Appalachia: Rich Land, Poor People

the following program is from n-e-t the public television network the sound that falls and holds that stage so dear it's people working far away and those who love to roam are homesick for appalachian turkey home sweet home i think one of the beautiful stains i've ever saw is in the fall of the year when i look on this technic of the mountains and see the beauty of all of the different colors of the trees and i'm riding along with people i say look younger young is the most beautiful scene that i've ever saw i see the technic color of the mountains we wonder how long it'll last we wonder how long we can hold our peace we wonder how long we can serve and look and what's the greediness of people while almighty god come in and destroy and all things that was created for man and they were coming in from the far corners of america and they're taken out they are taken out of our county and our our state they are taking out the things that god provided and put forth for us they taking it out and they're leaving us nothing they're leaving us nothing coal is the king pike county is the largest coal producing county in the world now in kentucky last year there was a hundred four million five hundred eight 179 annually to kentucky that's the only thing we have and if the outsiders would leave us alone we don't have any trouble with people here next time yeah well it's awful crowded oh well i couldn't have been sure if i hadn't sold molecular stove and television things i just wasn't had no room for it what did you get for what you sold i sold the lectures over 25 hours and so the tv and antenna you know what water was with it i guess it's 200 foot of water for 20 dollars i let my bookcase go for ten dollars shotgun pretend practically give it away how long is it that you still have some of that money left no no i paid okay i paid 16 this is frank collins he's 38 lived in the mountains all his life he has three children and a sick and pregnant wife he doesn't have a job in the book case i told ed bought about to eat with it took the woman over to hospital for a checkup nothing left out of him electric stove for 25 hours because i hit that bought gas moved up here most of it bought a little grub too there was nothing left out of the head i don't know what i'll do nothing now for the first month i'll get my stamps after i get hit by curvy through for a while he worked the mines until they mechanized then like thousands of others he was thrown out of work some men went to the city to look for a job or go on relief and since 1950 the region's population has decreased by three hundred and fifty thousand but an estimated one and a half million more people many like collins remain there are no exact figures on the number of poor but they're estimated around fifty percent and maybe more many of them are old and disabled but many others like collins are able to work but have no skills except mining a little better than i do now so you rent 15 dollars i haven't lived in a big six room half thousand income tax 270 social security five eighty five fifty eight that's eight dollars and store 120 270 i made 154 dollars and broke even with him no you broke even yeah never got a diamond just paid my debt but i have made good money down there hot spot now it's all mechanized though yeah talgo why is it good and it takes everything you make to live and you post your yarn and your wife sick yeah i didn't have no hospital car didn't that's what i could write and scrape she was down three months down there and her father had to take a dollar for once i didn't have him undertaker could you work in the mines now and make any money i've had it but i couldn't say nothing but you couldn't get paid like you used to no after you get a job in a big machine man it's like scotia ain't here or something or you experience pain you can make good money i think they pay somewhere from 25 to 30 dollars here all depends on the job you know that continuous minor i think it pays 30. i don't shell car runs from about 20 pounds i can't that's pretty hard to get into though yeah it is exactly you just can't hardly do it unless you're experienced and somebody knows you about that don't look slapping nothing here in no way nobody starvation's all and you can't find work now that's that it's normally we've just lived this this way we can since august and in front and let's quickly put that into there's gonna put me on a disabled chick you know over here they never they come around you know because i just say we'll do anything frank had to take care of me you know never did come around so we'll just let it go i think we're doing pretty good though yeah in a way we have hey dad but i wish i could left kentucky all together i could actually got a good job i sure did if my wife gets well i'll go i'll find out yeah there's nothing here anymore at all unless you do have some kind of train or something your own that you can live that others just take me now i've got i don't own nothing got no job or nothing it's hard to live now what'd you do when you get out of school i just stayed home work had it over now though i went on see now i made a mistake why'd you quit hey i just it was too mean to go i just wouldn't go wrong but my sister is younger than me she went plum soup with eighth grade and graduated high school with high semester of high school and then got mine and she went for eight years she never missed a day and that was like huh so i was just doing that okay i went 300 hours one place got one of these and 300 another and got one that's great and started in high school over here and went two nights on the wt program and clinton went to vocational school it wasn't yeah it would have made a lot of difference so well i've never been here to start with that probably been somewhere working if i had always been at first i've got a house too but actually i was cool while you forget a lot of it here's the old picture me and my daddy the picture just took off from you where was he buried up on the hill that malmakes about his place was he born around here he lived in the mountains all his life he always laughed do you like him yeah what did he do well he worked in the mines you know and he got this thing and here's some other pictures see that's the smallest here's emery when he's in the second grade here he is in the first grade the nice instant is again there's that little of color yeah just i had one black and white and that little color you in the bible huh man see nobody don't ever mess with the bible now that you're not keeping fighting that's leonard looks like he's bad or something it was esther's everything oh uh hey hey there are some jobs available mostly in the mines but they require skills which men like collins do not have until recently there were few effective programs to train them and little attempt to bring new industry in instead there have been government work programs medical cards and food stamps a gigantic welfare state has emerged which has destroyed pride and initiative and made people dependent on the system collins borrows two dollars and fifty cents to buy sixty dollars worth of stamps on the first of each month the food lasts in less than three weeks jack y'all won't be thomas no thank you frank i waited i'll get sixty dollars worth this times friday and i have to do me all the month of december for fathers john engel john ingle frank collins here thank you just how they can't even actually what they should have you could buy an equals 60 hours well you can get some but you can't get what the owner needs milk is over a dollar a gallon you take three growing youngs how long do you want to do them just a mess or two now they can't have what they need maybe i'll get them two or three gallons and time i buy the rest of groceries meal flour and stuff like that large cream there ain't nothing left about meat stuff like it the eggs well you just you can buy them cheap but they don't last long and you can't keep them but if they don't use it that day you want to throw out cause i can't run a refrigerator i've got a good but i can't run it makes a big difference just a bad situation anywhere you go the wealth of appalachia is underground much of it however is owned by land and coal companies outside the region in cities like new york pittsburgh and philadelphia they bought the coal rights from the mountaineers around the turn of the century for as little as 50 cents an acre since then much of the profit has left the region today machines do most of the work and relatively few men are employed in the mines years ago there were thousands of miners they lived in company towns with company stores they risked their lives daily and until they organized in the thirties they worked twelve hours a day and more for very little pay and when the mines closed down during the depression and again in the fifties often it was without warning and many people were left nothing but their dreams i can remember the old days when uh after the first world war maybe it was in 20 that this whole place here that take the for instance the coke ovens would burn all night and they had theaters going right and when i was young we'd come up here sometimes i'd have a date we'd come over here and go to the movie one time i remember uh in particular the trail along some time uh we saw the first showing over here and this the whole place is all lit up and uh theaters and and old commissaries and uh and the coke ovens go on and they'd go on all night hater was a good booming place at that time it it had a big garage over there and a filling station and all these stores was filled up with everything in them to buy and the post office was there and this was a big commissary up to allegheny with everything in the world in it to eat and it was just a real wonderful place to live in and everybody enjoyed it i mean you know they had just living high on the halls you should say but when he went down they went down too and then they just moved out i'd leave as hard as seven times and i was working today this mind [ __ ] down up here closed down i was working that day and i was working the day this and sit down and i was working the day that and sit down down here and they just said come up put a notice up minds are down that's all of it they didn't give you enough companies didn't you they they didn't even fancy that and if you lived in the property you paid them the same as she was working for you if you lived in their houses you paid in rent you know how long you lived there you had to pay the rent the mines was down they didn't care you paid it right see then they moved you out and let the house fall down just like his whole hollers fell down no you know warning it works right on up to the night they shut her down and said she's gone boys joining her oh yeah they they lost automobiles they lost everything it was pitiful hauling furniture and stuff back out his heart big cars fine automobiles hit the sign but i had luck huh i kept mine i had a good one brand new and and a lot of their houses what houses they owned they stole them torn down sold it out yo they ain't they didn't care nothing about nobody tell you the truth about it blue down didn't care nothing about nobody come all you coal miners wherever you may be and listen to the story that i relate to thee my name is nothing extra but the truth to you i'll tell you i am a coal miner's wife i'm sure i wish you well i was born in oak kentucky in the coke and born and bred i know all about the pinna beans bulldog gravy and cornbread and i know how the coal miners work and slave in the coal mines every day for a dollar in the company's store for that is all they pay without the kentucky west virginia coal fields that world war one and world war ii wouldn't have been run and what will you get for your labor put a dollar in the company store a tumble down shack to live and snow rain poured through the tub the car that you drive uh requires a ton and a half of coal to make the coat to build that car old mining is the most dangerous work in our land today with plenty of dirty slaving work but very little pain this example of industry in eastern kentucky i think is just typical of uh how this country was founded on private enterprise my for over half a century central appalachian coal has supported american industry 1966 alone almost 900 million dollars worth of coal was extracted but the wealth underground is rarely reflected above ground illiteracy is high many people don't have enough food and vitamin deficiencies are still common the streams are polluted the countryside littered with refuse the mountains being torn up by strip miners the companies do contribute income in the form of workers salaries and some companies are active in civic activities but by and large the coal benefits only a few those that still work in the mines and those that service them we are a subsidiary of bethlehem steel and we operate three coal mines and preparation plants last year we produced two and a third million tons of coal used to make coke to make steel and right here in our town alone the last year and a half has been about 25-30 new homes david zaghir is superintendent of mines for beth elkhorn a subsidiary of bethlehem steel he is a company provide employment for these people who make seven eight thousand dollars a year there's a lot of opportunities here for people uh the living environment conditions is great uh we're a particular death we had a chance to raise our kids in a town like this everybody knows everybody and just a nice friendly atmosphere and the opportunities in mining are great we have a very low turnover people which to me is an indicator that people who work here are happy in what they're doing in the environment under which they live independent coal companies as well as some of america's largest corporations like bethlehem u.s and republic steel take millions of dollars of coal annually from appalachian counties yet those same counties have little money for public services like schools roads recreational or health facilities some of them cannot meet even 10 percent of their school budgets appalachian legislatures have kept property taxes low compared to other states and elected county tax assessors aren't given the money with which to do an adequate job of assessment we don't make any surveys we don't have any mapping assessment at all and revenue department doesn't furnish any technical advice or aid or any way in del mar drawn county tax assessor not county kentucky we just have to rely on the companies to give us an honest list and your most grace as they are pretty accurate if you can't survey the land how can you trust that the companies are giving you a fair assessment well we just we just have to trust them we just have to take that word they have a mapping system and they'll they'll bring their maps in and present them to us county tax commissioners and we don't know very much about them as we look at them but they sort of convince us anyhow have you ever tried to raise the assessments on them oh yes i i've raised their assessment pretty often how about a severance taxes i'd like to see us evidence take to myself i'm for it i think it'd be wonderful what would it do oh it wouldn't no doubt that the legislature would set it out to ride and contribute some or quite a bit of that money that would arrive from it to each county while naturally it would help our county there have been some proposals for attacks assessed locally on the coal taken from the ground five cents a ton would bring in almost 10 million dollars a year to those counties the companies have opposed it they say they cannot afford that much tax that it would put them at a disadvantage with other fuels it's been proposed well it's it's been proposed just recently in the state legislature but seemingly uh it's uh unpopular maybe i guess with the hole operators nationally they may not want to pay the taxes and you know these big companies that have a lot of wealth in your county and they employ a lot of men or not not very many now but they they keep a lot of money here and put a lot of money in circulation and naturally your representatives have uh inclination to sort of go along with them you know and try to please them and it's not too many people individuals think too much about it and realize that just what it would mean to the economy of the county and how much relief it will give all of those people as far as taxes if these companies were paying their share not paying enough well who's to be the judge uh we're paying what we're required to pay by law and in fact we even pay more david zaghir beth elkhorn we pay uh 20 of the taxes in this county alone and yet we only own two percent of the mineral so how about the other ninety-eight percent what's the movement uh nothing unless you can get it out and make a profit on it if you can't make a profit onto the penny or more you just leave it in the ground it's not worth anything tell you uh there there's uh a lot of good points for public debate there but i don't think our time is uh to let us get into all the aspects of the economics of the coal industry what do you mean without coal you would have very little of anything in our area the area is depending upon coal i think this area should be very happy that corporations such as ours and u.s steel and others are here they're good companies they're honorable combinations if we are wrong in mining coal in eastern kentucky and if we are wrong and what is going on in the appalachian area as far as industry is concerned then i think this whole country is based on the wrong philosophy to do it any other way you're just talking about socialism so if what we're doing is wrong then this whole country is wrong coal is cheap now everything going to gas or electrical well the practical is cheap but when you go and bite it by the time and transferring it from across the mountain over here you pay ten dollars for maybe more and when we come back we're back fourteen i just get the best way i can when he did have the money collins would buy coal to keep his family warm now like many other appalachians he crawls into the side of the mountain in back of his house and digs it out so don't trouble women a whole lot of trouble to just try to keep warm i had to crawl back in and dig even try to get a little cold girls may never got the factories in here maybe we wouldn't have to don't look like they ever gonna do anything though all the big companies just that on this coat poor people ain't got no more right to it tell me way back in her that they bought up the cold mineral for practice nothing from the poor people and now that ain't got nothing to live on or nothing else makes it rough all the way around they ain't a dozen people in lecture county i don't guess it's got coal rats some big companies got them all bought up that's where it hurts at if people had coal rats but they could make a little money around here but in truck management you can't do it big companies got it all black diamond uh blue diamond coal company and uh blackwood land company virginia steel and metal company they own a lot of this coal so what are you going to do the poor people ain't got no chance with big companies like that we just have to get it out the best way we can we ain't working come on son if we don't fight for what he thinks right now a hundred years from now there won't be nothing our grandchildren are great grandchildren and their grandchildren will grow up in property if we don't do something new if the free enterprise system has practiced in the appalachian area hasn't seemed to work for many of the people there neither has the welfare state in the form of government programs over 30 years of relief programs have done little to bring about any meaningful change in most lives these men and several vista workers came out of the west virginia mountains to the capitol in charleston to protest a 45 cut in welfare payments and lack of jobs at home the united states is a rich country we know we all know that it's a rich country why should the american people have to live in poverty when they've got enough money and enough resources here in in the states to live on and survive and make it good why should it i can't see it west of the richest states west virginia is one of the richest states in all of the men have large families all were on government make work programs which did not offer any future but did bring in some money it was enough to live on until the state cut it almost in half claiming a shortage of federal funds due to the vietnam war i worked all my life i've been on this adc for eight months they sent me to school they gave me 278 they cut me off cut my check back down to 165 dollars he lived on it his dad sent me to school they worked me 20 days a month for that they sent me to school so what happened i want to live in honestly i didn't mind it i'm working on going to school how many kids you got i got five boys how far is that 165. not very far the programs which seemed promising to many have delivered very little some men have been trained but many more remain untrained and there's no comprehensive program for them two thousand seven hundred miles of highway have been authorized but less than half have been completed and while education and health standards have been raised they are still far below national levels and the men feel that they've been given in their own words just enough to keep them from squealing and that government is unresponsive to their needs there's no job back home yeah you can get a job uh as an oil as a truck driver grease market we call it but what it pays twenty dollars a week did you think we could i could get my family on twenty dollars a week you make more on welfare all right that's when i got on how about in clay county what's including clay county ain't nothing but a coal available job to have a good income i mean there's a way we can uh support our family definitely what we want jobs and factors we want factors in west virginia they put factories in other places why can't you put them in west virginia they put them in ohio chicago and everywhere else why can't you put them in west virginia yeah i can tell you why they don't own a of coal miners the coal miners got the big majority they kicked a little man around that's why we get jobs yeah we'd be glad to work in fact i don't want to hand down i want to be a man i came down here i think i was pretty apolitical i just had graduated from law school i believed everything that i read in the books about the responsiveness of government to people and as the year progressed and i saw how man's economic situation made a difference and what kind of government he got became more and more disillusioned i mean that here where people have tried time and again by peaceful means to get even a straight answer to a problem which gravely affects them and have not been able to do so i myself am left with no choice except to believe that either this is a perversion of the democratic process in west virginia that we have in west virginia or else that the democratic process doesn't work in this country rick bank a vista volunteer from new york and bob tanner an appalachian volunteer from california helped organize this protest at the end of the month all we had was all we had was gravy and coffee you know for the last week of the month because the check ran out you know a week before that and you know it's just uh at least down in the southern counties uh where we work and i think the last election proved in the whole state you know that it's just not things just aren't working down here you know so there's another problem that goes along with that and that's the fact that people here don't understand the meaning of political power and are just beginning to understand that and until there is a group of poor people and middle class people whose interests are the same who are willing to organize to change the situation there won't be any impetus in the other direction i think this what's happening here is a good indication of it what what's the complaint of the avs and the appalachian group to save the land and people and all those people what is their complaint their complaint is period i mean they just complain they don't like our government bob holcomb past president of the kentucky independent co-operators association is representative of the small conservative middle class which opposes attempts by vistas and other groups to organize the poor let the government run everything and they preach that the government is the best to do all these things in other words everybody should be all industry and everything else should be completely controlled by the government the same philosophy is taught in russia but russia don't have to sin that's anything we live on we do that no i'm not saying there is no poverty i'm saying that poverty is more or less a state of mind because a lot of people that that uh you from new york would consider poverty-stricken don't consider themselves that way people go to work you know a property program no you don't need any poverty program they go to work work you know there's a need for it but i've done a great job in here uh no need for the comments no need for the appalachian volunteer or any other thing that's coming in here so you have a bad tax system bad education bad roads and that keeps the industry out and you don't have educated workers because of the educational system i was speaking about so somewhere somewhere along the line somebody's going to have to make a break in that and say look let's spend the money to change this system so that there can be industry there can be better education and there can be jobs for these people and make them productive citizens in other words when you tack when you attack the abcu guy when you attack the guy in welfare you're attacking the product of the system not the cause of what's wrong you're attacking somebody who's who's suffered under the system not the guy who's created it and if you want to change things don't tell this guy to get up and get a job when he can't because he doesn't have a decent way of life here well why couldn't he go to work like other people i don't see why they couldn't go out and shovel you guys are advocating that everybody leaked everybody that can't find a job in west virginia leave west virginia is that right well then what are they going to do sit around and starve you want to bury them you know why the cities are burning now because people from down south have gone up north they've gone to the cities and there's no jobs there's no food so they're burning them i mean if there are no jobs in this state and a guy has a family he's got to do something and so the federal government said all right we'll train these men they set up these great training programs looked tremendous in bill form the president signed them with empty dozen pens and handed them out to all the congressmen that sponsored the bill gets down to the local area and a hundred men out of 168 in clay county get assigned to the state road and they make big rocks in the little rocks some training no you're complaining in eastern washington i'm from the state of washington in eastern washington there was poverty as as deep as any poverty anywhere senator magnussen decided that that had to be changed and he started building the columbia river basin project a project that today has got 10 dams on it produces more electricity than the state of washington and the whole pacific northwest could ever use in a lifetime has produced great irrigation projects has raised that level of in