BUCK MAGGARD Tape 1, Side 1

Interviewer - Why don't you talk about where you were born and

something about your family, grandparents - do you remember them?

Buck - OK. Well, I was born near where we're sitting here, about

15 miles north of here on the north fork of the Kentucky river at

a little place called Cornetsville(?) Kentucky and that was in

1940. I was born in a old lumber camp, right near the north fork

of the Kentucky river and of course, I don't remember those years.

When I was 3 years old, my father moved over to Montgomery Creek

which is in ?? Kentucky to where I'm now living. We're probably

within a mile of where I grew up on the river where my father

moved to in 1940, and I've been there- with the exception of I've

been in the Army and probably in Indiana Ohio for six or seven

months at the time. I've lived in (Bred?) county probably about

seven or eight years. I've been here all my life practically right

here where I grew up. My father was a - during the depression

years he worked on the L and M Railroad and but before that has a

very young boy really, he come over from Wesley county Kentucky

over on the ( ). He come over into Perry(?) county and

worked at a saw mill, W and Ritter saw mill which is a big

operation on Littlewood(?) Creek in Perry County here. That's

where Cornetsville's at and I think he started working there when

he was about 11 year old. My mother was born just down the river

from Littlewood(?) Creek on a Creek called Mason's Creek, and I

think they - when he died in 1986 they'd been married 62 years.

Dad worked in the mines up until he retired in - it was either -

1959 or 60. And during that time he had been crushed twice with

roof falls and long about l954 - 56 he had to have one of his

lungs taken out because it was - because of black lung and rock

dust. So he held on for a couple more years after that, worked up

until he was about 60.

Interviewer - Worked there until he had lung cancer?

Buck - He worked with just one lung and then after he retired he

moved to ( ) County Kentucky and by that time I was married.

He lived until he was almost 85 with one lung and stayed active up

until about a year before he died. He had a small farm there in

Bethy County. He farmed the rest of his days. That's what he

really loved doing anyway. Growing up on Montgomery Creek, it was,

we did live for a while because Dad had to walk to work, there

were no roads in and out of Montgomery Creek at that time, so Dad

had to walk about 4 mile to work from where, in the morning. So

basically we did wander further down on Montgomery Creek to an old

coal camp where we lived for about 8 years, 'til sometime in the

40s to about '52. Then we moved back up near the head of the creek

after the roads and things come in and where I now live.

Interviewer - Do you know your grandparents?

Buck - I never met my grandparents on my mother's side. They

passed away years and years ago when I was real small. My

grandfather on my Dad's side, my great grandfather rather, was

originally out of North Carolina. Down near the North Carolina

coast, and they migrated from North Carolina up through the

Shenandoah Valley and a lot of the migrants stayed in ( )

County

is where I found most of them settled at, during those years.

Still lots of them there. And then the rest of them migrated on

into Kentucky and some come over on the Cumberland River which is

here in ( ) County. And some migrated on down into Leslie

County and that's where my grandfather was born was in Leslie

County, Kentucky over in the ( ) area. He worked in the log

woods all his life. That's all he ever did. He was a huge man. He

never could find pants to fit him. He was so big he couldn't

afford tailor-made clothes. and he had huge hands. I've never seen

nobody with hands as huge as my grandfather. He was the one that

took my father into the log woods when my father was 11 years old

was to helping him with a team of oxen. My grandmother was also

born in Leslie County on my Dad's side. Her background was also,

her father was a mountain farmers, loggers, and that's about all

that was going on back in those days until the mining come into

the area. And probably Dad was the first generation of migrants of

this particular generation, anyway, to ever work in the mines. Up

until that time, they were farmers and worked the logs.

Interviewer - Why did he go in the mines?

Buck - Well, after he left W. Ritter company, he went to the L and

M Railroad. I think the wages during that time were about $2 and a

quarter a day. We're talking like $29 - $20 during those years. He

figured that he could make a quarter or fifty cents more a day by

leaving the railroad and coming to the mines, and I think he

started in the mines at two and a quarter or two fifty a day. bur

during that period of time for the family that seemed like a five

dollar raise and that was the reason he went into the mines. And

then he had the skills he had learned on the railroad, some skills

that he used in the mine also. At that time it was all pulled out

by electric motors and he got familiar with track and motors and

electricity and all that kind of stuff, so that's the reason he

went into the mines.

Interviewer - So that's the kind of job he had - laying track.

Buck - Right. He laid track. He could do anything within the

mines. And he got into the union, the UMW at the very beginning of

that also. When he come to the mines the UMW was just starting up,

so he got involved with the UMW at a real early age. In fact he'd

already been involved with the railway unions before that. So

other than working at the saw mill, they were union jobs that he

worked. He was fortunate, not like some - he's always had that

union protection, always did have it. Right up until he died.

Interviewer - Did he talk about that much with you?

Buck - You growed up with it. At one time in this earlier year,

every mine here was unionized up until the middle fifties. Sot

you just grew up - union, union - heard it every day, every night.

The neighbors talking about it. You went to union meetings with

your parents and you got that feel of solidarity at a really young

age. I won't say that about the generation after me. All the

unions have gone, left out and everything and I'm sure people

don't get that feeling now of solidarity that they did when I was

growing up here. I was a teenager in the fifties, so I become

pretty well aware of unionism at a real early age.

Interviewer - What do you remember about those early conversations

in the home...?

Buck - There was always some issue coming up. Dad would always

talk about, you know, better working conditions. Somebody had got

screwed over at the mines that day or something or other like

that. You know, the neighbors would talk about it among themselves

and then they'd have a meeting at the local union hall to discuss

how they could deal with the company on this particular issue.

Just all kinds of things you hear. There was always safety issues.

Wasn't as much wages as you might think it was. Course that did

play a very important part. The union did bring better wages. My

Dad was making $13 a day in the fifties in the union mines. That

was not a lot of money but a lot more than most other people were

making. And so that was the kind of things they were talking

about. And they were always on lay-offs, you know they was talking

about seniority rights and all this kind of stuff. So you learned

about it at a real early age if you're in an old coal camp,

especially if it was unionized.

Interviewer - Were women part of those conversations?

Buck - Unfortunately, not. They were not. The husband rarely

discussed any issue around the workplace. Of course my mother had

to catch some of it because she was always there. But it was

really mostly the men who did most of the talking about it. The

women were, you know, its not like it is today. I'll put it that

way. They had their own little world too. That's for sure. Raising

kids, helping make the garden, you know, that kind of stuff. They

were more the supervisors of the household. Men did not supervise

the household too much he was always working.

Interviewer - Did your mother work outside the house?

Buck - My mother only like at a boarding house or something like

that where she worked as a cook. But it was not very much. I come

from a family of 14 so you can figure...

Interviewer - You had 13 sisters and brothers?

Buck - Right. So I was about the 7th or 8th one in the family of

14. She raised 10 of 'em. You can figure about what her duties

were.

Interviewer - Full time job.

Buck - Full time job. Laughter.

Interviewer - I'm still curious about these conversations when you

were younger. Did you get a sense that in the midst of this there

was a sense that you could do something...?

Buck - That was at a very young age and where I become aware of a

lot of stuff was in the local schools. The local schools had been

set up and really maintained and run by the coal operators. Big

coal operators I'm talking about are big companies out of

Philadelphia and New York or wherever they come from. They owned

most of the land we lived on. They owned the houses we lived in.

They controlled - they had a company store, so they - we were just

captives within this area. They also influenced the schools, and I

guess I become aware that where I go to school the textbooks were

written by somebody - god knows, I don't know where - and the

textbooks evolved around the lives of upper and upper middle class

people in the United States. And those textbooks, reading them

stories, nothing didn't jive with my surroundings or my area. I

was very confused about all this. I didn't see a chapter in there

about John L. Lewis or Big Bill Haywood or Eugene Debbs, all

those people. There was something wrong, there was something wrong

with the way I was being taught. They were trying to make me into

something that I would never be, probably didn't ever want to be.

