A Liberal Dose, April 21, 2022 "A History of Upper Cumberland Violence and Its Effects"

 A Liberal Dose

April 21, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“A History of Upper Cumberland Violence”

 

I’m currently working on a project that includes, among other sub-topics, violent crime in Appalachia. I am reminded of my topic, as if I could escape it, as I drive around the county and see all the campaign signs for the coming local elections, which include that of county sheriff. Candidates for office -and not only for the office of sheriff -regularly pledge they will be the one who curbs crime in the area. And crime is, and always has been, a problem in our county and our region. For generations, illicit stills in the Upper Cumberland woods were among the most productive in the nation (my grandfather operated one, and went to prison twice -once for making it and once for running it). For decades after that, this region produced a disproportionately large amount of marijuana. Twenty years ago, it was meth and oxycontin, now it is opioids, especially heroin and fentanyl.

And there has been violence. White County has had four law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, three of them in the same year (1924) and the fourth just a few years later (1931). If you know your history, you will recognize that those dates fall within the range of Prohibition (1920-1933), when it was against the law to make or sell alcohol (so of course there was a huge demand for it). I’ve written here before about Chief Sergeant Hugh Lowery, of the Bon Air Police Department -there is a historical marker about him on Hwy 70 as you get to the top of the mountain. He was gunned down after stopping a car whose passengers included a man who had just been drunkenly discharging firearms in the mining town, no doubt obtained from a moonshiner. That was April 23, 1924. Three months earlier, Deputy Sheriff William Welch was shot and killed while part of a raid on a moonshiner’s house (also on the mountain). That November, Deputy Sheriff Edward I. Gore was killed on Gumspring Mountain while pursuing a fugitive moonshiner. Finally, in 1931, Deputy Sheriff Harkless Grundy Kirby was shot and killed from ambush while destroying a still.

Surrounding counties all have their similar stories, most taking place either during the Moonshine Wars (1870s to 1890s, when the newly established Internal Revenue Service first started efforts to suppress untaxed liquor -those infernal Revenuers!) or Prohibition. Casualties included one of my own ancestors, who was a Gainseboro constable in the 1860s. While these are the sort of tales that get romanticized in movies, they were not that romantic for those involved -much less the drug-related crimes in the decades since.

But why is it that, for 150 years, illicit drug and alcohol manufacture and distribution have been so prevalent here? Is it because, as author J.D. Vance has made a fortune claiming, there is something intrinsically wrong with our culture? Is it because people of the Upper Cumberland and Appalachia in general are naturally less moral than people in other parts of the country?

No.

It is because the Upper Cumberland and Appalachia in general are traditionally economic depressed regions, among the most depressed in the nation. While there is no excuse or justification for crime, there is an explanation for it -poverty, and lack of opportunities to advance in life, lead some people to desperate acts… and lead other people to look for a temporary way to escape the bleak reality around them, creating a loop. Treating the symptoms while ignoring the disease is never going to work in the long run.

What actually is the cause for that economic depression, and how can it be treated? I’ll address that next time. For today I want to close by saying that the ultimate problem is beyond the scope of any sheriff to fix. But a sheriff can sure as heck make it worse. I’m glad we finally have one who doesn’t.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

 A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE   

A Liberal Dose, April 14, 2022 "This Land Was Made for You and Me"

 

A Liberal Dose

April 14, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“This Land Was Made for You and Me”

 

Last week, in my basic U.S. History course, we came to one of my favorite things to lecture about: popular culture during the Great Depression. It gives me a chance to talk about several things I enjoy, but discuss them on a deeper level, helping students see how those things reflect the feelings of people at the time. For example, the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges -and even Bugs Bunny -were agents of chaos, going into the world of the upper classes and turning everything upside down. Gangster movies (and real-life gangsters, too) became hugely popular because they were “sticking it to the man.” Pulp fiction and comic book superheroes took the country’s youth by storm, because a Depression and a brewing World War helped make empowerment fantasies extremely important to kids entering puberty.

We also discussed folk entertainers like those great Oklahomans Will Rogers and Woody Guthrie. The students had never heard of either one of them, but they all knew Guthrie’s most famous song: “This Land is Your Land.” I asked them what the song is about. “How great America is,” they answered. I informed them that, when they learned this song, they were never played THE WHOLE THING. There is a part at the end that is almost always left off. I played it for them, with the lyrics cast on the screen. I’m going to paraphrase most of it here.

