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Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Director, West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVRHC). 

This post is a re-issue of Lori Hostuttler’s 2015 blog. 

Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who championed equality and justice and espoused non-violence, unconditional love for our enemies, tolerance and service. His words are just as poignant today as they were in the 1960s. And his dream is still something we strive to achieve. He is certainly someone that inspires me to be an optimist, to cherish love and to forgive – to be a better person. Thinking about my blog entry for today, I wondered if Dr. King had any West Virginia connection. I found that he spoke in Charleston 65 years ago this week. 

On Sunday, Jan. 24, 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon and message at the First Baptist Church in Charleston. A small announcement in the Charleston Gazette appeared in the Come to Church column of the Saturday paper. 

The editors of the Gazette also included an editorial noting that King would see the same race issues in Charleston as he had in the South, but there were also “men of good will.” 

Gazette reporter Don Marsh interviewed Dr. King at his hotel in Charleston the evening before his address. King talked specifically about integration as a step beyond desegregation. He said, “ultimately, we seek integration which is true inter-group, inter-personal living where you sit on the bus, you sit together not because the law says it but because it is natural, it is what is right.” 

Don Marsh also attended the sermon and summarized it the following day. King spoke to a packed house and was welcomed by Charleston Mayor John Shanklin. Marsh described his voice as “low, powerful, controlled.” 

King urged forgiveness and reconciliation as a new order emerged in the United States. He also appealed for action, asking the audience to do what they could to “advance the case of mutual self-respect and understanding in any way they could.” Saying also, “we must work unceasingly for first class citizenship, but we mustn’t use second class means to get it.” 

In preparing to write today, I read Coretta Scott King’s piece on the meaning of the Martin Luther King holiday. It is also a call to action, a call to serve, just as Dr. King asked of those in his Charleston audience in 1960. Beyond a day of remembrance, Mrs. King calls for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to be a day of service. 

As I look back at these news articles and quotes from King, I can see some progress in the last half century. At the same time, I also realize how much more work needs done on matters of race, poverty, peace and justice all these years later. As we each celebrate and remember Dr. King today, I hope we are moved to work harder for those in need and to love others unconditionally, just as he did. 

Maryat Lee, born Mary Attaway Lee in Covington, Kentucky, is typically remembered for three things: her relationship with famed author Flannery O’Connor, pioneering street theater in Harlem through the Salt and Latin Theater (SALT), and founding EcoTheater, an indigenous theater that created plays out of oral histories in Appalachia and used non-actors in its productions.

However, despite the overwhelming acknowledgement of Lee’s impact on theater and the arts, an untapped well of research can be found within the detailed and deeply personal journals she kept from 1936 until her death in 1989. Save for a lack of writing in the 1940s, Lee kept up her diaristic practices religiously and took it just as seriously as her work in theater.

A large part of her journaling details her tumultuous business and romantic relationship with Fran Belin, a Brooklyn-native pianist and photographer who left New York City with Lee to create The Women’s Farm in Powley’s Creek, West Virginia, in 1973. While The Women’s Farm would go on to be overshadowed by the creation of EcoTheater some years later, it aimed to be a retreat for artists and intellectuals, primarily women and feminists. Some prominent visitors that Lee would write about included the “grandmother of Appalachian Studies” Helen Matthews Lewis; Paul and Nanine Dowling of the America the Beautiful Fund; music critic Howard Klein and realist painter Patricia Windrow as well as their two sons, Adam Klein and Moondi Klein; artist Maxi Cohen; writers and activists Toni Cade Bambara and Sonia Sanchez; playwright Clare Coss; and theater producer Susan Richardson.

Visitors of The Women’s Farm often became long-time friends (and sometimes romantic partners) with Lee and Belin, who were involved in the feminist movement and often attended women’s workshops and events with people they had met through The Women’s Farm.

Throughout her journals, Lee’s descriptions of people are oftentimes frank and unforgiving, such as referring to writer James Dickey as “gross”, journalist Dorothy Day as “sunken and ravaged” and writer Hannah Tillich as “smug in a very European way”.

Lee also wrote about world events that interested her. On the day she found out that Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match in 1973, she expressed her excitement by scrawling “BILLIE JEAN WON!!” at the top of the page, starkly out of place surrounded by her otherwise contained penmanship.

Some pages are written in a variety of different inks, showcasing Lee’s tendency to return to old passages to provide updates, clarify issues, and include more detailed descriptions.

Apparent in all journals are the inclusion of materials she references in her writings: letters, newspaper clippings, cards, and other ephemeral material like bird feathers and pressed flowers. Occasionally, Lee would sketch scenes to accompany text.

If Lee could not immediately access her journals when the urge to write struck, she would record her thoughts on any nearby paper. This can be seen with a few pages torn from a spiral notebook that she must have scavenged and wrote on during a hospital stay, which she later stapled into her journal.

The surprising details found throughout Lee’s journals are numerous and showcase her deep inner life alongside the practical realities of the unconventional life she led, whether that be as an emerging playwright in Harlem, New York City or as a farmer in the countryside of Powley’s Creek, West Virginia.

Lee’s journals, as well as countless other materials related to her life and works, can be found and accessed in the Maryat Lee, Playwright, Papers at the West Virginia and Regional History Center.

Following Veterans Day this November, the West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVRHC) will have the pleasure of working with West Virginia high school students for the third consecutive year of the West Virginia National Cemeteries Project. The goal of the project, which is funded by the West Virginia Humanities Council, is for students to research veterans who are buried in one of the two national cemeteries located in West Virginia and publish works that tell their stories.

In the first year of the project, students created biographies of many of these veterans, including men and women from different branches of the military, which can be found on the project website. In the second year of the project, the students researched veterans Clifford Condon and Nelson Bickley and contributed to online exhibitions about their lives and service: “The Record Keepers,” about Clifford Condon, and “The Mentor,” about Nelson Bickley.

The role of the WVRHC in the project is to provide hands-on experience with primary sources that reinforce what students are learning from their project advisors. The WVRHC has also scanned related documents from the collections to create a ‘surrogate’ collection that the students could use in their classrooms. This year, we will be hosting students from University High School, in Morgantown, and Grafton High School. Their field trips will bring them into a university library and archive, perhaps for the first time, and introduce them to the foundations of historical research. In small groups, the students will rotate through stations where they will analyze different types of archival material with guidance from the WVRHC and project staff.

This collaboration can spark the interest of the next generation of historical researchers and educate the public about the service members laid to rest in our national cemeteries. This Veterans Day, we encourage you to take a look at the exhibits and biographies online, and we look forward to sharing with you what this year’s students publish!