I would walk home every night, and I walked the railroad track,

and you know. But in these stories, the mothers come and picked

the kids up in station wagons from the schools. And they had white

picket fences and they had pedigreed dogs. You know, all the

houses were white and there I was living in a drab gray house in

Perry County, Kentucky in a coal camp. I didn't learn nothing.

Everything I learned was something, you know, I'd never heard

about, wasn't aware of. It was good to learn about things, you

learned something - you learned how to read and write. That

confused me all the way through school even when I got into high

school. It was the same thing. Course you had the math and the

English and the history. If you'd read the history of Kentucky

you'd think Daniel Boone settled every bit of it. He come here and

he built every town, he built every house. He surveyed every

river, he built the railroad track. He done everything. Nobody did

anything in Kentucky but Daniel Boone. Henry Clay made a lot of

noise. He talked a lot but Daniel Boone done all the work. So you

wonder about these things. What in the world is going on here. Oh,

its great Daniel Boone come through the Cumberland Gap and took an

ax and chopped a road out through it. But, my god, there was other

things happening in Kentucky. What the hell - who really built

Kentucky? You wonder about these things. They never tell you 'bout

nothing. And you know they teach you about democracy and Thomas

Jefferson. They never mention the fact - George Washington - they

never mention these guys were the biggest slave owners in the

whole United States at that time. So we didn't learn those things

in school. We never learned about - you don't really learn a lot

about nothing. And you learned nothing about yourself. So you go

through all this period of your life - you got people up here

trying to brainwash you and you're trying to figure out what's

going on, you know. You just get screwed up something awful. When

I become aware of what was really happening, you know, I set out

to seek information on myself. I become an avid reader in labor

history. I read all the classics. I went and found out about that

kind of stuff also. We touched on a lot of this stuff except the

labor and all the local history in the schools, but to get it more

in depth, you just have to go off and do it on your own, I

figured. So I really wouldn't say that the education I got, I got

it just by wanting to know something, and just wanting to do

something different and wanting to find out about myself, about my

background, who I am. I didn't give a damn about who George

Washington was. I didn't give a shit who Thomas Jefferson was. I

wanted to know who my family was and I wanted to learn about my

community. So all that stuff I really had to learn on my own.

Interviewer - ( )

Buck - I first become aware, I guess - see I didn't get started in

the school until I was about 8 year old. I had a physical problem.

I'd start in and I'd get real ill and I'd have to quit. My mother

taught me how to read. My mother was actually the one taught me

how to read. She had some old books that - I forget what they were

- that she'd had when she was going to school. She was the

educated one in the family, by the way. My mother actually

graduated from high school. My Dad never went really beyond the

4th grade. So she taught most of us how to read, the whole family

how to read. In fact, even before we started to school, the little

old books and the Bible and this and that. When I first become

aware that things weren't right which was probably about the 5th

or 6th grade when it begin to dawn on me - hell, this is not the

life I live, this is not my history.

Interviewer - How did that affect your relationships with the

school. did you become a problem child?

Buck - No. In fact, I was an honor student. You wouldn't believe e

it, but I was an honor student all through school. But it was so

easy to be an honor student. All you had to do was rewrite what

you'd read out of that book. That was always good to take the

test. I wouldn't say I didn't learn anything, but you know, I

didn't learn the things I really wanted to learn in that setting.

Interviewer - Would you tell us what life in a coal camp in those

days was like and what in terms of community activities, music and

church and stuff like that.

Buck - There was always music. I've always interested in it.

That's why I'm so interested today in preserving traditional

music. It was always there. There was someone in every community

that played the banjo or the fiddle or the guitar or the autoharp

or something. And a lot of evenings were spent around the front of

the old company stores and places like that or a wide place beside

the railroad track listening to people play music. Old people

would tell stories about growing up, you know, how it was before

the coal companies come in and all that kind of stuff - was always

plenty interesting. That's where I really learned about the

history of the area is from those people. Church - we had a

Methodist church which the coal companies paid the preacher. But

none of us ever went to that one. The only people that went to

that one were the bosses and their families. We had our own church

there in the camp, sort of a Pentecostal where all the neighbors

would gather up at somebody's house on a Saturday night, and you'd

have singing and music and 'course preaching and testifying and

all that. It was more like a rock and roll party (laughter)

Everybody would get in there on Saturday night. Some of the men

would be a little tanked up before they come. The women would all

dress up in their finest clothes they had, and they'd kind of pick

us kids up and take us all to this particular house where the

church was being held at that night. And have a really good time.

Music and there would be a lot of shouting and a lot of getting

into the spirits, 'course a lot of them were in the spirits before

they got there. (laughter) So it wasn't very hard to do. but it

was really - this is how people I guess - looking back on it was

how they sort of got rid of the frustrations that had built up

during their life in the week and this was the one time a week

that they could go and be with their neighbors and sort of a

spiritual thing, of course, and sort of get rid of that

frustration. I guess that's why most people of that camp followed

the Pentecostal faith. course that changed later on. People got

into the Free Will Baptist and all that kind of thing. But that

was probably the dominant religion in that particular camp I grew

up with the Pentecostal. They called it the Holiness. They

probably did build the church house which is still there today.

Interviewer - You said there were bosses in the camp and different

kinds of people even though yoou had union there that was strong

in protecting people from certain things. Do you have a sense of

"them" and "us"?

Buck - It was very obvious. The camp was split - you lived in

three camps. We lived where the working men lived, and then you

had this other section where the bosses houses were much finer.

Most of them had indoor plumbing. Then father up the creek right

up to where you couldn't get no further unless you went across the

mountain, you had the blacks. They were way back from everybody.

They had separate schools. their school was located about 200

yards from the white school, but we never associated with those

kids during school. We did socialize on the weekend. A lot of the

black people would come down into the camp to go to church and

visit with the working miners. And they worked in the bosses

houses.

Interviewer - They come to church so the Holiness meetings were

black and white?

Buck - They would be integrated, even though the schools wasn't. I

never went to school with a black kid until sometime about '56 or

'57.

Interviewer - So they worked in the mines?

Buck - They worked in the mines also. But they lived - we were all

segregated.

Interviewer - So you had a sense of the division in the

community?

Buck - It was certainly there, but it didn't exist at the two

lower rungs of the ladder. They had a lot in common. The ones that

didn't want anything to do - keeping us apart lived between us.

They were always there, you know. So we did have that sense of

division, it was certainly there. But in terms of race, I won't

say that racism didn't exist among all the people there but it

certainly was not as obvious that it probably would be in the deep

South at that time or even later. We got along well together. And

then you had a mixture, you had Italians that would live in the

camp, you had Polish and Hungarians, from all backgrounds that

come into the mountains to work in the mines. It was amazing how

well that they blended in with the ordinary working man. Course

coming from the background that they did was probably the reason.

Interviewer - What when you decided to go into the Army 'bout 17

or so?

Buck - I was 17. That was the year my Daddy got sick. He was laid

up for six months. That was the year he had his lung taken out.

And at that time I was the oldest one at home. I had one older

brother at that time and there was just a whole bunch of girls in

between us. some of them had married off and the oldest brother

had already working in the mines and married and had a family. I

was the oldest one at home and I didn't want to go into mines at

that particular time. So I went to the Army. That's a whole

different experience. But that was the first time I'd ever

traveled any was really out of the mountains for any length of

time. Looking back, I don't regret going to the Army. I wasn't

overjoyed after I got there, but I don't regret going because it

did give me a look at the other part of the world that at that

time I hadn't seen.

