mass exodus of unemployed mountaineers.
The 1990 census supports this conclusion. West Virginia is one of the only states east of the Mississippi to have lost total population over the last decade. As one former chemical worker put it, "When you got a hungry kid counting on you, it doesn't matter how much you love this state. You gotta go where you can make a living." Some of the coal counties have lost more than 50 percent of their population base. With it went the local tax base and the possibility of community revival.
One by one, the signs of a dying community appear. Banks stop loaning money. Home improvements are postponed. Workers and municipal employees are laid off. Money becomes scarce. Foreclosures are made. Stores suffer and close. Whole families start looking for new possibilities in neighboring states.
MANY QUESTIONS FACE those of us still residing in the mountain state. What can we do to halt this deadly scenario? How can we reverse the trends of neocolonialism and expropriation when those who have the most to lose also wield the least financial and political control? Do we see the irony in the fact that such a poverty-stricken people live on such a mineral-rich land? Doesn't common sense, indeed, the very gospel, compel us to cry out?
In many respects, West Virginia is perceived by outsiders as the nation's bad apple, an embarrassment. It's as if no one wants to see the full truth of this place and its people: Hide it away. Give us your dulcimer sounds but keep from us the cries of your hungry babies. Show us your colorful quilts but keep from us the cold of your substandard housing. Export your cheap and dependable labor force but save the mournful tears longing for a mountain view. Let us ride your white-water rapids but let us flee when the thrill-seeking is through.
The war on poverty did little to redistribute the land or the power base. If anything, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened. With a few notable exceptions, West Virginia's elected officials are as quick as any to propagate the fine art of political occlusion, often glossing over the real challenges we face. Operating under the delusion that by stating the truth they will jeopardize the people's confidence, politicians too often focus on garnering the support of the powerful few--those who control corporate interests and special interest lobbies.
The voices of the poor go unheeded. Thus, the cycle of disenfranchisement continues.
What will happen to this dispossessed and forgotten people? Will we all eventually fall prey to exploitation? What will be the response of the church? Only God knows. Yet, as Dr. King once said, "When it's darkest, the stars shine the brightest."
West Virginia's hope rests in part in a small uprising of determined young leaders, hell-bent on resurrecting "almost heaven." Crossing all the traditional political and economic barriers, these young leaders share a deep and abiding love for their native state--a love that will not permit them to stand idly by as it is destroyed.
Annually, the Woodlands Mountain Institute, a non-profit organization to advance mountain cultures, works with the top 100 juniors throughout the high schools of West Virginia. Selected for their demonstrated promise as scholars and leaders, these students are trained in the basics of community leadership and critical thought. Challenged to address the current crisis in the mountains, these young leaders are a beacon of hope in this state of despair. Their vision, creativity, energy, and zeal is already making an impact in the state and on those in power.
If these new leaders are steadfast, if they are faithful to the vision of a better future, if they resist the familiar lures of power and greed so apt to sabotage the movement, real change is possible.
West Virginians must help West Virginians to recapture control over their own destiny. Change will not come easily or quickly. But let us strive once more to build a West Virginia so great that those who follow us will think us mad to have attempted it. Our collective response to this call of faith will be the final arbiter between cultural genocide and prophetic hope.
Michael Curry was director of the leadership division of the Woodlands Mountain Institute in Franklin, West Virginia when this article appeared.
Training for Leadership
The Leadership Division of the Woodlands Mountain Institute in Franklin, West Virginia, challenges the state's young people to dare to dream of a better future, to empower themselves and others, and to advance mountain cultures and preserve mountain environments.
Leadership training is offered through a comprehensive program promoting academic excellence, community service, and college attendance. The leadership division counseled more than 17,000 students last year who wanted to attend college, providing support for them and their families, including assistance with college applications and financial aid information. In 1992, the program helped leverage more than $5.1 million in financial aid for West Virginia students who completed the program.
Another goal is to help college graduates secure professional and career opportunities in West Virginia, reversing the state's deadly "brain drain." The program networks with corporate and community leaders to help build a bridge for students from college to community leadership.
Programs of the leadership division are funded entirely by private, corporate, and foundation donations; students are not charged for its services. For more information about all of the institute's programs, contact the Woodlands Mountain Institute, Main & Dogwood Streets, Franklin, WV 26807; (304) 358-2401.
-MC
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