Affrilachian Culture

Affrilachian Voice: Celebrations of Truth and Culture

One cultural identity resistant to mainstream social persuasion among rural populations resides in the consciousness of Appalachian Mountain African Americans self-described as Affrilachians in which African Americans from this region are not trying to create an altogether new identity based on fight in the South or flight to the North, but are rather reinforcing and enriching an old identity. Because of the unique Appalachian cultural and regional environment, African Americans experienced less slavery, socio-economic stratification, and discrimination; subsequently they experienced more independence, opportunity, and cultural cohesion. Affrilachians are self-determined in their
efforts to overcome invisibility and stereotyping, and to conserve and celebrate their unique identities, producing a rich literary community from the Appalachian Region.
The Appalachian region is a world unto itself. Mountains steeply reign over the scenery which conforms to their heights by delving deep hollows into the bottom lands. Far from the plantation estates to their south, self-sufficient farmers till hilly, rocky soil for nourishment or bury themselves in its mountainous bosom for the sustenance of coal. Europeans from abroad came early to settle this area, often in search of political and religious freedom. They “varied in ethnic stock; emphasize equality, freedom of conscience, practical religion, homely virtues, and domestic institutions” (Turner 198). While slavery was still existent in this rugged backdrop before the Civil War, the region did not demand vast quantities of labor as did the South and felt the relief of the lightened institutional grip as well as some levity of pervasive and constraining cultural codes that would accompany slavery in the South. There was “little room for slavery in the framework of these solidly independent yeomen” (Turner 198).
In regard to slavery, the Appalachian region would act as a geographical/political buffer and mediator between slave and non-slave perspectives. Loyal Jones writes about cultural perspective in Appalachian Values when he observes, “Many mountaineers, as far South as Alabama and Georgia were anti-slavery in sentiment and fought for the Union in the Civil War, and although Reconstruction legislators imposed anti-Negro laws, thus training us in segregation, Appalachians for the most part, have not been saddled with the same prejudices against black people that other southerners have.” This is not to say that slavery was a benign occurrence in the region; for wherever corruption is allowed to persist, individuals will be corrupted and their narratives told. The slaves that were present in the Appalachians were scattered throughout the region, typically working in coal mines along with Native Americans who were also slaves during that period, but also working in commerce, transportation, and manufacturing (Dunaway ix). The majority of the Appalachian population were non-slaveholders and many of them were poor (Dunaway 1). The demanding country was no respecter of persons; both free and slave worked together to eke out their livings from the uncompromising land. However, one enterprising gold miner from the highlands of Dahlonega, Georgia became the “first free African American gold mine owner in Lumpkin County, calling his mine ‘Free Jim,’ purchasing the largest dry goods and general merchandise store in Dahlonega, followed by an ice house, and a saloon” (Dunaway 124).
When widespread poverty of Appalachia became a national issue in the 1960’s, the federal government’s response was to declare War on Poverty and institute the Appalachian Regional Commission to provide for sustainable communities and economic development in the region. In an initial “supposedly comprehensive 1962 study, The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, ‘the number of Negroes in the Region is such a small proportion of the total population [that]…the social consequences of their presence and migration are not of any great significance” (Turner 7), would render the African American population racially invisible. During that same period, Harry Caudill’s leading book, Night Comes to the Cumberland!, did not reveal much about African American community and their circumstances, although East Tennessee’s Highlander Center was actively involved with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s. It was not until 1985 that William Turner and Ed Cabbell published their collection Blacks in Appalachia, where “it came as a revelation to many that there had always been a significant African American presence in the southern Appalachian” (Hay 1).
Despite the general poverty and even exploitation undergone by most Appalachians apart from race, the noticeable difference between the Caucasian and African American Appalachians rests in the single dynamic of visibility versus invisibility. African American mountain life and culture have not just disappeared into a holler or hidden into one of the coal mines’ subterranean holes, but instead they have been marginalized by the onlooker. For instance, extensive excursions were made after World War II of the Southern Appalachians to peruse its music, particularly the folk songs from British Isles, and gather the most comprehensive collection of ballads in the world” (Turner 9). At the same time, the rich diversity of African American musical heritage was ignored even though music is, “that most ubiquitous element of Black Americans’ cultural footprints, wherever they are found” (Turner 10). During one trip, ballad solicitors stumbled upon an African American township and hastily turned back with an uncomplimentary dismissal of their wasted time. In retrospect, so many opportunities were lost to record and recover African American traditional hymns, spirituals, ragtime, and blues. William Turner, professor of Appalachian Studies, aptly points out the lack of acknowledgement, “They trekked the hills and hollers and filled their diaries with records from the points where the mountains met the magnolias to where the gritty heritage of coal mining melded with Birmingham 's and Pittsburgh 's steel, consciously oblivious to black life and culture in the mountains.”