Interviewer - You saw it as a way of supporting yourself?

Buck - At that time, I got $62 a month, $62 - $64 a month. Well

you could send - if you sent $30 home to your parents, they would

match it. More in terms of economics than it was that I was going

to be a Sergeant York.

Interviewer - Was that common among your friends?

Buck - Very common. If you'll look back at the history of the

mountains especially in this area during World War II they filled

their quotas with volunteers, and some counties didn't even have

to use the draft. A lot of it might have been a sense of

patriotism. A lot of it just had to do with the economics of the

thing also. Course a lot of them didn't come back. But anyway it

was a chance to get away. It was a chance to help the family. I

dropped out of school and I was a junior in high school. I adanced

real fast through the grades.

Interviewer - Going back a little bit. Was there much of a legacy

of the New Deal, the kinds of things that happened during

Roosevelt's administration? If you remember -

Buck - Yes, it was very obvious in the area where I grew up at, my

Dad never worked in the WPA. He was fortunate he had a job during

that period. He was one of the lucky ones. My Dad always said that

Herbert Hoover made a democrat out of him, because he was raised a

really conservative Republican up until the depression years. And

even though my grandfather never did switch over, his ideals about

things changed, you know, after the depression years when

everybody had it so hard. Even though my Dad had a job it still

wasn't easy. You know, you always hear the stories abut the WPA.

If you look around Whitesburg you see all this mason work and the

old bridges and stuff. A lot of that was made by Italian people.

They were great rock cutters. A lot of the old school buildings

what's left standing, were made during the WPA years. A lot of the

roads were built during those years. So you hear a lot of talk

about that. All kinds of stories about working for the WPA - it

was very obvious. Franklin Roosevelt was their hero. They had two

heroes. Neither one of them was George Washington or Daniel Boone.

It was Franklin Roosevelt and John L. Lewis. That was the talk. So

you learned about that real fast.

Interviewer - So the legacy of those years and the kinds of

changes they'd made in the mountains, were obvious to you growing

up?

Buck - Very obvious growing up. Even to the place that the road -

where I live at now there was not a road in there until round 55.

Interviewer - How did you get in - did you walk a path? bridge?

Buck - You could get up the creek in the summertime in a big

truck. In a truck, not a car, a big truck. And I'm talking about a

2 ton truck. That was it. It was walk paths and sled walks, even

in the 50s. So we're talking about really remote country even

during that period when the rest of the world was much further

progressed than we was. In fact, we didn't have electricity until

we moved into that coal camp. That was all deducted from the

miner's pay, the rent, the electricity, so much a month for the

doctor who was always a quack. All that was deducted from your

paycheck before you -

Interviewer - Did you have to trade at the company store?

Buck - You didn't have to, but the problem with that was, you

didn't have any way of getting out and going anywhere else. Very

few people owned cars, very few. So you were sort of a captive to

it. Most people did trade at the country store, and most people

always were overdrafted when they got to payday. They always owed

the company. They always managed to owe the company.

Interviewer - Did a lot of people have that same sort of feeling

about these company doctors that they were sort of quacks that

they were being taken for a ride?

Buck - Yeah. They did. Like you'd have probably one company that

would be taking care of like two or three coal camps. One coal

camp was not the only way you made a living. and they just become

dispensers of pills is 'bout what they did. I remember that they

had some - a little pink pill that no matter what you went to him

for, you always got a little package of those pills. Hell, I don't

know what they take 'em for, you know. I don't know whether they

worked or not. They had one hospital in the area that was in

Hazard, Kentucky, which was the county seat. It was run by a bunch

of Catholics, Catholic nuns run it, sisters. Called the Old

Mountain Mary Hospital. The kids that weren't born at home, mother

had problems, that's where they used to went to have a baby. And

that was it in terms of medical care. With the company doctor and

that one hospital. Few doctors in Hazard at that time.

Interviewer - Was the hospital perceived in the same way?

Buck - I would say that the facilities that they had at that time

was adequate. Adequate care, anyway. And they were a bright caring

bunch of people, those Catholic nuns were. Later on we had the big

hospital the UMWA hospitals come in. Miners were the ones who

financed that through assessments and everything from the union,

and they built that. So medical care got better. It never did get

up where it ought to be, but it got better. A lot better. You had

the medical card too, so you - the UMWA medical card.

Interviewer - You said the Army was a different experience. I'm

just curious what was that like. And what kind of impact that had

on you?

Buck - Well, the Army - you trained for one thing. The only thing

you're trained for is to kill people. That's it. That's the reason

they have an Army. You trained people to kill other people. I

never did have any desire to kill anybody. I know I get mad

sometime and want to choke somebody a little bit, but never had

any desire to shoot somebody. So that's another thing you learned

about the United States. We spend big money every year, even

during those years, that was at the very beginning of the nuclear

age and all that to train people how to kill other people. Its a

big business. Tanks, airplanes, and it didn't sit too well with my

philosophy, you know, I know you hear about all the violence that

took place here in the mountains during early years there was

feuds among families but all in all they were very peaceful

people. As long as people left us alone, we didn't like to be

bothered. If you just leave us to ourselves, we're very peaceful

people. Course somebody's going to fly off sometime and shoot

somebody, or knock 'em in the head with a club but that happens

everywhere. Course we got - we were known for being very feudish -

a stereotype, you know, laying up on the hill with an old a rifle

waiting for somebody would walk out of the house and shoot 'em.

That's never been true. There has been incidents like that. I'll

say that. Overall we're a very peace loving people. We don't

really like killing other people.

Interviewer - Where did you go in the Army?

Buck - I was at Fort Knox in Kentucky and (wood??) in Missouri.

Taught people how to kill people. That's what I did after I got

out of basic training. That was my duty after eight months - they

learned me how to kill people, I was assigned to gather recruits

when they come in. That's what I did.

Interviewer - What did you do when you got out? Say you studied

for a couple of -

Buck - I got out sometime in '59. I got married in '59 also. So

that was two good things happened to me. I got out of the Army

that year and I got married. And I went to work. The first time I

was ever on the picket lines and al that was in '59 after I had

come back out of the Army. I went to work strip mining at that

time. It had just started, it was the very beginning of it. They

had- first they brought in these huge augers that would just sort

of open up the side of the mountain and brought the coal out and

go into a truck. So I got a job on a auger, working on a auger,

and I worked there about, oh, not over three or four months.

Course I joined the UMWA at that time. I worked there about three

months and they decided we had this bloody strike, really horrible

strike. It was - what was happening, the Union was really losing

ground fast in eastern Kentucky. The big coal companies by that

time had sort of moved out and what you had left was a bunch of

what we called dog holes. What they done, they just pulled out so

we quit. Leased it out to other people so much a ton, money all

went to the same people, you know, the same trail and train hauled

it out. And this was a way of breaking the union, I guess. So it

held on for a few years after that. Was pretty strong up until

about '59 and they was getting worried because they were losing

membership. So they started to organize, in '58, reorganize all

these dog holes operations in eastern Kentucky. It lasted about a

year. Its probably one of the most bloody strikes since the '30s.

Finally the National Guard had to come in. It really got - people

shot. There was one of my buddies killed about a mile from where I

live. Shot in the back by a coal operator and the state police

took the blame for that. When I was 19 I was on the picket line at

( ), that's on Montgomery Creek. Where it comes out,

there's a little town they called Pigot(?) which is the post

office. So I was in the picket line when I was 19 years old. I

just come out of the armed forces like maybe three or four months.

There I was - they was on one side of the railroad track and I was

on the other. Striking miner (laughter) really didn't make sense

to me, you know. That's where I first got involved in- really got

involved in doing anything in terms of community organizing and

all that was that one experience there in 1959 with the strike.

