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Appalachian Volunteers Records, Parts I and II

 Collection — Multiple Containers
Identifier: BCA 0003 SAA 002

Scope and Contents

The collection includes the official records, correspondence, government contracts, personnel records, project reports, newspaper clippings, photographs, slides, film, and sound recordings of the Appalachian Volunteers.

Listen To Selected Recordings

Dates

  • created: 1963-1970
  • Other: Date acquired: 00/00/1969

Creator

Conditions Governing Access

Personnel records included in the collection may be restricted; all material protected by federal copyright law.  Please cite all materials. Records can be accessed through the Reading Room, Berea College Special Collections and Archives, Hutchins Library, Berea College.

Conditions Governing Use

Personnel records included in the collection may be restricted; all material protected by federal copyright law.  Please cite all materials.

Extent

149.00 ms_boxes

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

The Appalachian Volunteers (AV) was one of the most visible and, initially, successful of the War on Poverty projects of the 1960s. At its peak—in the summers of 1966 and 1967—the organization was receiving large amounts of federal funding and had over 500 volunteer workers in the field. Its prominent involvement in social and political reform, the geographic area it served, and the factors contributing to its demise make the records of the Appalachian Volunteers a rich source for the study of the reform impulses of the 1960s.

In 1963, the Appalachian Volunteers organization grew out of efforts by the Kennedy White House staff to begin pilot projects in Appalachia which might serve as models for broader-scale anti-poverty efforts. With the aid of a small federal grant, the Berea based Council of the Southern Mountains mounted a project emphasizing the use of volunteers.

Council staffers, Milton Ogle and Philip Conn, organized a board of directors and recruited eastern Kentucky college students to work in one and two-room schools.  These volunteers painted and repaired school buildings, taught enrichment classes, and conducted tutoring programs.  The staff involved school boards, parents and other community leaders, in an effort to stimulate a “self-help” frame-of-mind among community members.

President Johnson’s call for a “war on poverty” and the passage of the Economic Opportunity Act in 1964 opened the way for the CSM to receive additional funding with which to expand the pilot project. Additional staff was hired and additional student volunteers were recruited—particularly students from Appalachian colleges and in the east and north. During  summers large groups of volunteers were trained and sent to communities in eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, West Virginia and east Tennessee.

The Appalachian Volunteer project became an independent entity in May 1966. AV staff resigned in mass from the CSM, incorporated as a non-profit organization, and negotiated for funding from the Office of Economic Opportunity. This action resulted primarily from internal ideological differences regarding the extent to which the organization should be involved directly in controversial social and economic issues. Part of this realignment included moving offices to Bristol, Tennessee, a more central location for the AV’s wide-ranging operations.  Key staff members at that time included Daniel Fox and Jack Rivel.  Milton Ogle continued as director of the program until 1968, when David Walls assumed the position.

Appalachian Volunteer projects such as Books for Appalachia, school renovation, and tutoring efforts were non-controversial. However, the group’s involvement with such touchy issues as strip-mining, corrupt local politics, and fraudulent welfare practices put them at odds with some of their target communities and local, state, and federal government agencies with which they worked.  This involvement included informing poor people of their legal rights and means of redressing grievances, and helping to form grassroots political and economic organizations to achieve these goals.

A number of issues arose which undermined the organization’s effectiveness in many communities. These included sedition charges brought against an AV staff member in Kentucky and internal staff problems throughout 1967-68.  Under pressure from state and local governments, the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity began a series of investigations which eventually resulted in a partial cutback, then full loss of funding by the end of 1968. The result of this action was yet another move for the AV offices, this time to Prestonsburg, Kentucky.  In Prestonsburg, with private funding, severely restricted operations continued until 1971, when the organization ceased to exist.

Arrangement Note

Because of haphazard storage during the period of their accumulation, records were received out of original office order. They were restored to approximate original order with the help of Verdelle Vaughn, a former secretary with the Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM), the Appalachian Volunteers parent organization.



The records are in two parts:



Appalachian Volunteers Records Part I

Part 1 is arranged in twenty-three series:

Series 1 - COUNCIL OF SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS (CSM)-APPALACHIAN VOLUNTEERS (AV) Planning Records

Series 2 - CSM -AV Planning Meetings and Conferences

Series 3 - CSM -AV Programs - Activity Plans and Reports

Series 4 - CSM -AV Correspondence and Memos- Perley F. Ayer

Series 5 - CSM -AV Dissension

Series 6 - AV Organizational Records Following Separation From CSM

Series 7 - AV Board, Staff and Regional Meetings, Staff Lists

Series 8 - AV Activity Reports

Series 9 - AV Internal Dissension

Series 10 - Evaluation Reports on AV Program

Series 11 - CSM -AV Government Contracts

Series 12 - AV- Project Proposals for Grant Funding

Series 13 - CSM -AV Foundation Contracts

Series 14 - CSM -AV General and Correspondence Files

Series 15 - CSM -AV Individual Staff Files

Series 16 - AV Bristol- Prestonsburg General Office Files

Series 17 - AV Projects

Series 18 - AV- Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)

Series 19 - AV- Library for Community Action Styles (LCAS)

Series 20 - AV- Outpost-Intern Education Program

Series 21 - AV- Publications

Series 22 - AV- Publicity

Series  23 - AV Photographs

Series 24 - AV Audio-Visual Materials

Appalachian Volunteers Records Part 2

Records in Part 2 were conveyed to Berea after the processing of the main part (Part 1) of the collection was complete. Included are organizational records, correspondence, project reports, field staff activity reports, court case documents, newspaper clippings and print articles for the time period 1965-1971.

Part 2 is arranged into eight series:

Series 1 - Organizational Records  

Series 2 – Newspaper Clippings

Series 3 – AV Projects

Series 4 - AV Evaluation / Activity Reports   

Series 5 - Publications

Series 6 – Subject Files

Series 7 - AV Court Cases

Series 8 - Correspondence

Source of Acquisition

David Walls

Method of Acquisition

Berea College’s Southern Appalachian Archives acquired the Appalachian Volunteer’s organizational records in 1969 from David Walls. A small amount of additional material (1965-1971) was later conveyed to Berea after original processing— these records are presently designated as Part II of the collection. In 2015, David Walls donated a copy of his 1981 interview with Rich Kirby and a copy of Alan McSurely’s The Organizer’s Handbook to the collection.

Related Materials

Council of the Southern Mountains Collection

Appalachian Volunteers Oral History Collection

"Voices from the Sixties" Oral History Collection

Related Publications

Buckingham, Jeanne E. Live Coals: Memoir of a Kentucky VISTA. DE, Middletown; CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 23, 2015).

Other Descriptive Information

Materials from this collection have been digitized and are located here: https://berea.access.preservica.com/archive/sdb%3AdeliverableUnit%7Cfb88b2f5-8319-4992-b14c-7efd90d1d4f5/

Collection Number: BCA 0003 SAA 002

Processing Information

Because of haphazard storage during the period of their accumulation, records were received out of original office order. They were restored to approximate original order with the help of Verdelle Vaughn, a former secretary with the Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM), the Appalachian Volunteers parent organization.

Records in Part 2 were conveyed to Berea after the processing of the main part (Part 1) of the collection was complete.

Related Names

Subjects

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Title
Finding Aid of the Appalachian Volunteers Records, Parts I and II
Status
Completed
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
English
Script of description
Latin
Language of description note
eng

Physical Storage Information

Repository Details

Repository Details

Part of the Berea College Special Collections and Archives Repository

https://libraryguides.berea.edu/archives
Contact:
Hutchins Library
100 Campus Drive
Berea Kentucky 40404 US
859.985.3262

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