First there was a verse where the singer sees a No Trespassing sign. The other side doesn’t say anything: THAT side is made for you and me.

The next verse describes a line of people, in the shadow of a church, at the unemployment office. This makes him ask, “IS this land made for you and me?”

In the final verse, he says “Nobody living can ever stop me as I go walking that freedom highway. Nobody living can make me turn back. This land is made for you and me.”

I was watching them while they watched the screen. Several had widened eyes and dropped jaws when we came to the last part of it… because they were realizing that this song did not mean what they had always thought it did. Guthrie wasn’t JUST talking about how great America is -he was also talking about the ways it fell short. There are authorities making rules designed to inhibit your freedom, while not doing enough to help you make your way. Nonetheless, he expresses determination to be free nonetheless.

I then showed them the famous speech at the end of “The Grapes of Wrath,” where the Okie Tom Joad (played by Henry Fonda) says that maybe we aren’t a bunch of individual souls -maybe we’re all little parts of a big soul, and when one person suffers we all do. I pointed out that the words of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck (through his character Tom Joad) were reflections of a lot of New Deal Democrats and people on the left in general during the Depression.

The Guthrie song, I said, reminded me of another song 50 years later by Bruce Springsteen (who did a whole album called “The Ghost of Tom Joad”). I asked how many of them were familiar with “Born in the USA” -almost all were. What is it about? “How great America is.” So we listened. Jaws dropped once more when they realized the song was about a working-class Vietnam veteran who couldn’t find a job, or any help, and wound up in prison. The chorus was a sarcastic condemnation of the failure of the “American Dream.”

Here is my point, for them and for you. This is what history is. Taking something you never thought about deeply before, and thought you understood, and looking more closely to see what it really meant.

That practice, like those songs, ultimately IS patriotic, after all. They’re about how great America SHOULD be.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE   

 

A Liberal Dose, April 7, 2022 "You Can't Teach History Without Being Honest"

 

(Note: the title may seem obvious... but so should a lot of things)

A Liberal Dose

April 7, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“You Can’t Teach the Truth Without Being Honest”

 

I talked last week about the legislative bill that bans “divisive concepts” such as privilege, unconscious bias, structural racism, and other terms from higher education classes. This includes what the bill calls “sexual or racial scapegoating,” which might mean saying things like “in western civilization, men established and have maintained a patriarchy” or “white people enslaved Africans.”  It also specifically forbids claiming that the legal system was set up to protect the interests of one racial group over another.

I earned my history PhD at the University of Illinois in 2011 (after six years of work). My dissertation was titled “Race, Slavery, and Nation in Indian Territory.” My doctoral focus was U.S. History, and the two fields of expertise I was examined on were the histories of race and ethnicity in the United States, and the history of the American South. I say all that merely to show that the history of race, how the concept was developed, and how it works are things I have spent a lot of time thinking about, studying, writing about, and teaching. I am going to give you two examples of things I talk about in class that would be impossible to discuss in a frank, honest, and accurate manner while following the restrictions the Tennessee government is putting on higher education classrooms (which are supposed to be a site where adults -not children -gather for a free exchange of ideas and to be challenged).

Perhaps you have heard of the seminal supreme court case Brown vs. Board of Education (1954), which called for the end of segregation in public schools and was the beginning of the end for racial segregation in general. This overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), which had ruled racial segregation constitutional as long as the facilities were “separate but equal.” In Brown, NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall (who was later the first black Supreme Court justice) offered as evidence the research of two psychologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark (a married couple). This included the now famous Clark Baby Doll Experiment.

Children were presented with an array of baby dolls, which came in a variety of skin tones -from very dark brown to very “white.” They were asked which doll was smartest, and which was dumbest; which was laziest and which worked hardest; which was honest and which dishonest; which was good and which was bad. The children always picked the darkest brown baby for the negative categories, and the whitest one for the positive ones. This was despite the fact that the children themselves were African American. Now, those little girls’ parents did not sit them down as pre-schoolers and tell them that they were dumb, evil, or lazy because they were black. So where did they get that idea at such a young age? From the world around them. No one taught them specifically, they absorbed it. This, Marshall argued, proved that segregation was harmful, and helped win the case. That study was repeated a couple of times in the last decade or so, by the way, with the very same results (and with a variety of racial groups tested, not just little black girls). THAT indicates that the problem is not just segregation, because it ended long ago -the problem is the unconscious bias implicitly produced in our culture.