Very young and very naive about what was going on.

Interviewer - What did you do, what kind of activities, what

things did you get involved in with the union?

Buck - In that particular strike, I was just on the picket line,

like everybody else. Then we were shot at from the mountains, by

thugs I guess it was. Lot of 'em were arrested by the FBI for

blocking interstate commerce. All kinds of things like that

happened. Lot of them were just framed up. My brother-in-law spent

six months in the Federal pen. My wife's brother. They say

blocking the railroad track and whether he did or not is beside

the point. He spent the time for it just the same. There were

houses blown up. there were railroad bridges blown up, temples

burned. Just all sorts of things went on during that period. That

was probably the last big drive the union made. The drive itself

was a complete failure. The union completely failed. But by that

time automation was taking over, and even though they were - less

men would be working more coal would be produced because of

automation. And the union at that time had become more interested

in the tonnage and the royalties than in people.

Interviewer - This happened about the time John L. Lewis died?

Buck - He was still president of the union at that time. He died

sometime in the 60s. And then we went through - Tony I think took

over sometime in 63 or 64, somewhere along in there. And then it

all went downhill.

Interviewer - When you started to lose a kind of faith in the

union even with this-

Buck- Well, you know what it was, people still held on, and they

dreamed that the union was going to come back strong. And this

existed up until about late 1962. All of a sudden they started

getting these memos from the health and retirement fund that they

would revoke - all their health cards were going to be revoked.

All of 'em. Just across the board, you know. Everybody's health

card was going to be revoked. and then you got into a period where

you had a really civil war, a sort of revolution , took place

until about '64 and it was called a ( ) picket movement where

just hundreds of people would gather up every morning and go to a

particular coal mine and shut it down for that day and then move

on somewhere else. This got really violent also. That was also a

time we had the National Guard back in again.

Interviewer - Talk about that just a little bit more. I'm

interested in how things moved from the spirit of organized

structured resistance to the union. The traditional channels to

this -

Buck - Right. What was happening during the 50s we had a coal

boom until, while the war was going on, World War II. John L., you

know, he pulled the miners out several times. One time right

during the war when he said they couldn't do it. So he went ahead

and pulled 'em out anyway. They needed the coal real bad, so they

were ready to bargain with the union, even the coal operators

were. And that started changing figures. The one thing, America

itself began to change. The industrial world began to change. We

were moving away from - even the railroads itself was moving away

from using coal to run the engines because they was converting

over to diesel. A lot of the big manufacturing companies who were

converting over to natural gas and oil and that kind of stuff. The

demand for coal was just down. And then you had, you know, a sort

of going through a recession, changing back over from a war

economy, back to, you know, and all that. So there was not a real

demand for coal during the early 50s. And then the big companies

who were going to survive, had sunk millions of dollars into all

the new mining technology to get more coal for less men. The union

went along with this. In fact the union, itself opened up the

biggest banks in the United States, but not one dime of that money

was ever put into training miners to do something, equip them for

other jobs or helping other industries come there. They just sort

of forgot about these people was going to be laid-off. They just

forgot about them. And they really done nothing to help 'em. Even

John L. didn't. This continued all during the 50s. We had a really

great depression here during the Eisenhower administration, almost

as bad as Hoover days, here in the mountains. So this went on for

about 10 years. The union was gradually losing ground, but wasn't

really doing a lot to help it. They were just sort of going along

with the bigger coal companies, produce more coal, give us more

royalties, we'll just sort of let this thing drag on. We're not

going to do nothing about it. I think even though, I say that was

a bloody strike in 50, it was really a token effort on the part of

the union to really get these men back in the mines, you know, to

get them back to work. A very token effort. They should have

started 10 years earlier than they did. And this was all building

up here in the mountains. The 59 strike being a complete failure.

Then you had two years of no union activity and very few union

mines left in the area at that time, and then they revoked their

health card. Something that you had had since 1946, something or

other like that. All of a sudden you're left without not only a

job, you don't have any health benefits. All the stuff you've

worked for, had worked for, is all of a sudden gone. You had

nothing, absolutely nothing left, all those years. And that

started happening in 1962 they started revoking the cards and

that's when all the miners started organizing the masses. It

wasn't even safe to be outside your house. It sure wasn't safe to

be neutral. You had to be on one side or the other. So we opted

for the Union side. I was very much - as a young man much involved

in that movement, and I was on the youth committee of it- of the (

) picket movement. This went on up until around 1964. It was

really hard, and then Kennedy was elected president. And just up

to before he was killed he had got some legislation through

congress, you know, the OEO was being created, and some money was

supposedly going to be sent to eastern Kentucky. Then he was

assassinated in 63, I believe it was. Well, just after the

assassination of Kennedy a bunch of miners organized and got a bus

and went to Washington and picketed the United Mine Workers and

the White House. And by this time Lyndon Johnson was president,

and he promised if they come up there he would listen to them. But

when they got up there, he wouldn't talk to them. John L. Lewis, I

mean the union wouldn't even let 'em park in the parking lot. A

lot of people from the teamster's union was very sympathetic at

that time. You know, Jimmy Hoffa, at that time was president of

the teamsters. He had sort of become a hero of these rolling

pickets- because he was the one union that got them into the

offices that found them places to stay while they were up there.

And they finally did get in to talk to, I think it was, George

Reedy who was some kind of a aid. He agreed to talk to these

miners while they were up there. And he promised them if they

would come home, get organized, really get organized formally they

could get X number of dollars for job training programs, stuff

like that. So this was the very beginning of the war on poverty in

eastern Kentucky as I know it. As a result of those miners going

up there, a million dollars was sent to eastern Kentucky for our

jobs training program. But that jobs training program was

controlled by the same people that these people were fighting -

the local courthouse gangs, the local chamber of commerce, and all

that. So from the very beginning they got control of that money,

and it was them that determined who would be on those programs and

who wasn't, so it didn't really - well it did help in terms of

this money, and some people were in a lot of the work projects and

were working, that there was some money and people were getting a

little money back into the -. So the miners themselves come back

and organized into a thing called the- oh boy. The Appalachian

Committee for Full Employment was the first community action

organization in Perry County and it was organized by one of my

heroes, an old man by the name of Everett Thorpe who's now dead.

They was the one that drawed up the community action plan for

eastern Kentucky and later was taken away from 'em of course. So I

began working with Everett Thorpe during that period. Everett was

an old union organizer and he was in his sixties, he had retired

from the mines then. I got hooked up with him as his aid, and I

guess there's where I really got my biggest influence, in terms of

knowing how to deal with people, in terms of labor. I probably

learned more from Everett that I did anybody because I worked with

him day and night for about three years.

Interviewer - Tell us a little bit about him, his background.

Buck - He was raised in (Br ) County. Everett was. Come

from a large family of mountain people. His father was a mountain

farmer. And he'd somehow managed around and got an 8th grade

education. And that was almost impossible during the period he was

growing up there in the 1900s in ( ) county, I'm sure. But

anyway, he somehow got educated. He got interested in law. He

always wanted to be a lawyer is what he really wanted to be, but

he never had the money to go to college and never had the money,

so he had to go to work. He orginally started working on the

railroad also. Started out working on the railroad at a really

young age and managed to study law. He had gotten all these law

books and he could - really, really knew the law, labor law

especially, he really knew that. He could quote it to you all day.

And he was also a supporter of Eugene Debbs. He got acquainted

with Eugene Depps at some convention in New Jersey or somewhere, I

forget where it was, way back in the 20s or 30s. He had met Depps

personally, and I think he was even one of Debbs supporters when

he run for president, when they had him in prison so he had all

that background. He'd met all these people. Debbs was one of his

heroes and he'd been involved in all the railroad strikes. Later

he'd come into the mines and he got to organizing in the mines,

organized the UMW. Fired five times by the company for union

activity and ended up being superintendent of the company, so you

know, he had a lot going for him. So I meet this guy, you know,

and he's willing to take me under his arm. I was his organizer,

and he was going to learn me how to organize people. And he did.

