AHA Session 42
Thursday, January 8, 2026: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Hancock Parlor (Palmer House Hilton, Sixth Floor)
Chair:
Kathryn Newfont, University of Kentucky
Papers:
Comment:
Kathryn Newfont, University of Kentucky
Session Abstract
What are Appalachia’s Black histories? How might insights from those histories change what we know about Black history nationally and even globally? Though smaller in population than white communities, the impact of Black people on the region and its history is no less significant. This panel features new perspectives in Black Appalachian history with a primary focus on the Black Freedom Struggle. Included are presentations that examine a nineteenth-century slave revolt in Kentucky, Black radical women in the Tennessee Valley region during the Jim Crow era, the local fight for civil rights in Appalachian Alabama in the 1950s and 1960s, and a regional Black Power organization in the 1960s and 1970s. Composed of social, intellectual, and environmental histories, this panel asserts Appalachian history as an important lens for understanding national and international trends, and Black history as an integral part of Appalachia’s story.
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