Anita Cherry: Like Father Like Daughter  History was made in the winter of 1973 in the coal seams of Jenkins, Kentucky. Alongside Diana Baldwin, Anita Cherry became one of the first two women in the United States to work underground in a coal mine.

Appalachian Figures From Double Creek to Hindman James Still was born on July 16, 1906, in the Double Creek/Double Branch community near LaFayette, Alabama. After studies at Lincoln Memorial University (’29) and graduate work at Vanderbilt (M.A., 1930), he arrived at the Hindman Settlement School in the summer of 1931.

Appalachian Figures A voice from Knott County Verna Mae Slone was born in Knott County, Kentucky, on October 9, 1914, and died in Hindman on January 5, 2009. She and her husband, Willie Slone, raised five sons. In addition to writing, she became known across Eastern Kentucky for her quilts and cloth dolls.

Appalachian Figures Charles McElroy White grew up in the logging and rail hamlet of Hutton on the outskirts of Oakland, Maryland. He went on to lead one of the nation’s largest steelmakers during the most turbulent decades of American industrial history. His path ran from a mountain schoolhouse to the University of Maryland, from mill floors to boardrooms, and into the hearing rooms of Congress.

Appalachian Figures Why Baker matters Edwin T. Baker served eight years in the California Assembly, then two years on the Los Angeles City Council, during a moment when Southern California was growing fast and demanding a bigger voice in state government.

Appalachian History A round valley with a very old story Stand at the Pinnacle Overlook above Cumberland Gap and look down on the town of Middlesboro. The basin that cradles the streets is strikingly circular. For decades geologists mapped and argued about that circle’s origin.

Appalachian History What happened at Pound Gap On the night of November 29–30, 1927, a white mob seized Leonard Woods, a Black coal miner from Jenkins, Kentucky, from the Letcher County jail in Whitesburg. They drove him to Pound Gap on the Kentucky–Virginia line and killed him there.

Appalachian Figures Introduction Robert Burns “Bob” Conley was born in Mousie, Knott County, on February 1, 1934. He reached the majors with the Philadelphia Phillies in September 1958, starting two games in five days. His brief stay still matters here because it shows how a mountain kid from a small bend of Troublesome Creek climbed all the way to a big league mound.

Appalachian Figures A coal camp beginning Clara Juanita Morris was born in Lynch, Kentucky, a model company town built by the U.S. Coal & Coke Company, a U.S. Steel subsidiary. Lynch rose quickly after 1917 with stone public buildings, graded streets, schools, a hospital, and a massive coal tipple.

Appalachian Figures Few Leslie Countians have written a song that climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard country chart. One did it from Hyden. Betty Jean Robinson, born Betty Jean Rhodes on June 17, 1933, grew up in the hills around Hyden and later carried that upbringing to Nashville as a working songwriter and, in time, a prolific gospel artist.

Appalachian Figures Lynch, Kentucky, as a beginning Lynch was carved out of Harlan County by the U.S. Coal & Coke Company, a U.S. Steel subsidiary, beginning in 1917. It grew into a model company town with miles of planned streets, graded house types, a hospital, schools, churches, and one of the most advanced coal loading plants of its era.