The guy really did. He really knew how - and was at this time

getting sort of up in years, and he just didn't have the energy to

direct all this and he needed somebody to that for him. So I went

with him, and he was the one that taught me all the little tricks,

how to deal with a group, and how to deal with individuals, how to

get in and out of the community without getting shot, you know,

and all that kind of stuff. I really owe a lot to him. I got to

say that. He was really a big influence in my life.

Interviewer - What were some of his secrets -

Buck - There really are no secrets. One thing we always did, we

never talked about anything we didn't know what it was. We had to

know exactly what we's talking about. The whole secret of it is,

is just knowing what the hell you're doing. Knowing what you're

talking about and somebody asking you a question and being able to

answer it. And be yourself is the most important thing. Just be

yourself. Try to be nothing other than what you are is the big

secret of that.

Interviewer - Were you still working in the mines? Were you

working?

Buck - Yeah. And just after that, that was my first go-around with

Everett. After that I moved back down into ( ) County stayed

until about two years after that. And then I got hired on as one

of the supervisors on the WET program, work experience and

training program which was quote - the happy pappy's(?). So I got

involved in that. And was up with this group of people one day

fighting forest fires with the state forestry department. And we

worked about 12 hours, 12 of 14 hours all day long. And if you've

ever fit fire in your life, you'll know what you're going through.

Blisters all over your hands and feet, you're burnt up. And its

right in the hottest, driest part of the year. Ain't no way you

contain the fire in eastern Kentucky when its windy and hot and

dry. But we contained one big one and started home, and these guys

said we've got to go somewhere else. Theres this big fire up

there, they need everybody, bringing in people from all over the

state to fight this - right in the head of ( ) Kentucky

which is 40 some miles from the county seat. So they hauled us up

there and we got up there about 10 o'clock that night. I was so

damn tired I couldn't stand up. Honest to God, I couldn't have

walked another 100 yards if I'd of had to. So I just said well - I

learned some things from Everett, you know. Theres no way you can

work us over 8 hours a day without giving us a break and giving us

some food. I ain't going do it. If these guys want to do it, they

can do it but I am not making these men go to work. They've not

had a break, they've not had dinner, and they're not going to do

it unless they get it. And they said we're going to make you work.

And we had this big old guy - one old guy he just went up so far

and started back over this way. (laughter) Big old tall guy. This

forest warden pulled a 44 special out of his holster and stuck it

in this big old guy's gut. And pulled the damn trigger and the

damn thing snapped. I don't know what the shit happened. Then he

shot under his clip and the damn thing went off. How it come

around to an empty chamber or what it was, I don't know. Well when

this happened the other people started getting mad. They just

said, well hell you go ahead and kill us we're not going to work

either. So there were about eight of us sort of just walked off.

We walked 40 some goddamn miles to Jackson to where the main

office was. We got there about 2 o'clock the next day. I mean we

walked every damn step of it. You talk about blisters! We had 'em.

What happened there, they said, well we'll take care of this. You

all just - we don't want it in the newspapers or anything like

this. We'll take care of this little incident now. Buck, you've

done a real good job with these people. Tell you what we're going

to do . We're going to let you have an office job . So here I am

all of a sudden, I'm a sitting in the private office in the county

judge's office in ( ) County doing nothing! Absolutely nothing!

(laughter) I'm there. I ain't got no duties, nothing. So I started

getting an idea how county government is working. Theres nothing

no more corrupt than eastern Kentucky politics. Still is. Its not

changed. This was 1966 by the way. I just set there, and I got to

thinking about that incident - there was never anything done about

it. Those guys were treated like shit. Nobody didn't really give a

damn. I was responsible for those men on that particular day, and

I let them down. I didn't know nothing about it and so what I did

- I had access to a telephone, I didn't have one at home - so I

just set there day in and day out calling all these old boys,

these unemployed fathers And other people I knew. Said, look we're

getting shit-over throughout this damn camp. We got to do

something about this, and we organized. I got those people

organized from the county judge's office in (Britain? ) county

using their money their funds. So we started an organization

called the (Brittan) County Grassroots Citizens Committee. First

all poor group was ever put in there in (Britain) County. In fact

there were no organized groups there except the JCs or Lions Club.

Marie Turner was the superintendent who led it with an iron hand

and had been for 30 some years. So we got this organization

started right under her nose. And she didn't know what the shit

was going on. We got started, we were very fortunate - at that

time there was some vistas come into the area that was sort of

helping us out. The heathen so to speak. We just tried to figure

out a way to use them too. Hell, we know that part of the system

too. So we'll just use them also. So we got them on our side, and

they come in here and started day care programs and things like

that - Marie Turner, she was sponsoring them. So we got them on

our side and got a newspaper put together, a thing called the

Grassroots Gossip. We'd tell what was happening in the courthouse

and you know. And we'd send these things - we'd put 'em together.

My brother was the editor of it, Jim. We put this little thing

together every week and we used Marie Turner's mimeograph machine

that she didn't know about. And her stationery to print it on.

We'd send this little thing out to all the agencies in the state

and to OEO Washington, the congressman's office, the senator's -

give 'em all the information from this little group of people in

eastern Kentucky. They didn't know what the shit was going on up

there, you know. They thought the revolution had done started. But

anyway, we finally did get recognized by the local community

action program. And of that little group, I mean they really put

the screws to us too. They tried every way in the world to disband

the group and do everything in the world. But out of that group

there was some things accomplished. We got roads in the

communities which had never had a road in a very short time. The

school children, you know - they would build bridges so they

wouldn't have to wade the creek. And the school buildings in

general got fixed up. And then we made a big difference in who

could be elected in that county. You got three or four hundred

people, that's a big vote these people's got families. So they did

see us as a threat. The poor guys who were working on these

programs got better conditions and they got tools to work with,

transportation. So a lot of things come out of that organization.

Course they finally got rid of me. To say the least. I mean I no

longer had my private office in the county courthouse, I can

assure you of that. And so I was without a job. I come back up

into Hazard, up in Perry County, up here where I live right now,

and begin working in the mines again. I worked for about three or

four months and the telephone rung when I come home and it was

Everett once more. Said, look, look I need your help. Good

Everett, what do you need? And he had someway wiggled his way

round into becoming the community action director of Perry County.

(laughter) I have no idea how this happened. He said, I need an

assistant. Would you like to work for me again? I certainly would,

you know, so I went down and began working with Everett Thorpe

once more. We set out to - he had this master plan about how Perry

County could be organized. It took us several months to get that

thing figured out, what we was going to do there. We set about

organizing the county once more. And what we did, we did organize

15 communities in Perry County in that period. We started 15

community centers. We actually had two black community centers in

that county. And then all of a sudden we had another big powerful

organization. We called this - the main organization was called

The Perry County Citizens Action Committee. And what we did, we

went around to in these various communities and set up

organizations to elect people to this Perry County Community

Action Committee who was just run by Everett Thorpe, of course.

