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Q&A: Appalachian Identity and the Tennessee Valley Authority [1]
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Date: 2025-07-18
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Even though he has amusingly skeptical things to say about historians, Mark T. Banker is a historian as well as a teacher and author. His book “Appalachians All,” published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2010, is an overview of and response to the ways people classify others as Appalachians or, conversely, decline to consider themselves Appalachians. Banker has taught history in Tennessee and New Mexico, and in addition to his books, his writing about Appalachians and their communities have been widely published.
Recently, Banker and I talked about his scholarship, his life’s work, and his corner of the world. Banker was speaking to me from his home a little more than a mile from the confluence of the Tennessee and Clinch rivers. It’s an area rich in history and Banker has a lot to say about the people and corporations that settled it and live in it. “Appalachians All” examines the southern Appalachians and their people by looking at three subsets: the area around Cade’s Cove, the Clear Fork Valley (the Cumberland Plateau in northern Tennessee and southern Kentucky), and cosmopolitan Knoxville itself.
Enjoy our conversation about the impact of the huge utility company Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), coal mining operations, and the struggle of southern Appalachians looking for an identity. And where these things all coalesce in the 2008 Kingston coal ash spill from the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Mark Banker: Where the coal ash spill occurred, it didn’t come my way and I wasn’t affected. I was, however, indirectly affected by the George W. Bush recession. I had completed that book (“Appalachians All”) and submitted it to the University of Tennessee Press in 2007. Then came the financial exigency, the Press was told to stop spending money and they called and mothballed the book. The coal ash spill validated my unusual take on Appalachia, that we’re all impacted here. [Eventually Banker’s book was published in 2010.]
Daily Yonder: Have you seen “Wild River?” [Editor’s note: “Wild River” is a 1960 film about efforts by TVA in the 1930s to clear settled land in Tennessee in order to flood various valleys by constructing dams that would generate electricity. Banker’s father, Luke Eugene Banker, worked for TVA and, later, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a worksite for the country’s atomic program.]
MB: I went to see that movie as a child with my father who owed everything to TVA. I teach classes and my class this fall will deal with representation of Appalachia in films. “Wild River” is a valuable cultural barometer of early 1960s America. I wouldn’t be here without TVA. TVA convinced my father to work for them in Norris. He met my mother. Without FDR and the New Deal, I wouldn’t be here. We who benefited from TVA in many ways should understand that for coal-bearing Appalachia, TVA was a disaster. I benefited from that disaster. I never thought as a child my long showers would have an impact on people elsewhere in the region. The granny character in “Wild River” would fight an agency that said, “You people are expendable.” My dad knew both sides of the TVA story – they hired him as an administrator out of college, then the Manhattan Project led him to move to Oak Ridge. My parents would never have met if TVA didn’t allow my dad to co-op between Norris and the University of Tennessee. Dad’s favorite expression is that it’s better to get forgiveness than ask permission. I always worry about my writing being too egotistical, almost everything I know I learned. But I rationalize when someone is writing and they cite their personal connection, their writing is better.
DY: I think some people think of Appalachia as poor, rural, and synonymous with the South. Obviously, geographically, the Appalachian Mountains are not just in the South. What’s created that impression of Appalachia over the decades?
MB: For any group that is the subject of stereotypes, once you begin to look seriously, you find what is a simple black and white story is a complicated story with shades of gray. You hear Appalachian stereotypes, and yes there’s a seed of truth there, but there’s so much more to the story. We who live in the region, who don’t fit those stereotypes, should be given much of the responsibility for those stereotypes. There isn’t any subject a historian can’t make more complicated. We’re our own worst enemy. I would argue that our goal should never be objectivity because we should be aware of our biases. I’m first and foremost an American historian. We’ve never come face to face with our biases.
DY: How about the idea that some equate Appalachia to being poor?
MB: When you try to undo a stereotype, you sometimes accidentally perpetuate it. I’m fascinated by what happens when marginal people interact with people we call the “mainstream.” What we’re seeing today is backlash that wouldn’t have happened if we had not had Barack Obama or BLM. There is a backlash. A lot of people who were closet racists, it brought out the worst in them. It helped elect the next president.
DY: How did you arrive at the idea of defining the East Tennessee region as the three regions in your book?
Cover art provided by University of Tennessee Press
MB: That’s very representative of Appalachia as a whole. I took this course up at Berea College [in Kentucky] in 1988. There was coal Appalachia, timber tourism Appalachia, there was also an urban Appalachia left out of the picture. Most Knoxvillians are not aware of it, but go back three generations and there’s a farmer, a lumberjack [in their family]. I knew of a book about Clear Fork Valley, “Power and Powerlessness,” and that was my pillar for coal Appalachia. There was a different dissertation and book about Cade’s Cove. I struggled with what to do with Knoxville. But if you look at a map, Knoxville is obviously in the Appalachian region.
William Cronon’s book “Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West” says there’s no such thing as urban and rural, it’s all part of the continuum, and I felt that represented Knoxville’s relationship with coal Appalachia and timber Appalachia. Nobody likes redneck jokes more than white Knoxvillians whose grandparents worked in those industries. The nostalgia crowd – I call them the quilt and dulcimer crowd – they don’t like my book. They’re the history people. None of us ever see the truth perfectly. I wanted to create an Appalachia where my students in Knoxville could say, yes, I’m Appalachian too. I believe that for Appalachia’s future, all of us need to realize we have a stake in its identity.
DY: What kind of changes do you see happening to Appalachians and East Tennessee since the publication of your book in 2010?
MB: It’s very sad up in the Clear Fork Valley. When I wrote the book, it was already having meth problems. In timber tourism Appalachia, it’s a mixed bag. Tourism continues to ravage Sevierville and Pigeon Forge. Knoxville the city is a much more progressive place. Still, a lot of my students don’t live in Appalachia anymore. They’re doctors in California. We all hope to create a society that’s more diverse and suspicious of attacks on diversity. It’s not the life I envisioned. When I left here at 18, I had no sense of Appalachia, no idea I would ever come back here or be a scholar of Appalachia. It was the 18 years I spent away that made me a credible observer of this region.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.
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