Turner shares a metaphor regarding the nature of Appalachia’s invisibility due to geographical constraints as he shares a reply of the owner of a “notoriously substandard and unsafe coal mine in China’s Shanxi Province to a National Public Radio (NPR) reporter when asked how he eluded the scrutiny and control of the Central Government.
The owner replied, ‘The mountains are high, and the Emperor lives far away.’” The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) has delineated Appalachia to include thirteen states and more than four hundred counties (Turner 11). The environment is well recognized as containing the most biologically diverse mountain systems on the continent. The diversity of this regional span in terms of its geography, ecology, ethnicities, and cultures and their interactions with each other is difficult to grasp. Reflections of their environment and “despite a popular opinion to the contrary, Appalachia is as extraordinarily heterogeneous economically, socially, and culturally as it is ecologically” (Hay 9). Burkhard Bilger of the New Yorker called the Appalachians, “a kind of cultural Galapagos.” At the very least, finally someone is noticing the multiplicity of this extensive domain. It would seem that most of the “Emperor’s kingdom,” the outsiders, have not been able to scale the mountain wall surrounding Appalachia to see what is really like
inside.
A sense of place bearing importance on identity in Appalachia has historically been problematic. Where, exactly, Appalachia begins and ends has been debated over the years. Referred to as “Allegania” by James Taylor in 1862, the region was first set apart and proposed to be of tactical importance to the Union. Since the economy of the region was not connected to the plantation, the mountain inhabitants’ attitudes were nearer to those of the non-slave states than they were to the slave states of the South. It was, however, enacting Jim Crow legislation that delineated the differences between Appalachia and the rest of the South, aligning most of the region with northern sentiments (Hay 10). Many variations of boundaries have been presented by just as many entities, basing individual conclusions on the subject at hand whether geographical, sociological, historical, economical, or as mentioned, political. Even within the Appalachian community, there is no definitive boundary consensus. For example, two major geographic definitions differ considerably from each other. “The boundaries defined in 1965 by theAppalachian Regional Commission (ARC) are far broader than those defined in the 1950s by the Southern Appalachian Studies Group (SAS, see Figure 1). Today, the ARC’s updated map (see Figure 2) is the most commonly cited geographic representation of the region, since it is government-sponsored and frequently revised” (Taylor).

Figure 1: Geographic boundaries of Appalachia as defined by both the ARC and SAS in 1950-60s (Taylor)

Figure 2: Geographic boundaries of Appalachia
(including counties) as defined today by the ARC.
Detailed map available online. (Taylor)

Another way of looking at identity is that it should be bound to shared community rather than region.
In his One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture, John Shelton Reed argues that members of a regional community share more than geographic space; “they share a common identity, a common history that binds them together as a people” (Reed 4). American sociologist Robert Bellah defines a community as a group which retains a “community of memory” (Taylor). From these viewpoints, communities are shaped by memories, and of the telling and retelling of those memories over time. So instead of seeing Appalachia as a geographical place or myopic racial viewpoint, we could analyze the region in terms of interfacing and interaction. We could have the freedom to accept identity on the basis of shared encounters within community of culture. In this way, the location of one mountain or the foothills or even the flat lands will not constrain or restrain our vision of who we are. We can revise and claim identity based on our scrapbooking of memories and sharing those savored moments with others who appreciated them. This new conceptual mode of envisioning Appalachian identity has practical implications for sustaining the people of the region by controlling “the kinds of political, socioeconomic, educational, professional, and social support our governments and communities provide”
(Taylor).
