A River Runs through It: Black Appalachia as Zone of Fugitivity

• In Event: The Ohio River: Free People of Color, J.P. Ball's Anti-Slavery Panorama, and Zones of Fugitivity

Description for Program

Kilvert is an unincorporated community in rural Athens County, Ohio—roughly 25 miles east of the West Virginia border—largely unknown and invisible to outsiders. The community traces its origin to 1830 when an emancipated family left (West) Virginia, purchased land in southeast Ohio, and settled in the area around what would become Kilvert. Kilvert and its 200-year history is one example of erasing Black people from the region we call Appalachia. In the Foreword to the seminal Blacks in Appalachia from 1985, historian Nell Irvin Painter writes that “Black Appalachians, whose experiences have not conformed to stereotypes of black life are, for that reason, an invisible people.” This year, Crystal Wilkinson’s Black Appalachian cookbook Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: “People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia. Those not surprised that we were there, are surprised that we stayed.” Rather than focusing on the hills of Appalachia, this paper turns its attention to the Ohio River as a zone of fugitivity for individuals and communities living in, and moving through, the Appalachian region.

Author

• Kenton Butcher, Bucknell University