Anti-Blackness, Black Geographies, and Racialized Depopulation in Coalfield Appalachia from 1940 to 2000

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I investigate the ways that anti-Blackness has shaped coalfield Appalachia's human geographies. I draw on Black Studies and Black geographies literature to inform my theorization of anti-Blackness. Beginning with the question of why Black people left Appalachia in greater numbers than their white neighbors, I find that Black people left the mountains largely due to the unequal effects of deindustrialization. Black communities faced a racialized hierarchy of labor in the coal mines, racialized exposure to hazards and environmental risk, and the pull of other places with friends, family, and better jobs. I argue that the experiences of Black communities in the coalfields illustrate the supposition in Black geographies literature that anti-Blackness shapes human geographies by reproducing assumptions that Black people are aspatial, as in “not producing and making space.” I conclude with a brief analysis of the narratives that white people tell about Appalachian whiteness and identity, and I argue that Black people continue to be deemed out of place in dominant narratives about the region.