What I just said is apparently about to become illegal to say. I guess they just want us to say the Court ended segregation without saying why.

The other example is the whole class I am currently teaching, American Indian Law, which is about federal policies toward Native Americans. Those policies were designed to take away Natives’ lands, limit their rights, and limit their tribal sovereignty -and still are. Oops, I did it again.

I did not study for years to teach you what you already think and want to keep hearing. I did it to teach you history.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

  A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE   

A Liberal Dose, March 31, 2022 "Divisive Concepts Bill: Who Is Actually Being Divisive?"

A Liberal Dose

March 31, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“Divisive Concepts” Bill: Who Is Being Divisive?

 

Conservatives around the country have been twisting themselves in knots over “critical race theory” for a year-and-a-half now, even though very few of them actually know what it is. As I described in a column last year, CRT is a concept taught in law schools and grad schools, and sometimes in upper division college courses, that examines the way race and the law have been intertwined in U.S. history. Practically no one outside those classes had ever even heard of the term until the fall of 2020, when then-president Trump happened to see someone complaining about it on Fox News, and decided the next day to issue an order to ban it in all government training and encouraging his supporters to try to ban it outright. Just a week or two ago, he was telling people to lay down their very lives to stop it.

From that moment on, his supporters have been obsessing about both that theoretical approach and the New York Times “1619 project,” which focuses on the foundational role of slavery in early U.S. history (and, by implication, the role racism has played since). Most people upset about the very existence of these historical perspectives have conflated a whole bunch of things under one umbrella -all of them things which make some people uncomfortable to talk about, or which make some white people feel like someone is trying to make them feel guilty or single them out for blame… concepts like white privilege, implicit or unconscious bias, and structural racism.

As a result, several red states have passed laws banning such concepts from being remotely approached in schools. Many of those state laws, from the outset, applied to both K12 and college. When Tennessee passed such a law last year, though, it did not apply to higher education, only K12. I figured it was only a matter of time until they went for the universities, and I was right. A bill doing so passed the state house of representatives at the beginning of this month, and passed the state senate on March 21^st.

Like other such bills around the country, it does not specifically say “critical race theory” -no doubt because that is such a highly specialized approach that is actually only used in a small percentage of college classes -and has much broader language. It bans so-called “divisive concepts” like those I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago. It also includes anything that could make anyone “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress.” Talk about snowflakes. Of course, any frank and honest discussion of history can do all of those things, and probably should. It also bans anything that “promotes or advocates division between, or resentment of, a race, sex” or other group. How do you define promoting division or resentment? Many people would claim that simply talking honestly about racism could potentially do those things -so it should not be done.

According to this bill, soon to be law, any student who gets a bad grade on a paper or exam because they did not agree with what the professor is teaching (on an emotional, not a factual, level), can sue the professor. The professor could then be written up on the first offense and fired on the second, regardless of tenure. The senators favoring the bill did admit that, unlike K12 teachers, professors are guaranteed academic freedom so they can’t be told what to say or teach… but they can face the aforementioned consequences if they do, which make the point moot.

The intent of this bill is to frighten professors into avoiding any frank and honest discussions about race and gender… or, as one senator said, to make sure they give a more “balanced” view of slavery and the Trail of Tears. It will backfire, as it cannot hold up in court. And, believe me, that’s where it’s going.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU. Although, in this case, they do represent the view of the entire history department.

 

 A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE   

 

A Liberal Dose, March 24, 2022 "World Gone Mad: What Can We Do About It?"

 

A Liberal Dose

March 17, 2022

Troy D. Smith

World Gone Mad: What Can We Do About It?

 

Several people have responded to my column from last week, when I said it seems like the whole world is going crazy. This has included some of my conservative, as well as liberal, friends. I have fewer of those than I used to, at least fewer I can talk to about politics or life in general. But, thankfully, there still are some -and many of them agree with me on a lot of things (sometimes to their surprise).

One of those dear conservative friends, agreeing with much of what I said last week, posed an important question that I felt was worth addressing: what can we do about it?

