Politics and Government

Local, state, and federal; legislation; elections; party loyalties and boundaries; appropriations (e.g., ARC); programs and policies

Arnade, Chris.  2016.  “Mocked and Forgotten: Who Will Speak for the American White Working Class?”  The Guardian, 24 March.  1,381 words.  “The National Review, a conservative magazine for the Republican elite, recently unleashed an attack on the ‘white working class,’ who they see as the core of Trump’s support. The first essay, ‘Father Führer’, was written by the National Review’s Kevin Williamson, who used his past reporting from places such as Appalachia and the Rust Belt to dissect what he calls ‘downscale communities’.”  He describes them as filled with welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addiction, and family anarchy.  http://gu.com/p/4hzbf/stw.

Barksdale, Kevin T.  2013.  “James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and the Constitutionality of the Creation of the State of West Virginia, 1787-1863.  Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 39, Special Sesquicentennial Issue (Fall): 10-13.

Biggers, Jeff.  2013.  “From Selma to Coal River Mountain: Ken Hechler’s Century of Hellraising Leadership Marches On.”  Huffington Post (blog), 20 September.  793 words.  Tribute to legislator, activist, and historian, Ken Hechler on his 99th birthday.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/from-selma-to-coal-river_b_3961907.html.

Corbin, David.  [2012] 2015.  The Last Great Senator: Robert C. Byrd’s Encounters with Eleven U.S. Presidents.  West Virginia and Appalachia Series, no. 17.  Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.  384 pp.  Originally published: Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books.

Corbin, David A.  2015.  “John F. Kennedy Plays the ‘Religious Card’: Another Look at the I960 West Virginia Primary.”  West Virginia History, n.s. 9, no. 2 (Fall): 1-35.

Ezzell, Tim.  2013.  Chattanooga, 1865-1900: A City Set Down in Dixie.  Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.  188 pp.  Contents: The spoils of war: Chattanooga to 1870 | “This embryo city”: Chattanooga’s postwar economy and society | “Fireworks and flapdoodle”: municipal government in the 1870s | “An honest, fearless press”: Adolph S. Ochs and the rise of the Chattanooga Times | Bummers, blacks, and bourbons: municipal politics, 1880-1885 | “Shout for glory”: the boom of the 1880s | “A choice of evils”: city politics, 1885-1892 | “Desperate times” and “Desperate remedies”: the bust of the 1890s.

Gustafson, Seth.  2015.  “Maps and Contradictions: Urban Political Ecology and Cartographic Expertise in Southern Appalachia.”  Geoforum 60: 143-152.  Landslide hazard maps, Macon Co., N.C., defunded by the state (2005-2011).

Hardesty, Susan M.  2013.  James Clark McGrew: West Virginia Statesman and Servant [1813-1910].  Parsons, W. Va.: McClain Printing.  136 pp.  McGrew served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1869-1873, and twice as mayor of Kingwood.

Javersak, David T.  2013.  “A Species of Legal Fiction: The Wheeling Conventions.”  Goldenseal: West Virginia Traditional Life 39, Special Sesquicentennial Issue (Fall): 26-29.  Constitutional conventions (1861, 1862, 1863) preceding W. Va. statehood.

Jenkins, Jack.  2016.  “Appalachia Used To Be a Democratic Stronghold: Here’s How to Make It One Again.”  ThinkProgress, 25 May.  2,562 words.  Presidential Primary Election; Donald Trump.  http://thkpr.gs/3778577.

Johnson, Fenton.  2014.  “Power and Obedience: Restoring Pacifism to American Politics” [essay].  Appalachian Heritage 42, no. 1 (Winter): 28-45.  “We were four brothers, sons of the Kentucky hills who came of age in lockstep with the escalating war in Vietnam .... In barely two years the U.S. constructed its Titan Missile sites. What might we achieve if our leaders motivated us not to destroy the Earth but to heal it?”

Jones, Sarah.  2016.  “Appalachia Isn’t Dead: It Just Needs Reinforcements.”  Scalawag Magazine, 15 March.  2,275 words.  Profiles the region as the presidential primary progresses, with an eye to the Bernie Sanders campaign.  http://www.scalawagmagazine.org/articles/appalachia-isnt-dead.

Kalhoefer, Kevin.  2015.  “Conservatives Misrepresent Coal Industry’s Decline to Attack Clinton’s Coal Communities Aid Plan.”  MediaMatters for America (blog), 18 November.  1,658 words, with statistical charts.  http://mm4a.org/1WZmb9u.

