David Walls (academic) - Work With Appalachian Volunteers

Work With Appalachian Volunteers

In fall 1966 Walls joined the staff of the Appalachian Volunteers (AV), a nonprofit agency conducting community organizing projects in the central Appalachian coalfields of eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and southwestern Virginia. He moved to Harlan County, Kentucky to supervise VISTA volunteers. A year later he became field coordinator for the AV in the state, and moved to Berea, Kentucky. When founding executive director Milton Ogle resigned in August 1968, Walls became the director for the organization's final year. Although his initial work in Harlan County involved organizing low-income people to demand representation on the Cumberland Valley's community action agency, he soon was drawn into the growing opposition to strip-mining for coal, after a landslide from a strip-mine bench threatened a house at the head of Jones Creek, above Verda on the Clover Fork of the Cumberland River in Harlan County. The AV's support for people opposing strip-mining for coal led to sedition charges in Pike County, Kentucky in August 1967 against an AV staff member and two workers for the Southern Conference Education Fund. Although the sedition charges were quickly dismissed by federal judge and former Kentucky governor Bert T. Combs, the case undermined OEO support for the AV.

After Republican governor Louie B. Nunn was elected in November 1967, the AV faced an investigation by the Kentucky Un-American Activities Committee (KUAC). Walls issued a statement challenging the constitutionality of KUAC and the legality of the hearings. He refused an invitation to appear before the committee, but was not issued a subpoena, which he had hoped to challenge in court. In an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, Walls summarized the outlook of the AV staff on the coalfield region:

"An impatience with the slowness of change and paternalistic government programs; a distrust of experts who think they can solve the problems of poor people; a disgust with the way corruption is taken for granted in the mountains; a trust in the ability of poor people to solve their own problems, given the proper tools and money; a desire to end the colonialistic exploitation of Appalachia by corporations in Pittsburgh and New York and by small cliques of men in county seats; and a belief that the wealth of the area's mineral resources ought to go toward constructing a better way of life for all the people who live here."

Political pressures to terminate funding for the AV finally took their toll, and no further OEO support was forthcoming. After attempting an orderly spin-off or phase-out of AV staff and programs, Walls resigned as executive director in April 1970.