I wish I had an easy answer. I ended last week’s column by saying that appeasing, or even ignoring, people on the other side that are actively encouraging hatred and even violence is not the answer. Honestly, I believe that at certain points in history (Nazis, segregationists, pro-slavery people… and some very large movements today) there has been a moral imperative to speak out in opposition, and even to take action. Everyone who disagrees with you, though -or with me -does not fit into those categories. I think I do have an idea of where to start, where reasonable people are concerned.

Listen to one another.

Listen to people who are not like you.

If you are a man, ask women what it is like living in a man’s world -and actually listen. Don’t argue, don’t be defensive, don’t be in denial, don’t tell them why they are wrong: LISTEN. If you are white, ask a person of color what it is like to be in their shoes, and actually listen. You will learn that a lot of things you make assumptions about are not accurate. Let that fact sink in -again, without being defensive. Even if it makes you uncomfortable -especially if it makes you uncomfortable. People of color are made uncomfortable all the time… think about that, listen to their stories, and let it sink in.

Conversely, don’t immediately demonize people just because they claim to be conservative. Don’t make assumptions, or comments, about how stupid, backwoods, or ignorant you think they are. You are letting your own preconceptions blind you and prevent you from communicating. Honestly, the fact that so many working-class people in rural areas are correct in their assumption that a lot of liberals treat them like they are all morons instead of looking for common ground and treating them with basic decency drives them farther and farther away. At this point, I know that many of my readers are thinking “well, THEY shouldn’t act so morally superior, so quick to judge, or support policies that hurt people different from them.” And that is CORRECT. But it should cut both ways. Remember, I said that appeasement of radical far-right people (a fast-growing group) is not the answer -but neither is painting everyone with the same brush.

The next step: look for things in your own community that can be done to improve the lives of everyone, and look for those things with love. Then find ways to work together to help.

There are a lot of poor people going hungry in the Upper Cumberland. There are a lot of kids doing without things other than food, from toys to shoes. There is a lot of need for medical assistance for the poor around here -especially since so many local hospitals in other counties have shut down. There is a lot of need for assistance at your own local public schools and libraries. There is a need to protect our beautiful landscapes and wildlife.

No matter how crazy the world keeps getting, there are lots of opportunities to make a difference. If we can stop being so angry at each other there is a lot of good we can do together -without violating our integrity in the process.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

 A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE   

 

A Liberal Dose, March 17, 2022 "It Feels Like the Whole World Has Gone Crazy"

 

A Liberal Dose

March 17, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“It Feels Like the World Has Gone Crazy”

 

The world seems to be getting crazier every day. It is amazing the number of things happening now that most of us thought were permanently in the past, or would have been dumbfounded fifteen years ago to think we would ever see at all. Russia flat-out invading countries in a virtual reenactment of the tactics and justifications of Nazi Germany. Having to actually think seriously again about possible nuclear war. Anti-Semitism on the rise -only this week I was invited to give a virtual presentation for a community just outside Los Angeles where both the high school and local synagogue have been vandalized and covered with swastikas. Racist violence on the rise -against various minority groups. LGBTQ rights gained in the last decade now endangered. Women’s reproductive rights being rolled back 50 years or more. For that matter, the past few years I’ve been hearing many conservatives talk about the sinfulness of birth control, not just abortion, something I never remember in my life hearing any Christians -other than some Catholics -argue. Freedom of speech coming under attack -with politicians actually dictating what words or concepts high school teachers and even university professors can even say. Perfectly innocuous -even highly educational and inspirational -books being banned and burned. People furiously protesting against being asked to wear masks or get vaccinated during a deadly pandemic. People storming the Capitol to prevent the constitutional mandate of verifying election results, in order to keep their guy in power… injuring over a hundred police officers in the process and literally smearing feces in the halls of Congress.

It feels like we’re going backwards.

People are so intensely divided nowadays over political issues, with rage bubbling right there on the surface, threatening violence and even murder on their own friends and relatives (like the man recently convicted in court for his crimes on January 6, 2021). Not just social media, but traditional media like newspapers and radio, frequently feature “pundits” expressing hatred for or even calling for violence against those who disagree with them. This has, in fact, extended beyond politics and into the sphere of daily interaction. People are a lot ruder than they were a few years ago, especially older people -even my college students who work in restaurants have noticed it. I know that, in past years, I always knew a large number of people -friends, relatives, co-workers -with whom I could disagree about politics while both of us remained respectful and cordial. That number has dwindled alarmingly. And, I admit, I am frequently embarrassed by people who actually agree with me for the hateful and condescending ways they talk to those with different views.

