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This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the Duplication Policy section for more information.
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Collection Overview
| Size | .5 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 450 items) |
| Abstract | The Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project (EKAAMP) is a public humanities and archival collecting initiative directed by Karida Brown, an African American sociologist, in partnership with the Southern Historical Collection (SHC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an historically white institution. In 2013, the SHC joined Brown in her efforts to document a multi-generational African American community with familial ties to coal mining towns in Harlan County, Ky. The community which Brown studies has its origins in the coalfields of the Appalachian South and specifically the surrounding area of Lynch, Ky. Appalachia was a destination for thousands of African Americans, who left the rural deep South in the early twentieth century during the Great Migration. A company town, Lynch was established in 1917 by U.S. Coal and Coke Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The collection contains oral history interviews, photographs, copies of documents and artifacts related to coal miners in the mid-twentieth century, and community histories of Lynch, Ky. Karida Brown conducted the oral history interviews with African Americans whose families migrated from the coal camps of the Appalachian South to cities and suburbs across the country. Photographs from circa 1948 depict street scenes, residential areas, and coal mining facilities in Lynch, Ky., and also African American residents of Lynch, both adults and children. Copied documents include floor plans for company housing and a discharge report for a fired coal miner. Artifacts include a hard hat, goggles, and other work tools and safety accessories. Community histories describe the founding of the coal camp, the buildings and businesses in the company town of Lynch, schools, entertainment venues, and leisure activities. |
| Creator | Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project |
| Curatorial Unit | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection. |
| Language | English |
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Information For Users
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Processing Information
Processed by: Laura Hart, April 2015; Chaitra Powell, July 2019; Nancy Kaiser, Chaitra Powell, and Patrick Cullom, October 2021
Encoded by: Laura Hart, April 2015
Updated by: Laura Smith, July 2019
Updated by: Patrick Cullom, October 2021.
Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.
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Subject Headings
The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.
Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.
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Related Collections
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Historical Information
The Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project (EKAAMP) is a public humanities initiative directed by Karida Brown, an African American sociologist, in partnership with the Southern Historical Collection (SHC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an historically white institution. In 2013, the SHC joined Brown in her efforts to document a multi-generational African American community with familial ties to coal mining towns in Harlan County, Ky. Brown has conducted oral history interviews with community members and helped the SHC collect manuscript materials from the community and its social organizations.
The community which Brown studies has its origins in the coalfields of the Appalachian South and specifically the surrounding area of Lynch, Ky. Appalachia was a destination for thousands of African Americans, who left the rural deep South in the early twentieth century during the Great Migration.
A company town, Lynch was established in 1917 by U.S. Coal and Coke Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The company supplied housing, health care, social services, commissary, churches, schools, and recreation for coal miners and their families. At its peak in the mid twentieth century Lynch's population reached 10,000 and included African Americans and whites with eastern European and British heritage. Although the mines were not strictly segregated, most areas of life, including schools, churches, commissary, and recreation, had separate facilities for blacks and whites until the mid 1960s.
Neighboring Benham, Ky. was also a coal mining camp and company town operated by Wisconsin Steel Company, a subsidiary of International Harvesters Company. The Benham mines closed in the 1970s.
U.S. Steel withdrew its operations in the mid 1960s, and the population of Lynch and the surrounding areas dwindled as families, who had spent only one or two generations in Appalachia, began to move across the country, settling in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, California, Missouri, and other states. Despite the long distances now separating this close knit community, individuals and families from the Harlan County coal towns Lynch, Benham, and Cumberland retained close ties with each other and nurtured what sociologist Karida Brown has called a "post-migration diasporic identity."
Eastern Kentucky Social Club
In 1969 a small group of African Americans living in Cleveland, Ohio who shared eastern Kentucky coal mining heritage established the Eastern Kentucky Social Club (EKSC). The primary mission of the Club was to "stay together." Membership and participation in this active social network nurture a collective identity and a community formed around remembrance of a time and place.
Cleveland was the site for the Club's first annual reunion in 1970, and by 2012 the founding chapter had been joined by 15 more chapters including ones in Lynch, Ky., Atlanta, Ga., Milwaukee, Wisc., New York, N.Y., and Washington, D.C. Chapters bid to host the annual Labor Day reunion. Attended by hundreds, the reunions include parties and other social activities, Christian worship services, featured guest speakers, and the Club's board meetings.
EKSC membership overlaps with membership in alumni associations associated with eastern Kentucky schools including Lynch Colored School, East Benham High School, and alumni of Rosenwald schools in Harlan County, Ky.
