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The Metro Detroit region of Michigan is home to a significant Appalachian population, one of the largest populations of Urban Appalachians in the United States. The most common state of origin for Appalachian people in Detroit is Kentucky, while many others came from Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere in the Appalachia region. The Appalachian population has historically been centered in the Detroit neighborhoods of Brightmoor, Springwells, Corktown and North Corktown, as well as the Detroit suburbs of Hazel Park, Ypsilanti, Taylor, and Warren. Beginning after World War I, Appalachian people moved to Detroit in large numbers seeking jobs. Between 1940 and 1970, approximately 3.2 million Appalachian and Southern migrants settled in the Midwest, particularly in large cities such as Detroit and Chicago. [1] This massive influx of rural Appalachian people into Northern and Midwestern cities has been called the "Hillbilly Highway". The culture of Metro Detroit has been significantly influenced by the culture, music, and politics of Appalachia. The majority of people of Appalachian heritage in Metro Detroit are Christian and either white or black, though Appalachian people can be of any race, ethnicity, or religion.
Between 1940 and 1960, around 7 million Appalachian people migrated to the North. During World War II, Appalachian people worked in war factories and automobile manufacturing, in part due to the decline of coal mining in Appalachia. The Immigration Act of 1924, which restricted immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe and Asia, also created a shortage of working-class immigrants in Northern cities, a role that was filled by many working-class Appalachian migrants. Northern industrialists believed Appalachian people to possess mechanical aptitude and a Protestant work ethic, and felt that Appalachian people lacked the political radicalism and unionism often found among Eastern and Southern European immigrants. [2] While "Hillbilly Highway" is a metaphor, many Appalachian people who arrived in Detroit literally traveled along "Hillbilly Highways" such as U.S. Route 23 and Interstate 75. [3] [4] In Chad Berry's Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles, he claims that 66,000 white Appalachian people resided in Detroit in 1930. Many were from Eastern Kentucky, particularly Harlan County. 1,000 people a year left Harlan County each year in the 1950s, so many that a bus line ran daily departures from Harlan to Detroit.
Many Appalachian people settled in southwest Detroit. Southwestern Detroit was once a predominantly Polish neighborhood, before Appalachian people became predominant. The area is now referred to by locals as Mexicantown and boasts a large Latino immigrant population, particularly because many of the Appalachian people have aged and died, moved to the suburbs, or moved back to the South. [5]
Poor Appalachian people who arrived in Metro Detroit were often looked down upon with disdain. Appalachian people were stereotyped as backwards, their homes were considered eyesores, and landlords sometimes refused to rent to them believing that the neighborhood would become an Appalachian enclave. In a 1953 survey conducted by Wayne State University, Detroit residents were asked to identify "undesirable people" in the city; "Poor Southern whites" and "hillbillies" were tied at the top with criminals and gangsters as the most undesirable, being considered more undesirable than "Negroes", "drifters", and "transients".
In a socioeconomic research study conducted by Roscoe Griffin that spanned from 1945 to 1950 on households of the Pine Mountain School district in Kentucky (made up of migrants), unique characteristics were identified that alienated the community from modern communities. Griffin noted two characteristics of the community, indifference towards developing formal organizations/lack of participation in existing ones and an overall lack of resistance to the severe widespread poverty in their community. Referring to this situation, Griffin suggested cultural, geographical, and religious constraint explanations. [6]
Appalachian people faced ridicule for their appearance and accent. Due to social exclusion and cultural affinity, many Appalachian people decided to live amongst other Appalachians in tight-knit communities, these communities still exist today in small cities such as Hazel Park. Due to the insularity of these Appalachian communities, some of the children and grandchildren of people from Appalachia still speak with a strong Appalachian/Southern accent. [5]
In a 1935 article in The Nation , Louis Adamic wrote that "hill-billies" were believed by Detroit auto manufacturing employers to be "safe" – that is, not inclined to unionize. [7] Adamic reports that automotive companies were recruiting during the early 1930s with the belief that these rural people had not been influenced by ideas of unionism. [8] The article goes on to report that the hill-billies were looked down upon by almost everyone due to their extremely low standard of living, lack of familiarity with modern plumbing, and because they were seen as taking away jobs from the old-time automotive workers. [8] The advent of assembly lines meant that unskilled workers could ably perform tasks at manufacturing plants, which made Appalachian migrants adequate employees for the work.
The Appalachian people who migrated to Detroit (and in smaller numbers to Flint) in order to work in the automotive plants gained an identity distinct from the one that they possessed in their home state. [9] In their home states, people saw themselves as distinct from those living in other parts of the state, or in a different part of the South. Once they migrated to Michigan, they were lumped together as southern white laborers, and a group consciousness based on that label emerged. Migrants from all over Appalachia began to feel a social solidarity with each other, preferring to work and live beside other Southerners than with Northerners. It was believed that the Appalachian migrants assimilated less rapidly than Northern rural migrants because of their group consciousness and the persistence of certain southern regional attitudes, and an acute awareness of the difference between themselves and other native-born white Americans. [10] Because the Appalachian migrants didn't have cultural context for situations they encountered in northern industrial cities, their reactions were dictated by their rural southern lives and attitudes. [8] During holidays and lay-offs, most of the migrants went back to their old homes. [8] During lay-offs in Flint, MI, as many as 35% of the migrants would return to their old homes. [11]
While many Appalachian people in Detroit are white Appalachians, and Appalachian identity is often stereotyped as exclusively white, there is a large Black Appalachian population in Detroit. Because Appalachia is stereotyped as an all-white region, the identities and narratives of Black, Latino, Indigenous and other Appalachians of color are frequently neglected, marginalized, and obscured. [12] Detroit and Chicago were leading destinations for Black Appalachian people, many of whom previously worked in coal mining. [13]
Beans are an important element of Appalachian cuisine in Metro Detroit. Beans were important to Appalachian people, who often came from rural poverty, because they were cheap, nutritious, and could be easily farmed in a backyard lot. Beans are often served in chafing dishes. Soup beans are commonly served at meals either as the main course or as a side dish, often using Pinto beans or Navy beans. Other common foods in Appalachian cuisine include cornbread, fried cabbage, and stack cakes. [14]
Metro Detroit has long been home to a thriving bluegrass and honky tonk scene. Several bars and restaurants in Detroit such as Red's Park-Inn bar, Telway Diner, Alice's Bar, and George's Famous Coney Island have reputations as hang-out spots for Appalachian/Southern people. [5] In 1973, the New York Times reported that some 25 "hillbilly heaven" bars existed in Detroit, the closest thing to an Appalachian community center. [15]
Bobby Bare, a popular country singer from Ohio, had a hit song with "Detroit City" in 1963 which described the homesickness and culture shock commonly experienced by Southern migrants. [16]
Harriette Simpson Arnow's novel The Dollmaker is a fictional account of an Appalachian family's migration from rural Kentucky to Detroit during World War II. The work has been praised for its realistic depiction of working-class life. [17] The Dollmaker has been adapted into a 1984 made-for-television drama film starring Jane Fonda.
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A 1973 New York Times article claimed that churches were a unifying gathering place for Appalachian people, referring to "the city's fundamentalist churches that perpetuate the frontier faith of the hills", alluding to Protestant and Evangelical denominations of Christianity such as Pentecostalism which involve emotionally expressive forms of worship, faith healing, and belief in literal notions of Heaven and Hell. Faith Pentecostal chapel in Hazel Park was cited as one of these churches. [15]
Hillbilly is a term for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in the Appalachian region and Ozarks. As people migrated out of the region during the Great Depression, the term spread northward and westward with them.
Appalachia is a geographic region located in the central and southern sections of the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. Its boundaries stretch from the western Catskill Mountains of New York into Pennsylvania, continuing on through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains into northern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, with West Virginia being the only state in which the entire state is within the boundaries of Appalachia. In 2021, the region was home to an estimated 26.3 million people, of whom roughly 80% were white.
The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970. It was substantially caused by poor economic and social conditions due to prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states where Jim Crow laws were upheld. In particular, continued lynchings motivated a portion of the migrants, as African Americans searched for social reprieve. The historic change brought by the migration was amplified because the migrants, for the most part, moved to the then-largest cities in the United States at a time when those cities had a central cultural, social, political, and economic influence over the United States; there, African Americans established culturally influential communities of their own. According to Isabel Wilkerson, despite the loss of leaving their homes in the South, and the barriers faced by the migrants in their new homes, the migration was an act of individual and collective agency, which changed the course of American history, a "declaration of independence" written by their actions.
Harriette Simpson Arnow was an American novelist and historian, who lived in Kentucky and Michigan. Arnow has been called an expert on the people of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, but she herself loved cities and spent crucial periods of her life in Cincinnati and Detroit.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
Verna Mae Slone was an Appalachian author from Knott County, Kentucky.
The culture of the Southern United States, Southern culture, or Southern heritage, is a subculture of the United States. From its many cultural influences, the South developed its own unique customs, dialects, arts, literature, cuisine, dance, and music. The combination of its unique history and the fact that many Southerners maintain—and even nurture—an identity separate from the rest of the country has led to it being one of the most studied and written-about regions of the United States.
In the context of the 20th-century history of the United States, the Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West. It began in 1940, through World War II, and lasted until 1970. It was much larger and of a different character than the first Great Migration (1916–1940), where the migrants were mainly rural farmers from the South and only came to the Northeast and Midwest.
In the United States, the Hillbilly Highway is the out-migration of Appalachians from the Appalachian Highlands region 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 Appalachia. The term hillbilly is considered to be a modern term because it showed up in the early 1900s. Though the word is Scottish in origin, it does not derive from dialect. In Scotland, the term hill-folk referred to people who preferred isolation from the greater society and the term billy referred to someone being a "companion" or "comrade". 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.
The Dollmaker is a 1984 American made-for-television drama film starring Jane Fonda and based on the 1954 novel written by Harriette Arnow. It was originally broadcast on ABC on May 13, 1984.
Urban Appalachians are people from or with close ancestral ties to Appalachia who are living in metropolitan areas outside of the region. Because migration has been occurring for decades, most are not first generation migrants from the region but are long-term city dwellers. People have been migrating from Appalachia to cities outside the region ever since many of these cities were founded. It was not until the period following World War II, however, that large-scale migration to urban areas became common due to the decline of coal mining and the increase in industrial jobs available in the Midwest and Northeast. The migration of Appalachians is often known as the Hillbilly Highway.
Appalachia is a geographic region of the Eastern United States. Home to over 25 million people, the region includes mountainous areas of 13 states: Mississippi, Alabama, Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, as well as the entirety of West Virginia.
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.
Blood on the Forge is a migration novel by the African-American writer William Attaway set in the steel valley of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during 1919, a time when vast numbers of Black Americans moved northward. Attaway's own family was part of this population shift from South to North when he was a child.
Poor White is a sociocultural classification used to describe economically disadvantaged Whites in the English-speaking world, especially White Americans with low incomes.
The Appalachian region and its people have historically been stereotyped by observers, with the basic perceptions of Appalachians painting them as backwards, rural, and anti-progressive. These widespread, limiting views of Appalachia and its people began to develop in the post-Civil War; Those who "discovered" Appalachia found it to be a very strange environment, and depicted its "otherness" in their writing. These depictions have persisted and are still present in common understandings of Appalachia today, with a particular increase of stereotypical imagery during the late 1950s and early 1960s in sitcoms. Common Appalachian stereotypes include those concerning economics, appearance, and the caricature of the "hillbilly."
The Dollmaker is a novel by Harriette Arnow. It is the story of Gertie Nevels and her family's migration from their Kentucky homeland to industrial Detroit during World War II. First published in 1954, the novel earned a 1955 nomination for the National Book Award. Its New York Times book reviewer called it a superb novel, notable for its strength and the glowing richness of character and scene. In 1971, Joyce Carol Oates characterized this novel as "our most unpretentious American masterpiece".
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.
The city of Chicago, Illinois is home to a significant Appalachian population. The Appalachian community has historically been centered in the neighborhood of Uptown. Beginning after World War I, Appalachian people moved to Chicago in droves seeking jobs. Between 1940 and 1970, approximately 3.2 million Appalachian and Southern migrants settled in Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest. Due to immigration restrictions in the 1920s, personnel managers in Chicago encouraged working-class migrants from the Upland South to fill those jobs. The culture of Chicago has been significantly influenced by the culture, music, and politics of Appalachia. The majority of people of Appalachian heritage in Chicago are white or black, though Appalachian people can be of any race, ethnicity, or religion.