Judging that identity moves beyond region to cultural connection, consider that “between 1940 and 1970, more than seven million people left rural Appalachia to settle in urban cities” (Taylor). The result of this sudden change of scene will likely generate a conflict with personal identity as concepts of home transform to new places. This renegotiation of identity entails a grasp of who you are in relationship to who you are becoming. Losses of culture can be mitigated through the extension of identity to the new place. Many regard migrating Appalachians to populaces in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan as “Urban Appalachians,” a renegotiation of culture to a new place. The strength of that connection will depend of the power of community memory and the amount of new building that is done within that cultural context. Quarrels over physical boundaries are now just lines drawn in the sand, easily amended to accommodate individuals and groups who self-identify with the Appalachian heritage and culture. The ability to self-identify must not only be concerned with internal assessments, but must also, contend with outside perception. The Appalachian people have been misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misrepresented through stereotyping from “outsiders” for many years. Memory building from sources beyond the mountains has often been unsympathetic and embellished. “The stereotype of the ‘hill-billie’ for example, first appeared in print in 1900 when New York Journal used the term to describe ‘a free and untrammeled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him” (Taylor). For over one hundred years, these stereotypes have proliferated, being collected and retold countless times. Perhaps the only positive attributed to these stereotypes is the wholesale exclusion of African Americans “caricatured along with the iconic hillbillies made famous in Al Capp 's ‘Li 'l Abner’ or Billy DeBeck 's ‘Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.’ ‘Amos 'n ' Andy’ carried a sufficient load of the ‘Emperor 's’ black water” (Turner 12). The perception of the inhabitants of Appalachia as “Mountain Whites” continued to plague the region as the misinformed perpetuated the notion that the distinct geographical and cultural region had an exclusionary population of “racially pure” people. The most complementary images extended to the white inhabitants were those romantic versions where “pure strains” of Anglo-American’s (Anglo-Saxon’s) whose ancestors hailed from Elizabethan England and lived in remote, genetically and culturally untouched environments within the cloistering walls of the mountains. The other side of the spectrum misrepresented the people of Appalachia as not only ethnically exclusionary but also in a way that the “insiders” resented. “As early as 1899, the Reverend Robert Campbell wrote of the ‘bad odor that always emanates from a class appellation that seems to imply peculiarity, if not inferiority, later noting that the term [Mountain Whites] ‘savors condensation’” (Taylor). It was not until 2002, that the term “Mountain Whites” referencing the people of the Appalachian region in library catalogs and databases throughout the country was changed as the authorized subject heading to “Appalachians (People)” (Taylor). More than just an ill-conceived joke, representations of Appalachians were not in any way conventional. Dialectologist James Robert Reese contends, “that mountaineers are perceived by non-Appalachians not as ‘actual people who reside in the same world,’ but as ‘mythic personages who represent a way of life incompatible with the essential, rational, everyday mode of behavior’ exhibited by those in the mainstream” (Taylor xiv). These conceptions have been so widespread, even among scholars who have been trained differently, as to become traditional discriminatory modus operandi from the majority culture. Southern dialect is a key flashpoint, immediately indicating to many non-Appalachians inferiority of intellect and “backward” customs and culture. Commenting on the severity of stereotypical depictions verging on racism, Victor Villanueva purports, “Appalachian is a color” (Villanueva xiii). While pervasive poverty in the Appalachians has come to national attention, rallying cries have yet to be heard for those living, speaking, and writing in the precipitous region. Mainstream consciousness of this invisible minority does not extend the same respect and differentiation as other minority populations. Indeed, African Americans in Appalachia are doubly affected by stereotypes; “this Otherness is folded doubly back onto itself. In the first published collection on this topic—Blacks in Appalachia (1985)—the group is called a ‘racial minority within a cultural minority’” (Turner and Cabbell xix). Post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha names the space of double minority a “hybrid site of cultural negotiation” and in The Location of Culture (2004), Bhabha asserts that “people who live in the liminal spaces between cultures are in a unique position to build their own identities through present-tense performances - or lived moments that arise from immediate, raw experiences. It is through such performance that ‘objectified others may be turned into subjects of their history and experience’, and distinguished as ‘whole’ apart from the mainstream. This is an unexpected opportunity to “apply lemon juice to