< Previous10 People & Mountains In 1985, Appalshop released Buffalo Creek Revisited , an award-winning companion to The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975). In this powerful documentary, filmmaker Mimi Pickering revisited the tragic 1972 Buffalo Creek Disaster in Logan County, caused by the collapse of an impoundment dam owned by the Buffalo Mining Company. The disaster released a flood of black water and coal slurry that devastated 17 communities, killed 125 people, injured hundreds, and left thousands homeless. The documentary examines the lasting impact on survivors, the legal battles that followed, and the long-term effects on the area, while reflecting on the social, political, and environmental issues raised by the disaster, particularly the roles of industry and government in overseeing public safety. Pickering emphasizes that she could not have produced the film without Council funds: “Looking back 40 years now, it has been screened many times throughout the state and shared with other communities around the country that are looking to rebuild after devastating disasters.” Buffalo Creek Revisited was included in the Council-funded Moving Mountains , one of the first By Stan Bumgardner The Council’s media grants (up to $20,000) have supported the planning, scripting, and production of countless audio or video materials, websites, and newspaper series over the years, including groundbreaking and award-winning documentaries. Mimi Pickering, Appalshop “These stories portray the state’s beauty and the people’s strength to audiences locally, nationally, and around the world.” —Mimi Pickering MEDIA GRANTSSummer 2025 11 documentary series aired on West Virginia Public Broadcasting featuring histories, artists, and organizers from West Virginia’s coalfields. One film in that series, Nimrod Workman: To Fit My Own Category , has just been named to the Library of Congress’ 2025 National Recording Registry. Pickering believes “it is a great honor for the people of West Virginia and the Humanities Council, as well as the Workman family.” Pickering’s film portrait of the beloved and internationally recognized West Virginia singer and songwriter, Hazel Dickens: It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song (2001), was also made possible by a Council media grant. From West Virginia’s coalfields to Baltimore’s factories, Dickens lived the songs she sang. A bluegrass pioneer and voice for working people, her powerful vocals fueled union rallies and films such as Harlan County USA. Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song profiles her life, music, and feminist perspective shaped by her Appalachian working- class roots. Soon after the film was released, Dickens was honored with the NEA’s National Heritage Fellowship, our nation’s highest honor for traditional artists. Pickering sees Dickens’ “stature continuing to grow as new audiences discover her through this film.” Latrobe, in Buffalo Creek Hollow, after the flood Pickering reflects that Council-funded audio and film documentaries “have shared the history of the southern coalfields and stories from their many notable characters to students, educators, and the public in West Virginia and well beyond. These stories portray the state’s beauty and the people’s strength to audiences locally, nationally, and around the world who often have only negative stereotypical images of West Virginia. Without funding and expertise from the Council, much of this would not have been possible.” 12 People & Mountains The Council has supported Trey Kay’s The Great Textbook War (2009) and his radio podcast Us & Them (2014-present). Both have aired on West Virginia Public Radio, exploring divisions in American society through different lenses. The Great Textbook War audio documentary centered on a 1974-75 controversy in Kanawha County where conservative groups pushed for textbooks that reflected their views on American history, religion, and social values. Concerned with what they saw as a left-leaning bias, these groups challenged the portrayal of issues such as civil rights, feminism, and the Vietnam War. The conflict ignited heated debates, violence, protests, and changes in the way textbooks were reviewed and adopted, exposing the influence of political and social agendas on education. Ultimately, the controversy sparked ongoing discussions about academic freedom, the role of education in shaping societal values, and how history should be taught in schools. The project was honored with a national Edward R. Murrow Award and a Peabody Award. Kay remembers that when the potentially controversial audio documentary first aired, he received accolades from “people on either side of the ideological and political spectrum because we’d handled the story fairly.” “I honestly don’t think I’d have a career as a documentary journalist focusing on America’s culture wars if it wasn’t for the West Virginia Humanities Council.” —Trey Kay Trey Kay, Trey Kay ProductionsSummer 2025 13 Similarly, Us & Them, a continuing podcast created by Kay, delves into divisions within the United States over politics, race, class, and culture. It tells personal stories of individuals caught in “us vs. them” dynamics, bringing a human element to discussions of conflicts. The podcast fosters empathy and understanding, encouraging listeners to critically examine their own perspectives and find common ground. Through interviews with everyday people and experts, Us & Them explores both local and national issues, aiming to bridge divides. The show has earned a regional Edward R. Murrow Award for its impactful storytelling and exploration of societal issues. “I don’t know of many other sources,” Kay says, “that would fund this type of work other than the Humanities Council. I honestly don’t think I’d have a career as a documentary journalist focusing on America’s culture wars if it wasn’t for the West Virginia Humanities Council.” 14 People & Mountains Oscar-nominated director Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s documentaries Hollow (2013) and King Coal (2023) both offer powerful, intimate looks at the challenges faced by communities in West Virginia due to the decline of the coal industry. Hollow delves into the lives of rural West Virginia residents, particularly in McDowell County, which has suffered from population loss, economic hardship, and social struggles linked to the coal industry’s decline. Through personal stories, the documentary examines issues such as job scarcity, the opioid epidemic, and a fading sense of hope. The film’s name, Hollow, reflects not only the physical emptiness of abandoned towns but also the emotional void felt by the people. Sheldon’s approach humanizes the residents, showing them not as victims of economic change but as resilient individuals with deep ties to their community. King Coal continues Sheldon’s exploration of Appalachia’s relationship with coal, focusing on how the industry has shaped the region’s identity, traditions, and economic life. Through a mix of personal stories and a close examination Elaine McMillion Sheldon, Requisite Media of the environmental and economic tolls of coal mining, the film paints a nuanced picture of a community grappling with the industry’s decline. Sheldon, a West Virginia native, brings a deeply personal perspective to the story, highlighting the emotional and social impacts of this transformation while also exploring broader themes of environmental justice, economic hardship, and the search for new opportunities. Both films are deeply human and offer a sense of hope amidst adversity, urging viewers to consider Summer 2025 15 the resilience and complexity of the people in these communities. Sheldon reflects on the Council’s role in her films: “The Humanities Council was the first to believe in both Hollow and King Coal—long before national funders came on board, or awards were handed out. That early support wasn’t just financial—it was a vote of confidence that allowed me to keep working, to keep dreaming, and to do it from my home state of West Virginia. It gave me the time and space to dig deeper, to collaborate with local communities, and to trust that these stories had value even before they were fully formed.” Both films went on to receive national and international recognition—screening at Sundance, winning a Peabody, earning an Emmy nomination, and being named a New York Times Critics Pick. “It’s almost impossible to overstate,” Sheldon says, “how important that kind of early support is for artists working in and about this place. It’s what makes the work possible in the first place.” “It was a vote of confidence that allowed me to keep working, to keep dreaming, and to do it from my home state of West Virginia.” —Elaine McMillion Sheldon Storytelling—a traditional way of sharing information since the beginning of human existence—is essential to West Virginia’s story. Amidst tragedy and suffering, we are a resilient people. We pull together at our worst and excel at our best because, to paraphrase Hazel Dickens, “West Virginia, it’s where we belong.” Sometimes we need good storytellers to remind us why we belong here. Stan Bumgardner is the e-WV media editor.16 People & Mountains A Sampling of Humanities Council Grantees 2 3 4 32 23 5 6 9 19 29 30 7 11 12 25 26 13 18 17 1. Berkeley County Board of Education— Discovering and Sharing the Greatest Stories Never Told 2. FestivALL— Appalachian Authors’ Roundtables 3. Jackson County Public Library Association— Digitizing the Past, Preserving the Future 4. Parkersburg Art Center— ArtistTrees 2024 5. Kanawha Valley Rivers to Ridges Trail— wayside exhibits 6. Ohio River Festival of Books 7. Wayne County Quilt Trail 8. Hardy County Covention & Visitors Bureau— Robert Higgins House Museum, master plan implementation 9. National Coal Heritage Area— Coal Mining Heritage Festival 10. Augusta Heritage Center— Humanities at Augusta 11. West Virginia Mine Wars Museum— Treason Trials exhibit 12. Grow Ohio Valley— Wheeling Community Cookbook 13. Marshall County Historical Society— World War II exhibit, Cockayne Farmstead 14. Scotts Run Museum and Trail— Preserving the Stories of Scotts Run 15. Fairmont State University— Sand and Fire: 200 Years of West Virginia Glass exhibit 16. Harrison County Historical Society— Revealed: A Glimpse behind the Curtain of Harrison County’s Women 17. Glenville State University— Traditional Music and Tintype Photography 18. City of Weston Historic Landmark Commission— The Weston African American Oral History Project 19. Workshops by WV Authors— Daniels Elementary School 20. Museum of the Berkeley Springs— Morgan County BicentennialSummer 2025 17 Since 2019, the West Virginia Humanities Council has awarded grants totaling three million dollars to humanities programming in West Virginia. This three million has been matched, dollar for dollar, putting more than six million back into West Virginia communities. Here are just a few examples: 1 21 27 22 20 24 6 9 10 0 8 14 31 33 34 15 16 18 28 21. Carnegie Hall— Salt-Rising Bread workshop 22. Capon Bridge Ruritan Club— “Focus on History,” Founders’ Day 23. Richwood Area Chamber of Commerce— History Comes Alive in Richwood 24. Contemporary American Theater Festival 25. Weirton Area Museum & Cultural Center— Weirton Steel Employees Bulletin Online Archive 26. Brooke County Library Foundation— Voices From The Past 27. Yew Mountain Center— Forest Listening Rooms workshop 28. West Virginia Wesleyan College— Wesleyan Under Water: Remembering the Flood of 1985 29. Campbell Flannagan Murrell House Museum— Black History in Summers County, WV 30. Monroe County Historical Society— Interpreting the History of the African American Community of Monroe County, WV 31. Arthurdale Heritage— Agriculture and Industry exhibit 32. Fayette County Historical Society— Fayette County Hospital 33. Master Naturalists of West Virginia— A Day with the Original Master Naturalists 34. Friends of Ashby’s Fort— Dendrochronology workshop18 People & Mountains WORD THE POWER OF THE Percival Everett’s 2024 McCreight Lecture in the Humanities By Kyle Warmack In some novels, this declaration of identity is the kickoff, answering the all-important question, “who” is our protagonist? “Call me Ishmael,” says Melville’s narrator, as Moby Dick embarks on its opening page. Such beginnings sketch out the preliminary boundaries of character and personality that we, My name is James. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry. I was sold when I was born and then sold again. My mother’s mother was from someplace on the continent of Africa, I had been told or perhaps simply assumed. I cannot claim to any knowledge of that world or those people, whether my people were kings or beggars. I admire those who, at five years of age, like Venture Smith, can remember the clans of their ancestors, their names and the movements of their families through the wrinkles, trenches, and chasms of the slave trade. I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written. —excerpt from James by Percival Everett Photos by Michael KellerSummer 2025 19 the audience, are to inhabit for the duration of a novel such as Percival Everett’s James, which was released last year to universal acclaim. The titular character of James—the same “Jim” of Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)—does not scribble these words until nearly a hundred pages into Everett’s novel. By this juncture, the importance of James being able to read and write is far better understood by the audience: On the run from slavecatchers, James can scratch out his declaration of identity only at this point in the novel because three illegal acts have been committed: (1) He is on the run from his owner based on a legal system designed to keep him in bondage; (2) he has received a stolen pencil from another enslaved man; and (3) he has committed the forbidden act of writing. The first law proscribing literacy among Blacks in what was to become the American South was the colony of South Carolina’s Negro Act of 1740. The same act forbade Black enslaved people from traveling without a written permit from their enslavers “as it is absolutely necessary to the safety of this Province, that all due care be taken to restrain the wanderings and meetings of Negroes and other slaves.” Even the clothing of enslaved people was regulated since too many South Carolina Black residents supposedly had taken to sporting apparel “much No one came by the spot I had chosen as camp. I listened for dogs, but that awful sound never came. . . . I read. I never felt more exposed or vulnerable as I did in the light of day with a book open. What if I had been spotted by one of the local plantation’s overseers? Or a slave who might have been frightened by the sight? Or a slave who simply wanted to ingratiate himself to his master? There were those slaves who claimed a distinction between good masters and cruel masters. Most of us considered such to be a distinction without a difference. above the condition of slaves, for the procuring whereof they use sinister and evil methods.” South Carolina’s legislation went on to describe exactly which fabrics enslaved people could wear. Over the next century, similarly draconian legislation spread throughout the South, drawing stark boundaries around the world into which Everett’s James is born, and in which he has learned to survive. The crux of the novel, however, is that mere survival is not enough. Despite the towering threats of a society weaponized against much of its population learning to learn , James is driven to read and write. Language is his liberation, a theme that burns like a river of fire throughout Everett’s text. It is no accident, therefore, that the powerful necessity of literature—indeed, of reading and writing in almost any form—was a prevalent discussion topic during Percival Everett’s visit to Charleston last October, when he delivered the Council’s 2024 McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. For the Council’s 50 th anniversary, the staff sponsored a McCreight Lecture unlike any in recent memory. Rather than host the distinguished but surprisingly low-key Everett at one of the traditional theaters or lecture halls scattered around the capital, we selected the Capitol Theater on Summers Street—Charleston’s oldest surviving movie theater (now owned by Resurrection Church and used for live events)—originally built about 1914 in the waning days of vaudeville. The venerable old hall proved perfect for a large, appreciative downtown Charleston crowd on the city’s last ArtWalk of the year. Projected above the stage was a prominent banner celebrating our 50 th Photos by Michael KellerNext >