As an individual, I have a hard time reconciling all this with the country I thought I was living in for most of my life. As a historian, though, I know that there have always been strains of this phenomenon present -they seem to be in remission from time to time, like an aggressive cancer, but they always seem to show back up. There was plenty of anger, division, vitriol, and violence in the Vietnam era. The 1950s, too, while they may look like “Leave It to Beaver” in my imagination, had a lot of violent, hateful people doing very cruel things to little children of color who were just trying to go to school. Heck, 160 years ago, Americans were killing each other by the hundreds of thousands in the Civil War.

I believe in working to move the country forward to something better, not dragging it back to some imaginary “good old days” that were really not that good for many. A lot of people have been trying to do the latter -if you think all this is “making America great again,” you’re crazy.

I have always tended to be a peacemaker, and tried to bring people together. Despite that, appeasement is not the answer. I say that with deep sadness, not with anger.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

  A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE   

A Liberal Dose, March 3, 2022 "Russia's Aggression and Journey to Fascism"

A Liberal Dose

March 3, 2022

Troy D. Smith

“Russia’s Aggression and Journey to Fascism”

 

Most of the world watched in horror this past week as Russian forces invaded Ukraine, with combat troop mobilization that has not been seen in Europe since WWII. Even many of the Russian people have been outraged, protesting against the war in large numbers -despite the steady diet of false, anti-Ukraine propaganda they have been fed. We have seen many photos and heard many stories of Ukrainians of all ages bravely resisting and fighting for their freedom against the aggressive dictator Putin. While a source of horror and outrage, those of us who’ve been paying attention were not surprised -though many people too young to remember the Cold War were, and have been expressing their anxieties about the conflict growing even bigger.

And yet. There is a sizable minority of people in the U.S. who seem cavalier and unconcerned, and in fact are not only defending Putin but, in some cases, cheering him on. If any criticism against the war comes from these corners, it is to cast blame on President Biden for Putin’s aggression. I have seen a couple of people on the far left do this, perhaps defending Russia out of habit, but the vast majority of such voices are coming from the far right. Republican politicians seem more divided on this issue than any other I have seen in a while, even as Tucker Carlson and his ilk act like they are Putin’s personal cheerleader squad. This is the culmination of a strange slide that began several years ago, when a certain orange president -and, consequently, his most fervent supporters -seemed publicly smitten by the Russian strongman and effusive in their praise for him. Not every Republican I know is supporting Putin now -but quite a few are either vaguely defending him, not talking about it at all, or blaming Biden’s “weakness” and saying Trump would never have stood for such behavior from the dictator. That last assertion is especially ridiculous, as we all watched Trump spend four years playing Renfield to Putin’s Dracula.

This behavior has been puzzling to many Americans. After all, it was the American right who was always the most opposed to Russia during the Cold War, and who has crowed about it the most since the Soviet Union collapsed. Why this strange turnaround?

The right, and the Republican Party, have changed a lot in the last fifteen years or so… but Russia has changed, too. Last April I spent a couple of columns explaining the difference between communism and fascism (you can read them at SpartaLive or tnwordsmith.blogspot.com). Allow me to recap the official, historic definition of fascism for you.

Fascism is ultra-nationalism, usually led by a single, charismatic, authoritarian leader who promises to return his country to its former glory, and who blames his country’s present perceived “weakness” on both other nations and “corrupting” groups from within. Fascism is the very far right; communism is the very far left. Either can be authoritarian, though fascism is by its very definition. Have you caught highlights of Putin’s speeches over the last week or two? They have been full of paranoid misinformation about Russian people being persecuted in Ukraine (Hitler used the same excuse, the defense of German-speaking people, to justify his own early invasions) and the West’s alleged eagerness to invade and destroy Russia. He has not only talked about the greatness of Soviet Russia, but has gone back a thousand years to the formation of the Russian Empire. He has said the West is trying to weaken Russia by its tolerance of gay people.

Russia has not been communist for thirty years… but, under Putin, they are becoming more and more fascistic. A lot of Americans on the far right supported Hitler in the 1930s because they liked how strong he was. When they realized their mistake, it was too late.

History, friends. Look it up. And don’t repeat it.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE