In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis writes that the poor and the environment are connected. The poor suffer physically from environmental degradation and cry out along with the earth, and those with power must heed their cry. An examination of the Appalachian region and its people reveals that each of these three themes needs some development; the call to heed the cry of the poor provides no direction on how to heed multiple voices or voices antagonistic to environmental concerns.

By not addressing the damage done to the poor’s sense of dignity by environmental degradation, the pope does not write of their multivalent cry. The origin and history of the term “redneck” in Appalachia helps us to see a multiplicity of voices. The term is often assumed to come from the red-colored skin on the back of one’s neck from working in the fields, and the term means culturally backwards, ignorant, and racist. However, its original meaning was “a miner of a labor union.”¹ Mine owners and managers often used the term as an epithet, a substitute for “communist” or “Bolshevik,” a play both on the color red and unionization. They tried to paint these “rednecks” as lazy, thuggish, and ignorant, common motifs used to oppress vulnerable people.²

The miners resisted these stereotypes. Red bandanas were given to miners by the unions. The miners wore the red bandanas around their necks or arms to indicate their “working-class identity and solidarity.”³ The red, at times, also signified a racial union between black, white, and immigrant miners.⁴ In fact, “the red bandana is one of the oldest symbols of the labor movement in both the United States and Europe, and such neckerchiefs have long served as a form of protection for railroad men, miners, roughnecks, cowboys, loggers, and other American workingmen.”⁵

At times, redneck being a “union man” was particularly clear, as in the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia, “the largest armed insurrection in American labor history.”⁶ Over 15,000 striking miners, around 4,000 of which were African-American, were assaulted by 2,000 deputies, company guards, and state militia. It was a war of attrition as the former had the numbers, but the latter had the firepower. The striking miners wore the red bandanas to indicate their side, with the opposing side wearing white neckerchiefs.⁷ Eventually, the federal government intervened to quell the uprising, siding with the local government against the miners.⁸

With federal and state authorities on their side, coal companies more aggressively undermined unions. African-American men were brought in to work in order to undermine unions, either by using them as replacement workers in a strike or hoping racial prejudice would hinder cooperative action.⁹ With declining jobs and the poisoning of thought about unions, the GOP rose to prominence in coal-mining areas in the early 2000s. Even though technology and, more recently, the rise of the natural gas industry through fracking are responsible for the loss of coal jobs, unions and governmental regulations were said to be the problem.¹⁰ The corporations effectively shifted the blame away from themselves and emptied the term “redneck” from its proud union roots and perpetuated its meaning as ignorant, racist, and backwards.

This story of “rednecks” reveals different Appalachian voices. There is the cry of solidarity found in miner unions who wore red bandanas and stood against poor working conditions. It was a solidarity that cut across racial lines and included recent immigrants. It is a cry that can still be heard in Appalachia today by people who seek protection of land and communities, by women and minorities.

The “redneck” story reveals a portion of people who “cry out” against anyone and anything that threatened their work.¹¹ The mechanisms corporations used to deflect blame from themselves were picked up by many whose dignity and livelihood were threatened by loss of coal-mining jobs. These workers opposed unions and environmental regulations, women entering the work force, and minority groups entering the work force. This opposition contributed to the outward migration of African-Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century.¹² By 1970, there were more women in mining than African-Americans.¹³ The volatility of the labor market in mining, while primarily due to both technological displacement and foreign markets, only raises the volume of this cry against any perceived threat to employment.

This realization that the poor cry out in multiple ways, including ways that oppose the environment and other people, does not undermine but can strengthen the pope’s claim that the cry of the earth is linked to that of the poor. The poor and the earth share a history of neglect and damage that generates multiple, interrelated problems.

Until 10th January enjoy FREE access to Jason King’s full article Appalachia and Laudato Si’: Developing the Connection between the Poor and the Environment, published in Horizons, Volume 46 Issue 2

 

¹ Patrick Huber, “Red Necks and Red Bandanas: Appalachian Coal Miners and the Coloring of Union Identity, 1912–1936,” Western Folklore 65 (2006): 195–210, at 195.

² Fraley, “Appalachian Stereotypes and Mountain Top Removal,” 366.

³ Huber, “Red Necks and Red Bandanas,” 197.

⁴ Ibid., 195.

⁵ Ibid., 203.

⁶ Ibid., 203.

⁷ Ibid., 203–204.

⁸ Ibid., 200.

⁹ W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “Racial Violence, Lynchings, and Modernization in the Mountain South,” in Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation, ed. John Inscoe (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001), 313.

¹⁰ Philip G. Lewin, “‘Coal is Not Just a Job, It’s a Way of Life’: The Cultural Politics of Coal Production in Central Appalachia,” Social Problems (2017), https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spx030; Gabe Schwartzman, “How Central Appalachia Went Right,” The Daily Yonder, January 13, 2015, http://www.dailyyonder.com/how-coalfields-went-gop/2015/01/13/7668/.

¹¹ See Wuthnow, The Left Behind, 95–115.

¹² William Turner, “The Demography of Black Appalachia: Past and Present,” in Black in Appalachia, William Turner and Edward Cabbell, eds. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1985), 237–261, at 239.

¹³ Ibid., 249.