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Outspoken Appalachian writer Harry M. Caudill analyzes the exploitation and decline of the eastern Kentucky mountain lands, which have rendered “no people in the nation...more forlorn than the Appalachian highlanders in our time.Frontier attitudes, a strong attachment to the land, and isolation have produced in Appalachia a backwoods culture which made its people susceptible to an outside exploitation of their resources that has perpetrated on them a passive society largely dependent on relief.

But the times, says Mr. Caudill, are changing. A growing world population and global industrialization have created a drastically altered situation in eastern Kentucky. The area’s resources of energy are essential to the progress and well-being not only of the nation but also of the world; and the world is prepared to court the favor of the people who control these resources and is prepared to pay the price demanded by those owners. Mr. Caudill makes an eloquent plea for Kentuckians to reclaim the resources that lie in their mountains and to demand their fair share of the wealth generated by those resources. If they are willing to do this, the state and especially the people in eastern Kentucky can have a bright and prosperous future. But they can delay no longer. They must break the mold of passivity and take destiny into their own hands.

Harry M. Caudill is the author of such well-known books as Night Comes to the Cumberlands, Dark Hills to Westward, and My Land is Dying.

The Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf is a celebration of two centuries of the history and culture of the Commonwealth.

Publication Date

1976

Publisher

The University Press of Kentucky

Place of Publication

Lexington, KY

ISBN

9780813192871

eISBN

9780813150277

Keywords

Appalachian Plateau, Appalachian Region, Kentucky

Disciplines

Appalachian Studies

A Darkness at Dawn: Appalachian Kentucky and the Future
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