And through that we did get representation from the communities on

the local community action boards and had a voice in all the

programs that was coming into the area at that time, like

Headstart, Job Corps. That county-wide organization that we'd set

up and no other county had it, had an organization like that. So

this was probably the ( )county experience and the Perry

county experience once more was probably where I got most of the

background in community organizing. And I'm going to tell you it

was really a hard job both places, you know. (Bre ) County,

I walked more than I rode because a lot of places I went to there

were no roads and so I had to walk in and out of the hollows and

do that kind of stuff. ( )County was a little easier to get

around in and I had a car. So it become a little easier. That was

probably where I got most of the organizing in my whole life was

Perry and (Bethy) counties. anyway, finally the organization got

so strong Washington, when it got scared of that Perry County

organization, and they started putting the screws to me and

Everett and the fact even the board that finally merged into a

four county board and they did this to get rid of Perry County is

what they really done - so it wouldn't have all the power. So they

merged the Community Action Agency into a four county camp(?)

which meant you had three more counties to fight with than you

previously had. They really put the screws to me and Everett, but

by that time I had got hooked up with a group of conservationists

in the area called the Appalachian Group to Save the Land and

People who were just beginning their fight against strip mining -

and that was another that really got violent also. We had a lot of

violence in them mountains in 67. By that time I was hooked up

with them while I was working in the Community Action Program, and

they were operating in ( ) County must getting organized so

I got in over there and helped with some of that, organizing. And

finally it got so rough we just resigned. I resigned first and

Everett hung on a few months after that and then he resigned the

Community Action Program also. I went with a group called the

Appalachian Volunteers which was started at Berea College and was

still very much active in the strip mining struggle and we were

not out to abolish ( ) strip mining still destroying the land.

Interviewer - Lets go back a little bit just a minute. I'm

interested in the impact that the community action programs had.

You said this happy pappy program that you worked on, was it a

make-work program?

Buck - It was a make-work program. It really was. It didn't last

all that long. But what did come out of that as far as lasting,

you had Headstart in the schools for the first time which I think

has meant a lot to the school kids. And you had Job Corps come out

of that which depending on how you look at that. I'd say was

pretty successful. Especially for our kids, you know, like low

income families getting to learn a trade. So there were some

positive things come out of that. As a result of that people

become more politically inclined a whole period again. You know

we're talking about younger people now because the old depression

era people were dying out. The New Dealers were really going. So

the younger people - which I was much younger then - got that

period in their life where they could spend with these old New

Dealers and these people, and I think from that just sort of

passed the torch on to keep the spirit alive to get in there and

fight for what you need. I do think there were some very - health

care improved, school systems got title 1, title 2 money for all

sorts of improvements in the education system. So there was a lot

of positive things come out of that whole period. I do know that.

And they did have did have an impact on the younger people. Course

every job is created. There were real jobs created in working

within the programs and for the first time the teachers had aids

in the schools. Looking back on it there were a lot of negative

things that did happen during that period - we'll agree with that

- but there were a lot of positive things. And I think the most

positive thing was to have people like Eula Hall come out of that.

There's nothing more positive than that. Really.

Interviewer - This community participation was an aspect written

into the law - maximum feasible participation.

Buck - Maximum feasible participation. Well that's what we did

that. We did that in Perry County and it looks good on paper. But

philosophically it don't work in Washington, because when you get

people writing up their own programs and running 'em it don't work

well in Frankfurt and Washington. It really don't. It's just the

rhetoric is all it is.

Interviewer - So they didn't support it?

Buck - Absolutely not. In fact they passed the Green amendment.

Her congressman at that time, a really liberal congressman, the

late Carline Perkins, he got so scared of it in the 7th district -

and he was the one that helped pull out the old OEO legislation,

or said he did. But if you'd read the doggone thing, nobody had

ever voted for it. It was against every institution in the United

States, the legislation itself was - you ought to read it

sometime. Its amazing what's in that stuff. And all of a sudden

these senators and congressmen read this and said My God, there's

no way we can let this go on. These people are taking over.

(laughter) And they would have. I mean if you look at that

legislation - I don't know if you've ever seen it - honest to God

it just makes everything, even the churches. It don't leave nobody

out. And old Perkins, he got scared. He was head of the House

Labor Committee, that education thing. He was actually about the

third powerfullest man in Washington. He was chairman of the labor

committee and all that kind of stuff. He got the shit scared out

of him because people were just raising all kinds of hell down

here in the 7th district. He wanted to do something about that,

but he as afraid to do it, politically he was afraid to do it

because all these people had voted for him and he wanted to keep

'em. So he got Edith Green. She was from out West or northwest or

somewheres. Was a freshman congressman, just got elected. So he

hodooed her into writing up the Green amendment but it was called

Perkins legislation but he was afraid to give all this power back

- to give it back to the local superintendents and county judges.

He thought we didn't know about that. Old Carl did. They caught on

to it. After a couple of years they really figured out what was

happening real fast. They knew they had to do something about it.

So we got the Green amendment.

Interviewer - Why were they scared of it?

Buck - When people didn't make decisions for themselves especially

people who have never really had the opportunity. And you're in

office and then all of a sudden they start asking you questions

that you don't want to answer. It scares the hell out of you. And

that's exactly what was happening. People were starting to get

more involved - you get people organized and they get involved and

they start asking questions. And it usually always leads to a

local courthouse or the statehouse or Washington. In the final

analysis that's where it all ends up - here's the problem. And you

know it scares the hell out of people. They want to stay in

office. So they're going to get rid of you anyway they can.

Interviewer - You mentioned earlier when you went back to work

with Everett Thorpe you had a master plan for organizing Perry

County? Can you talk a little about what that plan was?

Buck - That plan was real simple. We targeted communities that

sort of spread out throughout where we could say, you know,

represented the whole county. They were chosen. Right on from the

old coal camps. And the whole plan there was to go to these

communities, and if we just got three people organized, that would

be the organization. What we were really setting up at first were

contacts in those communities that we could work with, potential

leaders. We would work with these two or three, or four or five or

six individuals to give them the organizing skills that they would

need to organize the community. And that's what we did. Some

communities we went in we just organized it ourself. Some of them

were a little harder and more remote. Now we had to work with

individuals to learn them the organization skills and how to run a

meeting and all that kind of stuff. And that was the whole plan -

surround Hazard. We sort of had Hazard surrounded which was the

county seat. The PCAC would be the umbrella organization of that

group. They would be the one to elect people through the Perry

County Citizens Action Committee, is what it was, the people that

was organizing these communities and elected the people to this

umbrella group which we had started earlier. So we had the

umbrella group and we had these 15 community groups out there

feeding into that. And we also created 15 jobs like that. We

created 15 organizers and 15 community centers which all kinds of

activities take place in, like daycare centers. It was a place

where people could come and talk about strip mining and whatever

it was. It was really a community information center, is what we

were really setting up, where this information would be available

because even in the 60s, you know, people were not very mobile in

eastern Kentucky. And we thought this information would be

important to have right in the community. And we also had little

health fairs and all that kind of stuff that took place. Health

screenings and all that taking place in these communities so that

people didn't have to go to the county seat just to get a little

simple hearing test or something. So we had it pretty well figured

out. But Washington was really looking down on it really hard, you

know. They were really getting scared about people doing this kind

of thing. Really harmless stuff in terms of what we were doing. It

was not nothing that was going to start a revolution, that was for

damn sure. But it was things - they did not want people to have

access to information was the biggest thing. And that's what we

were really shooting into it was information. There was every kind

of information we wanted from those centers. We made sure it was

there. And when people get information, they start asking

questions. That's what was happening. There was no master about a

revolution taking over the county government. If you'd hear 'em

talking in the courthouse, you know, it was a bunch of communists

out there that was going to take over Perry County. Who'd want it?

(laughter) When I say master plan, that's what the whole thing was

about. It was the least we could do in the position that we was in

was to feed these communities information, have 'em organized and

feed 'em information. We had no say-so in what that community done

with that information or what activity took place. That was all

decided by the community. Cause there was no way we could spend

all that time in every community anyway. So that was what it was.

Then after I left, I went with the ABs and got connected with the

Southern Leadership Conference.

Interviewer- How did that happen?

Buck- I was active in the issues of strip mining and I worked in

black neighborhoods in the mountains, and I was down in West

Virginia one weekend and I met Andrew Young. He was a

representative of SCLC. At a rally we were sponsoring the black

lung people. I was also involved in the black lung stuff with

Eula. He was at this rally and I met him. And they were just

starting to implement the plan of the great march on Washington in

1968, I believe it was. And so I met him and sort of got connected

up through him. And I was the Appalachian coordinator for that

poor peoples march, and also on the committee of the national

organizers.

Interviewer - That was predominantly a black organization and that

march from the national publicity was seen as a civil rights

organization. What was it like in reality?

Buck - I always thought that also. The SCLC was always more than

an all black organization. In fact all the support come from white

liberals I'm sure. But there were a lot of whites involved in that

organization throughout the South. Throughout the whole United

States in fact. The planning committee itself, which I was the

Appalachian member of that of the march was made up of Latinos, it

was made up of blacks, white Appalachians, Native Americans, just

all segments of the society was represented on that committee. And

all their meetings, all these various groups were represented. It

did start as ScLC deal at first, but the ScLC couldn't deal with

it so they had to bring in all these other groups to help

coordinate all this stuff. So when they said poor peoples march,

it was a poor peoples march from all groups in the society today.

They were really well represented. Fact some of the best

representatives were the Chicanos and probably the strongest.

Interviewer - Was it hard organizing people to support what was

seen as a black organization ?

Buck - No. It wasn't for me. I don't know about anybody else. I

didn't have any problem. I got three busloads to go from this

area. So that's a lot of people from a little area like this.

Those people were white. White Appalachians. They didn't have any

reservations whatsoever. I don't know. I can't speak for other

areas what kind of problems they had. But the Chicanos certainly

didn't have problems getting people, I do know that. Even the

American Indians didn't, so, you know, they were all represented.

And of course that ( ) we were down in Atlanta with Dr. King.

We were at his birthday party just shortly before he was killed. I

think he was 38 or 40, I forget how old he was. But I was at that

party, and we had a big meeting that whole weekend that we had the

party at his last birthday. Even there, there were people from all

over these various ethnic groups from all over the United States,

had been personally invited by Dr. King himself to that birthday

party. So it wasn't just a back thing. It really wasn't.

Interviewer - Had you been aware of the civil rights movement?

Buck - Oh yeah. Yeah I was very much aware of it. I had followed

it. Anytime you worked over in those communities you know you're

dealling with civil rights. And as far as I know, we had the only

black representation on the community action board in this area

because we had worked the black communities also. No other

community action group in these four counties had ever made any

effort to organize the blacks. So we were into it very early, into

civil rights. And they become some of our most vocal members also.

The blacks did from this area.

Interviewer - I'm interested in the Appalachian volunteers and

what that organization was about? How it got started and what it

was trying to do?

Buck - The Appalachian volunteers originally got started as a

group of students coming into the mountains sort of working in the

communities like painting school houses and building play grounds

and that sort of thing. Until it sort all of a sudden got the

notion they wanted to get into political action stuff. So at Berea

College they formed what they called the Appalachian volunteers

and applied for a big federal grant to do more of this kind of

work in the communities with the idea that they would get more

involved in the local politics of the community and the region

which is really what happened. I was working with the AVs when I

doing all that poor peoples campaign stuff. So what the AVs really

did for me personally, Eula also - she was one too - gave us much

more freedom and a much broader area to work in where before that

had sort of been confined to a particular county or a couple of

counties where we weren't doing the things we wanted to do; give

us a much bigger area in which to operate in, and give us a little

bit more money and a vehicle and we got very mobile. I think

probably the most successful work that was done by the Appalachian

volunteers or vista we used a lot of Vista's, in fact I was a

Vista supervisor myself when I was an Appalachian volunteer I was

a field coordinator. I think the most effective work was done with

the local volunteers from the Vista or AVs. Course Eula can

certainly - you can see the results of that. But there were other

places in the mountains you know that we had a really - we had to

work with the old grass roots organization who had become a local

Vista out of that. And started a building beautiful community

center right out of the middle of nowhere in ( ) County.

And she's dead now. She passed away a couple of years ago by the

name of Nancy Cole and she had activities going on there from the

60s right up until she died. She had garden co-op, she had sewing

co-ops going and all that kind of stuff. There was a lot of

individual success stories where people just dug into the

communities and really done something that lasted. That community

center is still there and those programs still go. There're still

going even though things is ?? same as Deeper Creek Clinic. So the

most effective work - and then you had a few hotheads, of course,

the radicals. Dad(?) never met a radical until he got to east

Kentucky. And they didn't last very long. They really didn't. They

got weeded out real fast and they left just about as big as they

come but they still had all these good local people who at that

time even though that's how I met Eula was through the APs - all

of us all of a sudden was mobile enough that we could do things

with one another. Wasn't just one individual doing something here,

you know, we had a network of people throughout the mountains.

There was me and Eula, there was Nancy Cole and all kinds of

people all of a sudden running round the mountains and doing

things as a group - not as an individual but as a group of people.

And this had a big impact on communities, all these various

communities that work on projects within another community of help

support a strike or a boycott from other parts of the mountains.

This was carry-over til we had such things as Vista and AV. So you

know positive stuff come out of that. And then we'd go into

another state. We got down into Tennessee. We were in West

Virginia, we were in Virginia. And so it was really just starting

a network of people, local community people and some of the other

ones stayed on, you know. The good ones stayed around and they

were doing things too. So all of a sudden you had plenty of people

doing things in the county or region. You had probably 50 people

working together to see that something was done, you know. And I

think that was one of the good things that come out of the AVs was

getting all these people communicating with one another. I don't

know how many times I've been in the picket line with Eula Hall

and a boycott, picketing in Washington, DC, the justice

department, the agriculture. And all of a sudden you had people

like that working together. It was really a good scene. And we

still do to a certain extent. So there have been some really

lasting things come out of all this, real positive things - people

getting together an working together and dealing with a situation,

dealing with these issues.

Interviewer - Did you meet as a group of Appalachian volunteers,

did you kind of get together to coordinate your activities?

Buck - Yeah we did. We have regular meetings. The meetings that

was really the most effective was the ones they didn't want us to

have. The directors of the program. Me and Eula and a bunch of us

would get together to talk about going to Brookside for a picket

line or going up on a strip job, stopping a bull dozer from

pushing somebodys house down. That was one of the really good

meetings things were of. Course we had our organizational meetings

too, but this is where people were really starting to sit down and

talk with one another as a group, local people, you know, and

hell, I was up one time on insubordination with the AVs. They

tried to get rid of me.

Interviewer - Who was running the AVs?

Buck - ( ). He's the head of the West Virginia legal

service program now.

Interviewer - Is he from around here?

Buck - He's originally from North Carolina. He's from the

Appalachians around here. He's a good guy. I think he got in over

his head and didn't know how the shit to deal with it, too. But I

was brought up on insubordination. I think Eula may have been too.

Nancy Cole was, All at one time. They were going to get rid of

every one of us at one time.

Interviewer - What had you done?

Buck- There was this environmental group. I always referred to 'em

- everybody called them anti-strip mining group and all that - The

Appalachian group to save the people. Well they got pretty mod(?)

sort of got dominated by school teachers and others. Other liberal

do-gooders who didn't want to do anything but go down and talk to

the local politicians and go Franfurt and have this big lobbying

effort to do - get regulations and stuff like that. And what we

had done in the meantime, we'd organized another environmental

group called Mountain Top Gun Club. Environmental group? That name

scares the hell out of people, but that's exactly what it was. And

what these people were doing, they were going to these landowners

as a group, as a conservation group, and a sportsman group and

they were leasing land from landowners at a $1 a year to build

shooting ranges on. The whole idea behind that was - it was very,

very clear - that the reason we was doing that was, we wanted that

coal operator - when he comes there he could no longer deal with

that individual, he had to deal with the Mountain Top Gun Club.