Lerer, Lisa.  2016.  “Once a Clinton Stronghold, Appalachia Now Trump Country.”  Washington Post, 3 May.  721 words, with two video clips:  “Anger greets Hillary Clinton in West Virginia” (2:29 min.); and “Clinton proposes ‘Marshal Plan’ for coal workers” (4:30 min.); plus a 40-photo portfolio, “Clinton on the campaign trail.”  http://wpo.st/Tk_Y1.

MacGillis, Alec.  2015.  “Who Turned My Blue State Red? Why Poor Areas Vote for Politicians Who Want to Slash the Safety Net” [Ky., W. Va.].  New York Times, 22 November, 1-4(SR).  2301 words.  Graphs, statistics.  http://nyti.ms/1kLMLSC.

McKinney, Gordon B.  2013.  Henry W. Blair’s Campaign to Reform America: From the Civil War to the U.S. Senate.  Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.  246 pp.  Senator from N.H. (1834-1920) saw “parallels between his native mountain region and mountain areas of the Upper South.”

Mulcahy, Richard. P.  2015.  “The Justice, the Informer, and the Composer: The Roy Harris Case and the Dynamics of Anti-Communism in Pittsburgh in the Early 1950s.”  Pennsylvania History 82, no. 4 (Autumn): 404-437.  Judge Michael Musmanno; FBI informant Matt Cvetic; and American composer Roy Harris.

O’Connor, Bob.  2013.  Countdown to West Virginia Statehood [June 20, 1863].  West Conshohocken, Pa.: Infinity Publishing.  95 pp.  Eastern planters vs. western mountaineers.

Owens, Richard Henry.  2013.  Rogue State: The Unconstitutional Process of Establishing West Virginia Statehood.  Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.  71 pp.  Contents: Introduction | Overview | Background | Designs for division and dismemberment | Precipitation: the critical events of 1859 and 1860 | The first act of secession: Virginia | Constitutional legerdemain: seceding from a seceded state | On the battlefield | Rogue statehood | Lincoln’s concerns and congressional intent | West Virginia constitutions and politics | Epilogue.

Perkins, J. Blake.  2013.  “Growing the Hills: The Ozarks Regional Commission and
the Politics of Economic Development in the Mid-American Highlands, 1960s-1970s.  Missouri Historical Review 107 (April): 144-167.

Purdy, Jedediah.  2016.  “What West Virginia Is Saying at the Polls.”  Scalawag Magazine, 11 May.  1,749 words.  “Last night, Donald Trump won 77 percent of the primary vote in West Virginia .... West Virginia is neither a secret socialist stronghold nor a racist fever-dream. It is one of several bleeding edges of a sharply unequal country, where people who never had much are feeling as pressed as they can remember ever being.”   http://www.scalawagmagazine.org/articles/what-west-virginia-is-saying.

Ray, Kristofer.  2015.  “Leadership, Loyalty, and Sovereignty in the Revolutionary American Southwest: The State of Franklin as a Test Case” [1780s].  North Carolina Historical Review 92, no. 2 (April): 123-144.  Indian sovereignty challenged in what is today upper East Tennessee.

Saward, John.  2016.  “Welcome to Trump Country, U.S.A.: What One West Virginia County Explains about the G.O.P. Front-Runner—and America” [Harrison Co.; Clarksburg].  Vanity Fair, 24 February.  4,003 words.  http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/donald-trump-supporters-west-virginia.

Stealey, John E.  2013.  West Virginia’s Civil War-Era Constitution: Loyal Revolution, Confederate Counter-Revolution, and the Convention of 1872.  Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press.  811 pp.  Deals more thoroughly than previous studies with the issue of slavery underlying West Virginia’s struggle for statehood.

Watson, Willard C., III.  2014.  “Tommy Walsh (1937-2013).”  Appalachian Journal 41, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 206-208.

Zemler, Jeffery Allen.  2014.  James Madison, the South, and the Trans-Appalachian West, 1783-1803.  Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.  209 pp.  “the ‘West’...--the region south of the Ohio River, west of the Appalachian Mountains, and east of the Mississippi River.”  Contents: What to do with the West? | A nationalist viewpoint | The West and the new Constitution | The fight for the Potomac | A western perspective | An unhappy West | And slavery | Western anxieties and the military debate | A change in emphasis | Epilogue: looking East.