invisible ink,” wherein the invisible African American residing in Appalachian America may be made visible and complete through consciously reviewed experiences in the now. African Americans raised in Appalachia have opportunities to access “present-tense performances” at every turn. The rural nature of their mountain culture sustains and edifies their daily lives. An anomaly to the more prevalent urban culture, African Americans embrace the place and culture of their home. Just as the “hill-billie” designation was meant as a slur, for some insiders within the culture it is used as a rallying point of honor and is deftly fashioned into a tool promoting mountain cultures to outsiders as can be illustrated by the contents of gift shops and themes of cultural performances. African Americans are in a particularly insightful position to view their neighbor’s contentions to cultural affronts, comparing their own responses to degradations, adroitly creating new definitions of Black empowerment in place of slurs and playing “trickster” to the unsuspecting majority. Carving out connections with the rural nature of their sense of place is important to Affrilachians (a more cogent and specific term as the intimacy of relationship is discussed in Appalachia), whether coming from rural or “urban Appalachians” situation points. Frank X. Walker explains in Coal Black Voices, one of the first documentaries on Affrilachian art, how Affrilachians connect with the Bluegrass Region of Kentucky:
One of the things I’ve encountered traveling outside Kentucky is having to defend the fact that people of color actually live here…. I’m trying to say that not only are we here, we’re here in a very large way. We’re part of Kentucky’s history. We’re part of the landscape. And, you know, we’re part of the lore of Kentucky that includes basketball and horses and bourbon - that all those things that are Kentucky are also us. And I don’t feel the need to separate them. I’m trying to find ways to build those connections, to let people know. It’s part of my responsibility as an artist - as a Kentucky artist - to say that out loud. To defend my place here and my writing’s place here and my family’s place here and our community and how it fits into the entire notion of what Kentucky is. In another of the first documentaries on Affrilachian art—Afrilachia (intentional spelling)—shares the story of African American Nikky Finney, poet and professor of creative writing, coming to the Bluegrass for the first time from South Carolina. Her arrival in 1989 to The University of Kentucky was greeted with a bundle of books and a stack of zeroxed papers awaiting her on an office desk. The note on top from mentor and colleague Norman Gurney encouraged her to explore the African presence in Appalachia for hundreds of years. She, Gurney, and Walker would take many trips into the back-roads of Appalachia, where they noted that history and culture were the “thickest off the highway” (Afrilachians). Finney remembers one of her first outings on a train ride from Maysville to Washington D.C. and her surprise at the dozens of black families living near the tracks in the West Virginia mountains. Finney relates the preconceived notion she has of there being “no blacks in the mountains” (Affrilachians). As history was coming to life for her, she knew she had come to Kentucky for a reason, perhaps to document this little known population or to “feed” her own personhood (Affrilachians). Coming from farther afield, postmodern author and Yale professor bell hooks (intentionally uncapitalized) relates her returning home story as she completes her trek from California and many other places back to Kentucky roots. Author of Belonging: A Culture of Place, hook grew up in Hopkinsville and is aware of “the world...that championed freedom for everyone. And the way in which that culture…had distinct antiracist dimensions accounts for the unique culture of Appalachian black folks that is rarely acknowledged” (hooks 11). She shares insights into her early nurturing years recounting, “I spent my early childhood around mountain white folk who did not show…racism, and …this world of racial integration in Kentucky hills had been a part of my upbringing, sharpening my sense and sensibility…” (11). Nonetheless, hooks departure from the Appalachian hills and subsequent saturation with mainstream culture changes the nature of her life, rendering an altered Appalachian viewpoint which is indistinguishable from the mainstream. It is not until she returns to her Kentucky roots that hook realizes for the first time the attitudes which have sequestered her identity as an Appalachian. Almost as important as “place” and its impact on identity is the Appalachian love for music. In fact, Affrilachians’ rich musical heritage draws on both place and music to inform wholly unique genres. Cecelia Conway in African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia (1995) firmly established the African origins of what many still consider the most iconic instrument in the Appalachian musical tradition. Many of the “twentieth-century mountain songs were called ‘blues’ and were adapted from that African-American song genre… Arnold Shultz, who greatly influenced bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe… [and] Robert Cantwell, in his 1984 tour de force ‘Bluegrass Breakdown’, demonstrated beyond any doubt the significance of black blues and jazz on the development of bluegrass music” (Hay 8). So it would seem that Appalachia got the banjo from Africa and the Anglo-Appalachians learned to play it from African Americans. The ballad surveyors’ intent on securing the “pure” forms of Elizabethan music overlooked a few important facts which, for them, were invisible. They did notice, however, the unique character of the presentation of these ballads, a vocal “peculiarity” in which the folk singers would randomly dwell on weak accent notes in the melody to break the monotony and confer an air of improvisation. Had they studied more diligently with unhindered minds, they would have discovered the source of the pleasing sound coming from the universal use of this technique in African American influenced genres such as blues, jazz, and gospel as well as the music of West Africa (Hay 8). Another genre of Affrilachian music is the work songs sung by “gandy dancers” doing the labor intensive job of laying track for the railroad before the machine era. In the documentary Affrilachians, Old time Affrilachian track layers from the Buckingham Lining Bar Gang who toiled for the C&O Railroad shout their layered chants, “I gotta gal/ long and tall/ sleeps in the kitchen/ her feet in the hall” as they reenact bygone days of lunging against their tools as they align track following a well choreographed routine. The celebrated hero of their force, none other than John Henry—the steel drivin’ man. This railroading Appalachian work identity is encompassed with Affrilachian surround-sound music, repeated often and forever remembered by the Buckingham Lining Bar Gang. As the Buckingham Lining Bar Gang came out to work that day to reenact former work songs, they were dressed in bib-overalls. Appalachians consistently communicate messages both to themselves and outsiders of their affiliations. Outsiders will need to be alert to perceive the messages sent by insiders. A proud and hardworking community, Appalachians will signal their deeply engrained values of strong work ethic and conserving ecology of culture and environment. Bib-overalls have been known to be worn by farmers, organic gardeners, crafts people, railroaders, coal miners, poets, and college presidents. The complexity of the message may take some time to decipher using an accurate cultural context. The washed out wrinkled shirt of a Berea College professor does not mean he has a lack of personal hygiene and respect for himself, his college, and his students. Rather it is both a statement and a commitment to eco-friendly attire with the highest of standards. The type of material is extremely important, using one hundred percent organic cotton, no harmful dyes, and energy conscience line-drying methods. A meager frame from which to hang those overalls and your recyclable container hitched to your bicycle will denote your standards relating to sustainable world hunger participation and again, energy conservation. Traveling to Alice Lloyd College will necessitate bringing your “Carhartt” jacket along, readying yourself to participate in any number of work projects from this number two work college in Kentucky. One glance at your apparel will tell insiders who you are and with whom you are affiliated. Affrilachians are a unique compilation of Appalachian and African culture. They inhabit the “cultural space stemming from Appalachia while embracing the concept that Appalachia plays host to a spectrum of racial and cultural identity. The term “Affrilachian” provides a door to a much broader conversation that involves a cross-section of people who can claim a number of nationalities, not just that of African descent” (Affrilachianpoets). Regardless of ethnicity, Affrilachians claim the long history and substance of the hills and mountains of the region, many living in the hollers and ridge-tops amongst the Appalachian mountains. Some retain the identity of Affrilachia while spreading out beyond the mountain shadows but never out of reach of its “raison d’être” as in the poem “Kentucke,” by the 2013 Poet Laureate of Kentucky, Frank X Walker who reminds: “…we are the amen in church hill downs/ the mint in the julep/ we put the heat in the hot brown/ and gave it color/ indeed some of the bluegrass/ is black” (Taylor). Notice Walker’s collective and inclusive “we” and use of past tense as he reminds readers and listeners about the deeds and accomplishments of Affrilachians in the history of the region, claiming rural Bluegrass for an extension of Appalachia. Affrilachian identity affiliation addresses another dilemma in a similar manner, this time one of identity and culture for Crystal Wilkinson, author of poetry collection, Blackberries, Blackberries. In Coal Black Voices, she reflects:
It felt like I was operating from the outside no matter where I was. I was black and operating on the outside…. With my writing, I always felt like that if I was going to be writing about my ruralness, then I had to approach that with a certain group. Or if I was going to be writing about my blackness, that was something different. And with the Affrilachian Poets, it validated my whole self and validated my own body of writing that…individually and collectively we had a message that could be understood and heard by the outside world. Affrilachians finding community connection to culture has a distinct historical tradition through the work of Carter G. Woodson, the Father of Black History, who is known for the first writing on African Americans in Appalachia in 1916 in The Journal of Negro History. He traces the Appalachian contributions to the anti-slavery movement to the pre-Civil War era. “…Woodson refers to white Appalachians as “the friends of freedom in Appalachian America” (Woodson 148). Additionally, he cites the 1855 founding of Berea College, the first interracial and coeducational college in the South, “as a courageous early example of the white mountaineer’s sympathy for and support of African American education and freedom” (Woodson 148). Woodson further continues to outline examples of relationships between blacks and whites during the beginning of the eighteen hundreds in Appalachia. Woodson concludes his article by observing, “White and black men work side by side, visit each other in their homes, and often attend the same church to listen with delight to the Word spoken by either a colored or white preacher” (150). The mutual appreciation for all things Appalachian, whether it be shared work ethic, family values (kin folks), church going, eating greens and cornbread, or bringing a “poke” (sack) to the store, validates the community culture providing a bond that strengthens identity. Some interesting church customs in the Appalachians are of particular interest to cultural anthropologists and those identifying commonalities throughout the region. In “The Study of Appalachian Mountain Religion,” Deborah McCauley noted the “holy whine,” a preaching style thought to have originated from the Great Awakening of 1740-1743 in the South, is primarily found in Appalachia with a parallel experience existing between mountain and black religious tradition (McCauley 148). Individuals with historical, theological, and experiential backgrounds related to the Appalachians will be best situated to analyze data resulting from these shared experiences. Many indicators such as these underscore the validity of historical narrative and living memories which point to integrated and shared church going practices among Affrilachians, Caucasians, and other ethnicities in the mountain region. Affrilachians seek to preserve the shared memory with Appalachia, deliberately stepping forward by self-determining efforts to conserve, preserve, and enrich those connections and memories. Even the term “Affrilachian” is self-created and has been chosen to represent their purpose to signify the importance of African American identity in the Appalachians. The story behind the creation of the expression “Affrilachian” is one of interest and significance. Attending an Appalachian writing gathering in Lexington, Frank X Walker wondered why the original title of the affair was changed to “The Best of Southern Writing” as opposed to “The Best of Appalachian Writing.” He knew both African Americans and Appalachians should be represented. Upon looking up the word “Appalachian” in the dictionary, he found he did not exist. Webster’s dictionary definition at that time narrowly only included “whites residents from the mountains.” Determined to ensure the voice of people of African descent in Appalachia, he created his own word: Affrilachian.
The whole impetus could have ended there if it had not been for the small but dedicated group of poets who met at The University of Kentucky’s Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center and quickly adopted the name for their poetry circle now called “Affrilachian Poets.” They purposed to defend their place in the Appalachian Mountain Region, asserting their part in the culture and landscape. It is through the creation of the term “Affrilachian” that African American Appalachians are now distinguished and “turned into subjects of their history and experience” (Taylor). They are now able to build connections as establishing points in order to conserve their culture and identities to outsiders, while gaining confidence and producing a broadened cultural recognition. They have also worked hard to produce the space necessary to create new informed extensions of those identities as can be observed by the proliferation of their work. As Turner emphasizes:
The mountains—those barriers made of insidious disparagement and benign belittlement—are not as high as they once were! The storehouse of knowledge about Black Appalachian life and culture will increase as the technologies of the New Information Age connect Appalachia to the rest of the world and as more and more scholars see Appalachia as a "kind of cultural Galapagos," where-especially in terms of black life and culture—things old are constantly unveiled and new ones are waiting to be discovered. (14)
Affrilachian literature continues to be an expression of the African American experience in the elusive region of Appalachia, both individually and collectively. “Affrilachian art authorizes and propagates identity through language performances that, when viewed together, create a viral ecology of rhetorical influence” (Taylor). This new ecology speaks back to history and forward to the future, overcoming centuries of mute inaccessibility. The dynamic of culture and identify in the hands of a self-determined people intent on preserving the best of their past and forging their own hopeful futures is a powerful template for “Everyman” who has lost his or her voice. Let the Affrilachians lead the way: revisiting, retelling, repeating, revising, restoring, and remaking.

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