the income in that area tremendously now why can't you guys as citizens of west virginia find us some projects in this state that are going to get us off the ground that's the kind of stuff you guys can do they are calling for dedication all the way to a cause at the same time they're feeding off messages to americans saying forget it pikeville kentucky herbert philbrick professional anti-communist was invited by the chamber of commerce there to speak out on the dangers of communism in the united states and in eastern kentucky you can see see where we end up we find americans who do nothing and kindness will work very hard so you can have a million americans do nothing in a handful of communists who are dedicated and who will give their lives to her cause who's going to win who will win i know there have been uh some rumbles concerning the vista program here and some of the where the money has done through the oeo anything to be surprised about anything to be hysterical about any reason to suspect it if the communists filbrick's appearance followed the arrest and an indictment for sedition brought against poverty workers they had been helping landowners organize against strip mining the law under which they were charged was struck down and they were released but the case brought out deep middle class fears of outsiders and government programs if we could only build now and if we can only find more people of equal dedication of equal concern we can and we shall win this struggle thank you very much god bless you okay oh definitely it's kind of this year what are they doing well some of the same things he spoke about i think uh i think the communists mixed up here this was arrested i'm born and raised here 62 years in these mountains we've always made a living without oeu and weather vistas we don't need them uh i've got some valuable land down here that men like him have just finished uh ordering my property i'm putting out fruit trees and things like that on these people uh they come in the restaurants they smell they stink they don't take a bath uh our poorest people take a bath in a number two washed up these people don't even take a bath you i've got up left the restaurant on occasion or two when these uh filthy things come in the odor is so bad you can't eat your breakfast jesus christ and the government and the government paying these people to uh come in here and tell us how to live yeah george go anyone would have a saturday night the same people listen you people would be you know holly i appreciate it if you're dressed like uh like uh hillbillies and not like something out of a out of a jack-in-the-box or something you don't need to come in here to impress us with boots and fuzzy faces all my friends wrong place boy you're going to be in the wrong damn place believe you me you better be leaving you come to us like uh human beings and we'll treat you like a human being you'll come to us like a damn bunch of beatniks and we'll treat you like beatnik uh my friend you better believe it you're treading on damn dangerous ground right up the back that's right divorce yourself from this bunch of scum and and and get with it be human being why is it dangerous ground sir it's dangerous ground because these mountain people won't tolerate they're getting tired they won't tolerate it my friend i know aren't they helping the poor people no no they're not helping the poor people they're taxing hell out of the poor people to feed the damn things that's right taxing my god mister do you want any property i hate new york you don't own no property huh jesus christ how are they taxing them we don't like your boots we don't like that we don't like no part of it i used to get caught up not to go to hell it's getting to the place where people are not really needed in this society the reverend andrew young of the southern christian leadership conference everybody is determined to drive us out now what do i mean by that they put the pressure on us down in mississippi that's the reason they won't give us free food stamps that's the reason they don't want the government programs to come in that's the reason they won't build houses that's the reason they won't provide education because they want you to get out of mississippi and go to chicago but when you get to chicago mad daily puts you under such pressure that he's trying to drive you out of life and people in west virginia who are going someplace and they go one from one state to the next and and nobody needs people nobody wants people anymore especially not poor people and so the people come together to organize from tennessee and eastern kentucky virginia and west virginia this is a meeting held in charleston west virginia in the summer of 1968. they are holding workshops on local problems and trying to get white appalachians to identify with a black civil rights movement but the combination of a cutback in poverty funds a feeling by the poor people that government and industry are not committed to change and the opposition of the middle class makes organizing difficult the only thing we can do is take over where we are and run that and if we can once begin to do that and build a base from where we're all poor then maybe we can have something to say about how the society is running i want you to remember why are we going to washington why am i standing here why are we fighting robert fulcher president of mercer county cap organization when i was a kid growing up i can remember when the back of my pants looked like something left over from