Sublime

The civil rights struggle in Appalachia, as elsewhere in the South, was an effort at remaking what it meant to be Americans. The Highlander Folk School is one of the most important institutions in that generations-long endeavor. In 1932, in the Tennessee hills, Highlander was established.

Section 27, an obscure amendment to the state constitution, Pennsylvania had guaranteed its citizens the right to clean air and pure water and to the commonly held assets of public natural resources. Pennsylvania was one of only three states in the nation to enshrine such environmental rights in its Bill of Rights.

In the case of the Cherokee, this meant that they would be citizens of the United States and residents of the state of Georgia, whose laws included a provision that Creek Indians could legally be hunted “wheresoever they may be found within the limits of this state.” Invoking

Among the newer hillbilly hustles is ginseng. Ginseng thieves go onto private or state land and forage for it, under threat of surveillance and chase. The kind of ginseng grown in Appalachia is of a particularly good quality for Asian markets. In traditional Chinese medicine, Asian ginseng cools, but North American ginseng warms the body. A fresh p

The armies of the Lost Cause rallied against Grant and Congress. To the Mississippi Clarion, the law was “unconstitutional and hideously despotic.” Congressman James M. Leach of North Carolina called it “an outrage upon the Constitution, an outrage upon liberty and free government, an outrage upon the good name of a noble State and a law-loving peo

Georgia’s population grew by more than half during the 1820s. That, plus the Southern cotton boom and the discovery of gold in the Cherokee Nation, put the Cherokees in a precarious position. In 1828 the state of Georgia declared the Cherokee constitution invalid and demanded the Cherokees’ land. President Andrew Jackson approved. An Indian nation