The Forgotten Frontier is a 1931 American documentary film about the Frontier Nursing Service, nurses on horseback, who traveled the back roads of the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky. It was directed by Mary Marvin Breckinridge, and featured her cousin, Mary Breckinridge, who was a nurse-midwife and founded the Frontier Nursing Service. Also featured are the people of Leslie County, Kentucky, many of whom reenacted their stories.
Letcher County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 21,548. Its county seat is Whitesburg. It was created in 1842 from Harlan and Perry counties, and named for Robert P. Letcher, Governor of Kentucky from 1840 to 1844.
Blackey is an unincorporated community in Letcher County, Kentucky, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 120. It is located near the early settlement of Indian Bottom. Blackey is thought to have been named after Blackey Brown, one of its citizens.
Whitesburg is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Letcher County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 2,139 at the 2010 census and an estimated 1,875 in 2018. It was named for John D. White, a state politician.
Appalachia is a socio-economic region located in the central and southern sections of the Appalachian Mountains of the Eastern United States. It stretches from the western Catskill Mountains in the east end of the Southern Tier of New York state west and south into Pennsylvania, continuing on through the Blue Ridge Mountains into northern Georgia, and through the Great Smoky Mountains from North Carolina into Tennessee and northern Alabama. In 2020, the region was home to an estimated 26.1 million people, of whom roughly 80% are white.
Hazel Jane Dickens was an American bluegrass singer, songwriter, double bassist and guitarist. Her music was characterized not only by her high, lonesome singing style, but also by her provocative pro-union, feminist songs. Cultural blogger John Pietaro noted that "Dickens didn’t just sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded her into the cause." The New York Times extolled her as "a clarion-voiced advocate for coal miners and working people and a pioneer among women in bluegrass music." With Alice Gerrard, Dickens was one of the first women to record a bluegrass album.
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.
Appalshop is a media, arts, and education center located in Whitesburg, Kentucky, in the heart of the southern Appalachian region of the United States.
Nimrod Workman was an American folk singer, coal miner and trade unionist. His musical repertoire included traditional English and Scottish ballads passed down through his family, Appalachian folk songs and original compositions.
Gurney Norman is an American writer documentarian, and professor.
The Martin County coal slurry spill was a mining accident that occurred after midnight on October 11, 2000, when the bottom of a coal slurry impoundment owned by Massey Energy in Martin County, Kentucky, broke into an abandoned underground mine below. The slurry came out of the mine openings, sending an estimated 306 million US gallons of slurry down two tributaries of the Tug Fork River. By morning, Wolf Creek was oozing with the black waste; on Coldwater Fork, a 10-foot-wide (3.0 m) stream became a 100-yard (91 m) expanse of thick slurry.
Hugh O'Connor was a Canadian director and producer who worked for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). His best- known film is the ground-breaking In the Labyrinth (1967), but his promising career ended shortly after that film's release when he was murdered while filming in Kentucky.
Yvonne Welbon is an American independent film director, producer, and screenwriter based in Chicago. She is known for her films, Living with Pride:Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999), Sisters in Cinema (2003), and Monique (1992).
Wendy Ewald is an American photographer and educator.
Documentary mode is a conceptual scheme developed by American documentary theorist Bill Nichols that seeks to distinguish particular traits and conventions of various documentary film styles. Nichols identifies six different documentary 'modes' in his schema: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative. While Nichols' discussion of modes does progress chronologically with the order of their appearance in practice, documentary film often returns to themes and devices from previous modes. Therefore, it is inaccurate to think of modes as historical punctuation marks in an evolution towards an ultimate accepted documentary style. Also, modes are not mutually exclusive. There is often significant overlapping between modalities within individual documentary features. As Nichols points out, "the characteristics of a given mode function as a dominant in a given film…but they do not dictate or determine every aspect of its organization."
Eula Hall was an Appalachian activist and healthcare pioneer who founded the Mud Creek Clinic in Grethel in Floyd County, Kentucky.
Elizabeth Barret is an American documentary filmmaker.
Pat Gish was an American journalist, publisher and co-editor of the Whitesburg, Kentucky newspaper The Mountain Eagle, along with her husband, Tom Gish. The Gishes led The Mountain Eagle in covering controversial topics such as the effects of strip mining on the Appalachian environment and political corruption. Under the Gishes' guidance, The Mountain Eagle became a prominent rural newspaper, and the pair won many awards for their journalism. Gish also founded the Eastern Kentucky Housing Development Corporation and worked to improve living conditions in Eastern Kentucky.
Helen Matthews Lewis was an American sociologist, historian, and activist who specialized in Appalachia and women's rights. She was 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 specialized 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.
Belinda Ann Mason was an American AIDS activist, policy advisor, and writer based in rural Kentucky. She was the first person with AIDS appointed to the U.S. National Commission on AIDS.