Karida Brown
Sociologist Karida Brown (1982-) was born in Uniondale, N.Y., to Arnita Davis Brown and Richard Brown. Karida Brown received a bachelor's degree in administration from Temple University in 2004, a master's degree in public administration in 2009 from the University of Pennsylvania, and a master's degree in sociology from Brown University in 2013. As of 2015, she is a PhD candidate in Brown University's sociology department, and her PhD dissertation titled Before They Were Diamonds: The Intergenerational Migration of Kentucky's Coal Camp Blacks is in progress.
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Scope and Content
The Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project (EKAAMP) is a public humanities initiative directed by Karida Brown, an African American sociologist who studies and documents a multi-generational African American community with familial ties to coal mining towns in Harlan County, Ky. during the mid twentieth century.
The collection contains oral history interviews conducted by Karida Brown with African Americans whose families migrated from the coal camps of the Appalachian South to cities and suburbs across the country. Brown asks interviewees about family life, community, race relations, segregation, schools, and migration out of Appalachia and poses the question, "where is home?".
Photographs from circa 1948 depict street scenes, coal mining structures in the company town of Lynch, Ky., founded and operated by U.S. Coal and Coke Company. Many images show African American residents of Lynch, both adults and children. All photographs have captions written by the donor, William Shaffer, Jr.
Other materials are community histories of Lynch, Ky., and copies of documents and artifacts related to coal miners in eastern Kentucky. Copied documents include floor plans for company housing and a discharge report for a fired coal miner. Artifacts include a hard hat, goggles, and other work tools and safety accessories.
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Series Quick Links
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Series 1. Oral History Interviews, 2013-2014
Oral history interviews with African Americans conducted by sociologist Karida Brown for her dissertation Before They Were Diamonds: The Intergenerational Migration of Kentucky's Coal Camp Blacks for Brown University in Rhode Island. Interviews are chiefly digital audio recordings. Some interviews are transcribed, and five interviews are digital video recordings. Brown asks interviewees about family life; neighbors and neighborhoods; segregated and integrated schools; teachers at the segregated schools; race relations and encounters with whites; and coal mining in Lynch, Ky., Benham, Ky., and surrounding areas in Harlan County where U.S. Coal and Coke Company operated coal mining camps and built company towns during the mid twentieth century. Other topics discussed are leisure and recreation; children's games such as kick-the-can, marbles, jacks, and hide-and-seek; athletics especially baseball; family discipline including corporal punishment or "whuppings"; and the legend of Limehouse, a labor agent for U.S. Coal and Coke Company who recruited and transported African American sharecroppers and convict labor from rural Alabama to Appalachia to work in the coal mines.
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Series 2. Images, circa 1948
Snapshots of streets, street scenes, neighborhoods, coal mine portal and coal tipple in Lynch, Ky. circa 1948. Some candid images show African American residents, both adults and children, of Lynch, which was a Harlan County, Ky. coal mining camp operated by U.S. Coal and Coke Company. A few images show coal miners outside the mine entrance. The photographs have handwritten captions on the versos that indicate the street names and building names. The donor, William Shaffer, Jr., provided the identifying captions.
| Image Folder PF-5585/1 |
"Houses on Church St."Black-and-white print A woman and man also pictured. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/2 |
"Houses on Church St."Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/3 |
"House on Church St."Black-and-white print William Shaffer, Jr.'s home in Lynch, Ky. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/4 |
"The house I lived in on Church St. in Camp #6"Black-and-white print William Shaffer, Jr.'s home in Lynch, Ky. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/5 |
"View from Church St."Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/6 |
"Main Street"Black-and-white print Utility poles, cars, and buildings visible in image. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/7 |
"Church St. entering to Main St."Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/8 |
"Church Street"Black-and-white print Two women wearing hats pictured on the sidewalk. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/9 |
"Part of Church St."Black-and-white print Three children on the sidewalk and a woman seated on a porch railing are pictured. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/10 |
"Views from Liberty St. Hospital & Hotel"Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/11 |
"Lynch Colored School on Main Street"Black-and-white print Three women seated on railing outside the building. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/12 |
"Lynch Hospital"Black-and-white print Two men walking toward the building. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/13 |
"Colored Metropolis Church"Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/14 |
"Post Office and Bank Building"Black-and-white print Group of men and one woman are pictured outside of the building. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/15 |
"In the rear is a outhouse, coal house and storage bin"Black-and-white print Man pictured in front of the small structures. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/16 |
"Supply cars for Mine #31"Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/17 |
"Supply cars for Mine #31"Black-and-white print Man pictured behind supply cars. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/18 |
"Coal Tipple"Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/19 |
"Coal Tipple"Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/20 |
'Part of the Landmark Coal Tipple"Black-and-white print |
| Image Folder PF-5585/21 |
'Coal Cars and Supplies Train"Black-and-white print Men pictured in background. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/22 |
"Entrance to Mine No. 31 and the Main Office Building"Black-and-white print Men and cars pictured in front of the building. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/23 |
"Mine No. 31 Entrance and Shift Change"Black-and-white print Men pictured in background. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/24 |
"Main Street Passing Mine #31"Black-and-white print
|
| Image Folder PF-5585/25 |
"Entrance to Mine No. 31 which is a landmark now"Black-and-white print |
| Digital Folder DF-05585/1 |
Images donated by Reverend Ronnie Hampton, May 2015Black-and-white print Acquisitions Information: Accession 102211. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/26 |
Images donated by Humes Perry, April 2015Black-and-white print Acquisitions Information: Accession 102198 Images of Perry family were donated during the EKAAMP program and exhibition opening at Wilson Special Collections Library, May 2015. Humes Perry of Waterbury, CT., is a former resident of Lynch, Kentucky and a graduate of the Lynch Colored Public High School. James Dula (1886-1963) with unidentified child and bicycle, circa 1940s Eddie Perry Sr. (1917-1985) in Harvester Slugger baseball uniform Essie Mae Dula Perry Foote (1919-2005), circa 1940s, in a white uniform Francis Pennington Dula (1889-1980), circa 1940s, in a white uniform Myrtle Perry Green-Amos, (1937-), Eddie Perry Jr. (1938-), James E. Perry (1940-), Humes Perry (1942-) group portrait, circa 1940s |
| Image Folder PF-5585/27 |
Images donated by Melvin Duncan, May 2015Acquisitions Information: Accession 102213 Images and other papers of the Duncan family were donated during the EKAAMP program and exhibition opening at Wilson Special Collections Library, May 2015. Images of mother Annie B. Duncan (1907-1979, father Frank "Cincinatti" Duncan (1907-1973), and brothers Melvin "Mudd Duncan (1947-), Reginald H. Duncan (1945-2010), James Edward Duncan (1934-1984). Mt. Sinai No. 2 Choir, Lynch, Ky. Annie Duncan (standing, 2nd to left) and Frank Duncan (standing, 3rd to left). Frank Duncan (right) and unidentified man with car. Annie Duncan. |
| Image Folder PF-5585/28 |
Images donated by Michael Brown, April 2015Acquisitions Information: Accession 102197 Michael Davis is Karida Brown's uncle (her mother's brother). Includes images of Brown's extended family. |
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Series 2A. Images of EKAAMP Exhibition, 2015 (Addition of 2015).
Acquisitions Information: Accession 102339
Photographs documenting the gathering in Chapel Hill of participants of the EKAAMP Project and of the exhibition opening held in Wilson Library. Photographs by Karida Brown.
Image Folder PF-5585/29-34
PF-5585/29PF-5585/30PF-5585/31PF-5585/32PF-5585/33PF-5585/34 |
EKAAMP Program and exhibition opening, April-May 2015 |
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Series 3. Historical Materials on Lynch, Ky., 1927-2014 and undated
Various printed items gathered or compiled by donor, Mike O'Bradovich. Community histories and articles describe the neighborhoods, social life, work, education, athletics, leisure activities, and medical services in the coal mining camp and company town, Lynch, Ky., operated by U.S. Coal and Coke during the mid twentieth century. Copies of documents dating from 1927 to 1956 include floor plans for company housing options, fliers for Labor Day celebrations, paycheck stubs and discharge papers for coal miners. Also includes brass tags worn by miners, an undated, printed map of Harlan County, Ky., and sets of historical trivia about Lynch, Ky.
