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David Walls (born October 21, 1941) is an activist and academic who has made significant contributions to Appalachian studies and to the popular understanding of social movements. He is professor emeritus of sociology at Sonoma State University (SSU) in California, where he was dean of extended education from 1984 to 2000.
Born David Stuart Walls in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and in Duluth, Minnesota. He finished the last two years of high school in Coral Gables, Florida. He attended the University of California, Berkeley as an undergraduate from 1959 to 1964, earning a bachelor's degree in economics. [1] While at Berkeley, he was active in SLATE, the campus political party, [2] and served a term on the board of directors of the Associated Students of the University of California.
After graduating from UC Berkeley, he began work in 1964 as a management intern at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington, DC, serving as an assistant to Mary E. Switzer, commissioner of the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration, and her deputy. In 1965 he transferred to the newly established War on Poverty headquarters, the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), where he worked in the Community Action Program, assisting Jule Sugarman with the launch of Project Head Start and funding student volunteer programs. [1]
In fall 1966 Walls joined the staff of the Appalachian Volunteers (AV), a nonprofit agency conducting community organizing projects in the central Appalachian coalfields of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and southwestern Virginia. He moved to Harlan County, Kentucky to supervise VISTA volunteers. A year later he became field coordinator for the AV in the state, and moved to Berea, Kentucky. When founding executive director Milton Ogle resigned in August 1968, Walls became the director for the organization's final year. [3] Although his initial work in Harlan County involved organizing low-income people to demand representation on the Cumberland Valley's community action agency, he soon was drawn into the growing opposition to strip-mining for coal, after a landslide from a strip-mine bench threatened a house at the head of Jones Creek, [4] above Verda on the Clover Fork of the Cumberland River in Harlan County. The AV's support for people opposing strip-mining for coal led to sedition charges in Pike County, Kentucky in August 1967 against an AV staff member and two workers for the Southern Conference Education Fund. Although the sedition charges were quickly dismissed by federal judge and former Kentucky governor Bert T. Combs, the case undermined OEO support for the AV. [5]
After Republican governor Louie B. Nunn was elected in November 1967, the AV faced an investigation by the Kentucky Un-American Activities Committee (KUAC). Walls issued a statement challenging the constitutionality of KUAC and the legality of the hearings. He refused an invitation to appear before the committee, but was not issued a subpoena, which he had hoped to challenge in court. [6] [7] [8] In an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, Walls summarized the outlook of the AV staff on the coalfield region:
An impatience with the slowness of change and paternalistic government programs; a distrust of experts who think they can solve the problems of poor people; a disgust with the way corruption is taken for granted in the mountains; a trust in the ability of poor people to solve their own problems, given the proper tools and money; a desire to end the colonialistic exploitation of Appalachia by corporations in Pittsburgh and New York and by small cliques of men in county seats; and a belief that the wealth of the area's mineral resources ought to go toward constructing a better way of life for all the people who live here. [9] [10]
Political pressures to terminate funding for the AV finally took their toll, and no further OEO support was forthcoming. After attempting an orderly spin-off or phase-out of AV staff and programs, Walls resigned as executive director in April 1970. [11] [12]
Walls began graduate work in sociology at the University of Kentucky (UK) in fall 1969, while still working part-time for the AV. In fall 1970 he began full-time studies at UK, moving to Lexington, Kentucky, to live with a group of fellow graduate students in Collective One, a politically progressive household of five men and five women. With an offset press in the basement, Collective One printed leaflets for the local anti-Vietnam War and women's movements. The women in the collective were among the initiators of the women's liberation movement in Lexington. [13] Collective members also helped organize participation in local and national demonstrations against the Vietnam War, and helped elect one of their group, Scott Wendelsdorf, to two terms as student body president. Walls married Lucia Gattone, whom he had met in Prestonsburg, Kentucky while working for the AV, at Collective One on Thanksgiving Day, 1971. He received an MA in sociology in 1972 with a thesis comparing dialectical sociology in Peter Berger and Western Marxism. After two years Collective One broke up as members went their separate ways to jobs and other graduate schools.