a halloween party because on the have two big patches over my pants on my knees the same way in west virginia we need jobs that will pay something you see in in the economy of the united states of america we stand number 12 in wealth the state of west virginia does but we're not a state we're more like a colony all of our natural resources and our great minerals is owned by people that lives in other states like the king and queen of england used to come in and take from the colonies these people are taken from us we have no tax at all on our great wealth nothing at all in other words why can't these people that owns this wealth in west virginia process this year into a finished product in west virginia set up factories into a finished product where this wealth can be processed here give the people in west virginia job because this is their wealth this is their money this is their life this is their land and it can be sold on the market much cheaper than what's being done and until the white people awakens to the fact that he is a poor man that he has to be identified to what he has and where he stands this is the main issue the main thing is the white people i tell you the white people have to be identified with this thing they said the white people want snapping out of this but i'll tell you in the last year i've seen more white people wake up or they've been asleep than i have ever seen you wake up out of bed in the morning god you like jack please andy take a look what white appalachian is they want you to see that they are part of this campaign army they want to be part of it and i am proud today to stand up before you as a white man and declare that we are becoming part of a nation that is being reformed again andy young as i said before one of the greatest men that i have ever known andy i love you as a brother i couldn't have said that a few months ago i hated the [ __ ] a few months ago this is true yeah until i began to realize the bible that i had read taught me that all people owned me and were created equal and that we're all human beings in the sight of god i'm not ashamed to admit what i was and what i am now today i am a man that can stand up for human beings and human dignity and human rights don't go there like is i'd like it here better not do anyplace else because it feels like home we used to live here once before it just feels like home i never i've been in the city except lexington and i don't know nothing about the city if i'd be in a city now know how it feels i'd tell you more about it but i like kentucky because it's forest hills and things woods i like the woods so i don't know what to do got to realize your boys 14 you'll soon be going off to work but i'll say he will even go to high school he doesn't been in high school he can't feel in two years so you've got a program put up here for the dropouts to work and you'll probably work on that they get to know somebody to get out on his mother's got a sister in dayton i've got a brother in belleville michigan you got a sister in illinois but he'll probably go somewhere i don't know where you go or what do you do but now you won't be here much longer yeah but you can't tell a young person down you all pretty well have to go with it never have anything am i let him get that wait let him get it he's twisting it mr scott was my teacher last year i failed a year i felt six i failed two years i ain't failed in two years i'd been a first year high school this year i fell in the fourth i filmed six why i fell on the six i was homebound taking out black fits i had two mama brain now lord moved it i believe i was going through school and trying to make something out of myself if you ain't got no education you just ain't got no job you can't get no job i've seen that on tv and you just can't go to work without education that's why that's sitting there now he ain't got no education period education he'd be all right wouldn't be a starting like we are i'm just um just thinking i'll go to high school because i think i like it and now going through college and trying to make something if i can get through college where you are now can't get through high school we are right here where'd you get your breath on you ain't got no ground hey in other words you mixed uh purple and yellow to get brown that's right yeah that's right huh yeah so what's this color here well you got blue in it no that's purple well maybe the blue feet is the name okay okay but you got a bad paint job around the edge that you're either you went over here you didn't go up to it i was still nice enough for a little boy okay this is net the public television network

Channel: Objet D'Art

Views: 772,970

Rating: 4.8134613 out of 5

Keywords: Appalachia: Rich Land, Poor People, Mining industry, Basic needs, Culture and social processes, Southern and southeastern states, Automation, Environment (Psychophysiology), Economics, Poverty, Clinical case history

Id: 5BYpJVTdeAU

Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Sun May 08 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/robobot]

For anyone that found this interesting, you may also like American Hollow (1999): https://youtu.be/8qTjfABqsQs

"Tells the tale of a close-knit Appalachian family that has changed little in the last 100 years."

[u/[deleted]]

Funny what has and has not changed since the 60s

[u/buddythebear]

If anyone is interested in the subject this article is a must-read. Not much has changed in Appalachia in 40 years. Things have probably gotten worse if anything.