In October, 1963, after reading a New York Times article about the impoverished conditions among the people living in the coal mining Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, President John F. Kennedy announced that he would be visiting that area in December, 1963 and see for himself the conditions described in that Times story. Obviously, that trip was never taken. In his first State of the Union Address the following January, President Lyndon Johnson announced the intention of his Administration to declare a War on Poverty. This led to the development of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and soon federal funds were flowing into areas like eastern Kentucky, funds to be used to improve roads, build schools and hospitals, and provide job training for those who lived there.
In February, Senator Robert Kennedy of New York announced that he would be making a two day visit to the counties of eastern Kentucky. Partly, the trip was Kennedy's wish to make good the unfulfilled promise that his brother had made to the area in 1963, and as Chairman of a the US Senate Subcommittee on Poverty, Kennedy intended to hold hearings in the area to see just how and if the War on Poverty was working for the coal miners of eastern Kentucky. The trip would also act as a gauge for Kennedy's yet undeclared candidacy for President in 1968. If he were to unseat a sitting President of his own Party and win a general election in November, he would have to rely very much on the support and the votes of poorer and lower class white voters, such as those of eastern Kentucky to be successful. Ironically, these were the very same voters that another candidate in 1968, segregationist George Wallace, was relying on for support, and, in an ironic twist of electoral fate, the same voters that were sought out by and voted for Donald Trump almost fifty years later.
In 2017-18, author Matthew Algeo went to eastern Kentucky and followed the exact same itinerary that Kennedy followed in 1968. He visited with many of the same people whom Kennedy saw and talked with then, visited the same homes and one room school houses that Kennedy did, and saw that the living conditions that Kennedy saw, have not, shockingly, changed all that much in the Appalachians. (He even learned how to pronounce it. Is it Appa-LAY-chian or Appa-LATCH-ian? Apparently, this depends pretty much on from which side of the Mason-Dixon line you come.)
You learn about a lot of things reading this book in addition to Kennedy's trip and his politics. You learn about the industry of strip mining and how it had ravished the land (a beautiful part of our country that President Kennedy felt had "all this marvelous potential") environmentally, how coal operators and mine owners profited while the residents and the workers continued to live in poverty. You learn if the War on Poverty actually worked, which it did until, for varied reasons, most of them political, it didn't. You also meet many heroes in this book. Among them are newspaper editors, schoolteachers, a group of people known as the Appalachian Volunteers, and you learn the sad and poignant story of a courageous Kentucky high school student named Tommy Duff. And it's not all one sided. Algeo gives voice to one Dave Zegeer, an executive for Bethlehem Steel who spoke on behalf of the coal industry during Kennedy's hearings. And even some of RFK's warts are exposed as well.
Algeo also weaves in some interesting stories of other people who were a part of the political landscape at the time, such as the aforementioned George Wallace and the very tragic story of his wife Lurleen (spoiler alert: Wallace does NOT come out looking good in this one). Even 18th century founding father Thomas Paine has a role to play in this story, and trust me, it's a relevant one. Like all of Algeo's books (just type "Matthew Algeo" in the search box at the top of this blog page, and you will find all of my prior posts on those books), this one is fascinating, interesting, and very readable. I finished it in two days.
Eastern Kentucky remains to this day one of the poorest areas in the country. It begs this question in my mind: If things haven't changed in the eastern Kentucky Appalachians over the last fifty-two years, have they really changed anywhere for anybody?
I was a junior in high school in 1968 when Robert Kennedy was killed. After reading this book, I find that fifty-two years later, I can still be inspired by him. Here is one of the things he said when addressing a group of those high school students on that trip to Kentucky:
"You can just pass through this existence and pass through life and not have made a difference. Or we can try to change the course - maybe not change the course of our whole country but change the course and change the lives of many, many people."
"All This Marvelous Potential" gets Four Stars from The Grandstander.
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