Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry Caudhill

Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry Caudhill

2019 Reprint of 1963 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. The biography of the Cumberland Plateau in Appalachia begins in the violence of the Indian Wars and ends in the despair of the idle miners living off Welfare. Two hundred years ago the plateau was a land of promise. The deep, twisting valleys contained rich bottomlands; the mountainsides, teeming with game, produced mighty timer. The people who settled this land in the eighteenth century were the sweepings of the English slums--but they produced great explorers like Simon Kenton and Jim Bridger. They lived by scratch farming, hunting and moonshine whiskey. The Civil War ravaged the land, leaving in its wake a legacy of hate which erupted into the great Kentucky mountain feuds and continued in the Moonshine Wars of the Prohibition Era.

When Caudill first wrote in 1962 the Cumberland Plateau was a wasteland of refuse-clogged streams, sterile hillsides, abandoned company towns and great piles of slag and rusting automobiles. The people were often illiterate, clannish and grim, but their fighting spirit was sapped and many, if not most, lived on welfare, which they regarded as their right. Schools were atrocious where they existed and the remaining coal was being ruthlessly gouged out by strip mining operations that, ironically, fed the gargantuan industrial complex of the TVA.

The publication of this book was a clarion call to action to address the distress of this region and resulted in the creation of the Appalachian Regional Commission, an agency that has pumped millions of dollars into Appalachia.

Caudill, Harry M.: - Harry M. Caudill (1922-1990) grew up in the coal fields of Letcher County, Kentucky, with a zest for history and reading. After being seriously wounded in Italy during World War II, Caudill went to the University of Kentucky Law School and later practiced law in Whitesburg, in Letcher County. He held some local political offices, in addition to a seat in the Kentucky House of Representatives. Caudill's 1963 book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area was and is a very influential work on Eastern Kentucky, affecting local and national government through individuals ranging from President Kennedy to Kentucky governors and Appalachian writers such as Denise Giardina. After retiring from practicing law, Caudill wrote 6 more books, more than 80 articles, and many editorials in the local Whitesburg paper, The Mountain Eagle. He delivered frequent speeches on strip mining and other Eastern Kentucky issues.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781931672009
ISBN 10	1931672008
Title	Night Comes to the Cumberlands
Author	Harry Caudhill
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Jesse Stuart Foundation
Year published	2001-01-01
Number of pages	404
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable