Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux: Appalachia's Struggle Against America's Institutions

In 1971, a young journalist from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Carroll County, Virginia, published Annihilating the Hillbilly - a manifesto against the stereotyping that justified Appalachia's exploitation. Half a century before Hillbilly Elegy put the wrong story in front of millions of readers, James Branscome was already telling the right one. Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux brings together five decades of investigative journalism by one of Appalachia's most consistent and credible voices, with chapters drawn from the Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg, Kentucky (where Branscome has been a contributor since 1973), the Washington Post, American Heritage, the New York Times Magazine, Business Week, Southern Exposure, the Daily Yonder, Cardinal News, the Kentucky Lantern, and West Virginia Watch. The book documents what others ignored: the deliberate impoverishment of a people and the systematic extraction of their wealth by industries, agencies, and institutions that claimed to be helping them. Its thirty-seven chapters cover the mythologies that justified exploitation, from John Fox Jr. through The Beverly Hillbillies to J.D. Vance; the migration crisis that has emptied the sixty-county Central Appalachian coalfield region; the Tennessee Valley Authority's transformation from New Deal idealist to the nation's largest strip-mine coal consumer; the Appalachian Regional Commission's structural underinvestment; and the data-center industrial complex now establishing itself on former mine land. Unlike many critiques of Appalachian conditions, the book moves beyond diagnosis to propose a serious policy framework for reversing the depopulation crisis: an Ascend Central Appalachia talent-attraction program, a contemporary Appalachian Homestead Act, and a time-limited Universal Basic Income experiment scaled to the region's challenges. The book closes with critical assessments of recent Appalachian literature, including J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, the Appalachian Reckoning response volume, William H. Turner's The Harlan Renaissance, Charles B. Keeney's The Road to Blair Mountain, and Tom Hansell's After Coal. Praise for Annihilating the Hillbilly Redux: "From Appalachian migration to hog castration, this book contains the wisdom (and humor) of a lifetime. Jim Branscome has been a guide, teacher and prophet for all of us who want to better know the eastern mountains." - Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort and co-founder of The Daily Yonder "No other journalist has covered the Appalachian odyssey for as long and with as much insight as James Branscome. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand Appalachia's past and current struggles." - Ronald D. Eller, author of Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945 "Appalachia is America's least understood major region. Jim Branscome has a deep knowledge of it, a firm independence, and an understanding of how the world works - and what it has done to Appalachia, and its unrealized potential." - Al Cross, founding director, Institute for Rural Journalism, University of Kentucky "He has told a story the 'established press' has, to its shame, neglected to tell. Jim Branscome knows the Southern Appalachians as few do." - Harry M. Caudill, author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, 1977 Read more