| Folder 1 |
Floor plans (copies) for employee housing, United States Coal and Coke CompanyDrawings made by the company's engineer's office in 1927 and 1928. |
| Folder 2 |
Commencement exercises announcement and program for Lynch Colored High School (copies), 1928 |
| Folder 3 |
Report of discharge or suspension of an employee of United States Coal and Coke Company (copies), 1937Employee was fired for his inability to make the baseball team as promised to his manager. |
| Folder 4 |
Labor Day Celebration fliers (copies), 1939, 1940, 1942, and undatedCelebration was segregated. "Two dances. A Porch and Ballroom Dance for the White People of Lynch will be given at the Lynch Hotel, and a Street Dance for the Colored People will be given on Lynch Road in front of the Main Store." |
| Folder 5 |
Paychecks (copies), United States Steel Corporation, 1956Also included is an employee's weekly earnings statement. |
| Folder 6 |
"The Building of a Coal Mining Camp" (copies), 1988Six-page history of Lynch, Ky., from the weekend edition of The Harlan Daily Enterprise. |
| Folder 7 |
"Lynch Trivia" compiled by Ben [Powell?](copies), 2002Compilations of trivia about life in the coal camp and company town of Lynch, Ky. Trivia items name people in the community, including staff at the Big Store, the cobbler, garbage collector, undertaker, and milkman. Also identified are buildings and locales, including the barn for mine mules, swimming hole, and town dump. Other trivia items pinpoint first and lasts such as the year a resident purchased the first television set in Lynch, and explain local customs such as the grease pole. |
| Folder 8 |
"Kentucky's Portal 31 Exhibition Mine , 2003" (copies)Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration preprint for 2003 annual meeting. |
| Folder 9 |
"Community Story" (copies), circa 2007A brief historical description of the coal industry in Benham and Lynch, Ky. Article alludes to a contemporary concern with environmental protection of Black Mountain and community opposition to a proposed strip mine. |
| Folder 10 |
"No Regrets: First Union Grad Student Recalls Teaching career in a Pre-Integration Coal Camp." Rosie Ivery Pettygrue (copies), 2010Article in the Union Alumni Magazine of Union College in Barbourville, Ky. |
| Folder 11 |
"Lynch Dynasty Recreated in 'Bulldog Room'" (copies), 8 January 2014Article in the Tri-City News published for Cumberland, Benham, and Lynch, Ky. |
| Folder 12 |
"Brief History of the Lynch Medical Services and the Cumberland Valley Medical Group" (copies), undatedThree-page description of medical care, miners' health, and hospitals in Lynch, Ky., written by Beatrice E. Cope, a registered nurse and health insurance administrator. |
| Folder 13 |
"The Lynch Hospital" and "Dr. Leland Early Payton" (copies), undatedBrief descriptions of the hospital and health care providers in Lynch, Ky. Of interest is a reference to an outbreak of spinal meningitis in 1936 that led to quarantines and the establishment of a temporary hospital that kept the mortality rate low. |
| Folder 14 |
"The Lynch Employees' Country Club" and "The Lynch Hotel" (copies), undatedBrief descriptions of Lynch's hotel and country club buildings and accommodations. Slight information provided on activities supported and hosted, including golf tournaments on a seven-hole course, dances, and orchestras. |
| Folder 15 |
"Lynch's Amusements, ""The Lynch Big Store," and "Post Office and Bank Building" (copies), undatedBrief descriptions of entertainment venues in Lynch, Ky., including the baseball park, theater, lodge house for fraternal organizations, and bowling alley. Amusements such as carnivals, circuses, concert performers, and movies are mentioned. Also contains descriptions of the buildings that housed the company owned and operated store, post office, and bank in Lynch, Ky. |
| Folder 16 |
"History of Lynch District 1917-1957," by T. E. Johnson (copies), undatedSections of the history are titled "Highlights on Lynch Plant, 1917-1957"; "The Town and the People"; and "The Mines, Coal Handling Facilities, Operating Procedure." The author, Johnson, is listed as a Special Representative, Coal Division, United States Steel Corporation. |
| Folder 17 |
"Brief History of Lynch Independent School District" (copies),undatedOne-page description of the school buildings, athletic fields, the school newspaper, honor society, and commencement exercises. School principals and their years of service are also identified. |
| Folder 18 |
Pictures of brass miners' tags for Lynch's Portal 31, undatedMiners wore brass tags with assigned numbers into the mines. Employees took the tags off a board before entering the mine, a practice that allowed the company to know who and how many were in the mine at any given time. Miners then hung their tags on coal cars so that they received credit for coal they had mined. Original brass tags returned to owner in 2015. |
| Folder 19 |
Printed map of Harlan County, Ky., (copies), undated |
Museum Item MU-05585/1-11
MU-05585/1MU-05585/2MU-05585/3MU-05585/4MU-05585/5MU-05585/6MU-05585/7MU-05585/8MU-05585/9MU-05585/10MU-05585/11 |
Coal-mining artifacts of Gean AustinAcquisitions Information: Accession 102323 Blue hard hat, j-hook, safety suspenders, lantern, two pairs of safety goggles, metal measuring device, utility belt with 4 attachments, safety belt, and canvas bag. For access to the artifacts, please contact wilsonlibrary@unc.edu. |
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Items Separated