Remaining at UK, Walls worked toward a doctorate in sociology and edited Appalachia in the Sixties [14] with his faculty mentor John B. Stephenson. In fall 1974, Walls accepted a faculty position of assistant professor in the social work program at UK. He also worked with a group of colleagues to organize the interdisciplinary Appalachian Center at UK, with a mission of promoting Appalachian studies courses, research on the region, and community service. The Appalachian Center was formally established in 1976, with Stephenson named director, and Walls designated associate director. A meeting between Walls and American studies professor Alessandro Portelli during a visit to Rome, Italy, in 1973 led to a long-term exchange program, involving graduate students and faculty, between the UK Appalachian Center and Sapienza University of Rome. [15]
Walls's doctoral research produced several articles and chapters that contributed to the emerging field of Appalachian studies. At the 1975 Appalachian Symposium held at Appalachian State University to honor Cratis D. Williams, Walls presented his paper "On the Naming of Appalachia", [16] which identified the first appearances of "Appalachia" on the maps of early explorers and mapmakers. This conference served as a catalyst for the Appalachian Studies Association. At UK, Walls elaborated on the application of the internal colonialism model to the Appalachian region, first developed by Helen M. Lewis, [17] and collaborated with sociologist Dwight Billings on the sociology of the southern Appalachians, the structure of the coal industry for the Ohio River Basin Energy Study, and the foundations of the university's Appalachian studies curriculum. His Ph.D. in sociology was awarded in 1978.
In 1982 Walls returned to California to take a job at Sonoma State University (SSU) as director of sponsored programs and general manager of the SSU Academic Foundation. In 1984 he became the dean of the school of extended education. During his tenure as dean, SSU introduced a BA degree completion program with a distance learning component, MA degrees in liberal studies and computer and engineering science, and an expanded group of MA degrees in psychology, including organizational development and depth psychology. He received an academic appointment in sociology, and taught classes on the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and gender and social movements. [1]
Walls authored The Activist's Almanac: The Concerned Citizen's Guide to the Leading Advocacy Organizations in America, interviewing over a hundred leaders of national social movement organizations. [18] After a favorable review of The Activist's Almanac in The Workbook [19] (a quarterly aimed at activists in the Southwest), editor Kathy Cone invited several articles by Walls. These appeared in The Workbook between 1994 and 2000, when the magazine was discontinued by its sponsor. Walls's survey article on community organizing has since been updated online. [20]
In the early 2000s Walls engaged in a dispute with Project Censored over what he saw as a denial of war crimes committed by Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, specifically concerning atrocities at Trnopolje camp and Omarska camp near Prijedor in Bosnia, and the Račak massacre in Kosovo. Walls's article in New Politics [21] drew a supportive letter from sociologist Bogdan Denitch and rejoinders from Peter Phillips, Diana Johnstone, and Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, with replies to each by Walls. [22] He was also critical of Project Censored's occasional inability to distinguish between sound and unsound science, as in the case of NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn [23] and its promotion of 9/11 conspiracy theories. [24]
Walls stepped down as dean in 2000, and taught part-time at SSU for four years, retiring as emeritus professor in 2005. He has since taught short courses on the sources of social movement success for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes (OLLI programs) at SSU and other northern California campuses. [1]
Project Censored is an American nonprofit media watchdog organization. The group's stated mission is to "educate students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government."
Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in Alabama, the cultural region of Appalachia typically refers only to the central and southern portions of the range, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, southwesterly to the Great Smoky Mountains. As of the 2010 United States Census, the region was home to approximately 25 million people.
Sonoma State University is a public university in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County, California. It is one of the smallest members of the California State University (CSU) system. Sonoma State offers 92 Bachelor's degrees, 19 Master's degrees, and 11 teaching credentials.
Appalachian English is a variant of American English native to the Appalachian mountain region of the Eastern United States. Historically, the term "Appalachian dialect" refers to a local English variety of southern Appalachia, also known as Smoky Mountain English or Southern Mountain English in the United States, both influential upon and influenced by the Southern U.S. regional dialect, which has become predominant in central and southern Appalachia today, while a Western Pennsylvania regional dialect has become predominant in northern Appalachia. The 2006 Atlas of North American English identifies the "Inland South,” a dialect sub-region in which the Southern U.S. dialect's defining vowel shift is the most developed, as centering squarely in southern Appalachia: namely, the cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; and Asheville, North Carolina. All Appalachian English is rhotic and characterized by distinct phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. It is mostly oral but its features are also sometimes represented in literary works.
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) is a United States federal-state partnership that works with the people of Appalachia to create opportunities for self-sustaining economic development and improved quality of life. Congress established ARC to bring the region into socioeconomic parity with the rest of the nation.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. It is derived from various European and African influences, including English ballads, Irish and Scottish traditional music, hymns, and African-American blues. First recorded in the 1920s, Appalachian musicians were a key influence on the early development of Old-time music, country music, and bluegrass, and were an important part of the American folk music revival of the 1960s. Instruments typically used to perform Appalachian music include the banjo, American fiddle, fretted dulcimer, and guitar.
Appalachian Ohio is a bioregion and political unit in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio, characterized by the western foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and the Appalachian Plateau. The Appalachian Regional Commission defines the region as consisting of thirty-two counties. This region roughly overlaps with the Appalachian mixed-mesophytic forests, which begin in southeast Ohio and southwest Pennsylvania and continue to north Georgia and Alabama. The mixed-mesophytic forest is found only in Central and Southern Appalachia and eastern/central China. It is one of the most biodiverse temperate forests in the world.
In the United States, the Hillbilly Highway is the emigration of residents of the Appalachian Mountains to industrial cities in northern, midwestern, and western states, primarily in the years following World War II in search of better-paying industrial jobs and higher standards of living. Many of these migrants were formerly employed in the coal mining industry, which started to decline in 1940s. The word hillbilly refers to a negative stereotype of people from the Appalachians. The Hillbilly Highway was a parallel to the better-known Great Migration of African-Americans from the south.
Appalachian studies is the area studies field concerned with the Appalachian region of the United States.
Joe Szakos is a community organizer and author. He was coordinator of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) from 1981 to 1993, and was the executive director of Virginia Organizing from 1994 to 2017. He is now an organizer with Virginia Organizing.
The Appalachian region of the Eastern United States is home to over 25 million people and covers parts of mostly mountainous areas of 13 states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, and the entire state of West Virginia. The near-isolation of the area's rugged topography is home to communities with a distinct culture, who in many cases are put at a disadvantage because of the transportation and infrastructure problems that have developed.
John B. Stephenson was a sociologist and scholar of Appalachia, a founder of the Appalachian Studies Conference, and president of Berea College from 1984 to 1994.
The Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM) was a non-profit organization, active from 1912 to 1989, concerned with education and community development in southern Appalachia.
Appalachian Volunteers (AV) was a non-profit organization engaged in community development projects in central Appalachia that evolved into a controversial community organizing network, with a reputation that went "from self-help to sedition" as its staff developed from "reformers to radicals," in the words of one historian, in the brief period between 1964 and 1970 during the War on Poverty.
Jim Wayne Miller was an American poet and educator. He was a major influence on literature in the Appalachian region.
Environmental justice and coal mining in Appalachia is the study of environmental justice – the interdisciplinary body of social science literature studying theories of the environment and justice; environmental laws, policies, and their implementations and enforcement; development and sustainability; and political ecology – in relation to Coal mining in Appalachia.
Helen Matthews Lewis is a sociologist, historian, and activist who specializes in Appalachia and women's rights. She is noted for developing an interpretation of Appalachia as an internal United States colony, as well as designing the first academic programs for Appalachian studies. She also specializes in Appalachian oral history, collecting and preserving the experiences of Appalachian working class women in their own words. She is known as the "grandmother of Appalachian Studies" as her work has influenced a generation of scholars who focus on Appalachia.
Helen Dingman was an American academic and social worker who was one of the central figures in the Progressive and New Deal eras to bring social and economic reform to Appalachia. After teaching in Massachusetts for five years from 1912 to 1917, Dingman moved to Kentucky to establish the Smith Community Life School under the auspices of the United Presbyterian Church. Serving as principal and directing six other schools in Harlan County, Kentucky, she provided both education and social services to the community until 1922. After a two year placement as an assistant superintendent for the mission board in New York, she was hired as a teacher in the Sociology Department at Berea College. She taught social work courses and trained teachers for the rural schools in the region until 1952. In addition, she served as Executive Secretary of the Conference of Southern Mountain Workers, establishing the professional basis for social workers. The first comprehensive economic and social survey of the Southern Appalachias was spearheaded by Dingman.
Area Redevelopment Administration was a rural poverty program of the Kennedy administration, primarily in Appalachia.
The city of Baltimore, Maryland includes a significant Appalachian population. The Appalachian community has historically been centered in the neighborhoods of Hampden, Pigtown, Remington, Woodberry, Lower Charles Village, Highlandtown, and Druid Hill Park, as well as the Baltimore inner suburbs of Dundalk, Essex, and Middle River. The culture of Baltimore has been profoundly influenced by Appalachian culture, dialect, folk traditions, and music. People of Appalachian heritage may be of any race or religion. Most Appalachian people in Baltimore are white or African-American, though some are Native American or from other ethnic backgrounds. White Appalachian people in Baltimore are typically descendants of early English, Irish, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh settlers. A migration of White Southerners from Appalachia occurred from the 1920s to the 1960s, alongside a large-scale migration of African-Americans from the Deep South and migration of Native Americans from the Southeast such as the Lumbee and the Cherokee. These out-migrations caused the heritage of Baltimore to be deeply influenced by Appalachian and Southern cultures.