And that's all it was. Just not leave the individual out there to

have his land - stripped by coal operator which they could do.

They could still do it. But they'd whole lot rather deal with that

individual than a neighborhood, the Mountain Top Gun Club. And it

was a conservation group. This scared the hell out of ( ).

And we did have people go up on these strip mines and shooting on

the weekends, you know, just let the coal operators know that they

were there. If you want to come out and talk to us, come on. We'll

willing to talk if they'd come. But anyway that scared Bill. When

they found out that we were involved in that, he thought it was

insubordination. He had to get rid of us, but what happened was we

caught wind of it before we went to this big meeting, and we got

our troops in order. They thought we didn't know nothing about it.

Just before that they turned it over to Dave Lawes, up at the

University somewhere. So we got wind of this and we got our troops

in order. Then we got to this big meeting and they brought the

charges up. We almost fired the director. They were going to set

up a committee of me and Eula and somebody else to run the whole

organization. (laughter) It backfired on 'em, they didn't get rid

of us. (laughter) And then some of us had pistols. We carried

pistols to the meeting on the side as members of the Mountain Top

Gun Club too.

Interviewer - It seems like a lot of times you were fighting the

people who were kind of setting up the organizations...

Buck - Yeah, you do its a struggle. You just have to stay one step

ahead of us, you know. So I did that for 20 some years, you know.

I was on the road so long in 1982 or 83, I decided I can't do this

no more. I got to be in one place. I got to be a little more

stable than what I am. In 1982 or 83 I just sort of hung it up for

a while, you know.

(end of side 2)

Interviewer - ...real tensions that everyone faces is that a lot

of these efforts that reach the federal level...when the

community action starts working the people start actually pushing

beyond these channels and it sets up the tension within the entity

itself.

Buck - It does, it does. We did have to be very true with the

Appalachian volunteers. With these organizations, you know, I had

to make a living an I've done just about everything because a lot

of people were not paid. I've dug graves. I 've had to dig graves

and I'm a trained legal assistant, I've worked as a paralegal.

I've had to do all kinds of other things, you know just to get by.

Its not been easy doing this. Its not easy at all. You finally get

to the point where you do burn out, and like I say in '83 I was

ready to quit. And I did. I'd never seen none of my kids really

grow up. My daughters was about to get married and I hadn't met

the husband of until about two weeks before they were even

married. So its pretty sad you know that this happens. So I want

some family life too. I hadn't had a whole lot of it even though I

had been married all those years, still married to the same woman.

And I wanted to look for something I could still be in the

community, have connections with the old friends and make new ones

also. I was working for a gas company as a pipeline inspector

until I come here. Thats what I was doing. I felt relieved in

doing that, you know. It was so different and I was so relaxed. It

wasn't easy work, it wasn't hard work. It was the easiest thing

I've ever done. But then I started doing - Anne Johnson who had

come into the area to do Harlan(?) county USA. She helped on that.

She just happened to stay in the area after that and then she come

to work here a couple of years, I think. And she decided to do

this whole series of videos on the war on poverty in eastern

Kentucky. She approached me with the idea of helping do that, that

series of videos. At first I didn't, I really didn't want to do

it. In fact she made several trips before I said OK. I'll do it on

a part-time basis. I'll do it on a contract basis. You pay me so

much per day when I work on it. I didn't really want to work full-

time and get back in the community. And then I got to working at

that. I got interested in doing radio and then all of a sudden it

dawned on me, well hell, this is where its at. I can actually

drive to work every morning and drive home every night. This is

what I want to do. So that's where I got interested in the radio

stuff and trying to figure out how to keep in contact with the old

organizations and the people I've been involved with all these

years, but to meet new people and thats whats happening with the

radio stuff. And that's why I'm here. That's the only reason why

I'm here. Because of that. It still gives me contact with the

community and the region, and I can sit there and talk into five

states. Thats a better job than getting in the car and driving

from here to West Virginia. So its worked out real well for me.

And I'm still very much involved in those communtiies and

organizations too. Its not that I just quit doing it. I'm in a

position now where we can get more information out to these

groups, they feed information to me. I feed information to them.

I've got people all over the mountains calling in news stories to

me. I can have people come and talk here in the studio. Or I can

go out into that community and have community forums. And I can do

all that stuff here. In a much more relaxed atmosphere. Its not

gotten any easier in terms of the hours you put into it. You still

put a lot of hours into it, but its very soul satisfying, so to

speak. I'm home and I've been here 7 years. I feel like I'm a

little more stable. I'm around my family and its been really good

for me, to be in radio, been really good. I really took a

advantage of it too and I'm going to continue to do that also. And

then it was a very pleasant experience working with Anne and the

video series. That was a very pleasant experience because it -

what we really done in that, what made me get excited about it

when I got to thinking, it was really just the history of what

I've done also. The whole history of what I've done. So that's

been very pleasing also. The videos have done quite well, you know

like the srtip mine thing. Several award winning videos come out

of that series and that's really good, you know. So that's been

very pleasing also. That's hard work now, I've got to tell you

about video, theres nothing easy about it. A lot of drudgery in

it, isn't it? (laughter) And that's when the hard work begins

after all this is done.

Interviewer - That's right.

Buck - So anything else you all would like to ask me? We've kind

of skipped -

Interviewer - Yeah. Alright. We'll go back a little bit to - I'm

interested in impact the Vistas program and what kinds of young

people came in to work on that - or not so young people, how they

viewed their jobs, how the communities saw them, what kind of

impact that had.

Buck - Well, if you look at it overall it didn't have a lot. The

whole Vista program over it all. But if you picked out certain

areas in the mountains where decent people come in to really do

something and not just be here to raise a little ruckus and leave

the next day. And some of them people stayed. They are still here

today. If you going into the areas where they really got in the

community and was accepted they had a big impact. Especially

around education and education program. They were the very ones

that come in, the ones that come in was willing to do, start the

daycare programs and stay with that. Started nutrition programs in

the school and stayed with it. I think they had a big impact. In

terms of politics that they brought into the area, I think what

they really thought was that coming into the area and didn't know

shit about nothing. You get in eastern Kentucky you'd better be a

pretty damn smart politician. Because these people got it, that's

what they cut their teeth on, politics here in eastern Kentucky.

And you're not going to put nothing over on them. And they were,

you know, course you had people come in who had Marxist here. they

didn't last six months. They were gone. You had some people who

were socialists and there's a lot of people here that had Marxist

and socialist tendencies. They still do. But they don't need these

people down here trying to tell 'em about Marx or Engels or all

that stuff. They know about that stuff. They may not know who

these people are but they practiced this for years. There was no

stronger socialist movement anywheres during the New Deal than

there was right here in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and

those places. Look at TVA. That wasn't Republicans that built that

I can assure you. That was probably the biggest concentration of

socialist and Marxists anywhere in the United States during that

period when that thing was being conceived and built. So we know

all about that stuff. We may not practice it the way they wanted

to see it, take up arms and go out and take over a court house and

all that kind of stuff. But we know about that stuff. Well they

got paid a little more than we did when they got here but they

didn't last long. Most people didn't last long. When they got in

here they started talking about doctrine and stuff like that we

didn't want to hear that because we had practiced it. We knew what

it was, you know. They were talking about theory, well it wasn't

theory to us. So they didn't last too long. But when people come

in and then many had a skill or made an effort. People saw that

they were there not just to make a name for themselves, and I

think they were very successful. But overall - I'm talking about

particular communities and regions - overall I think it was a big

failure for the mountains. The local people that got involved in

that whole thing, a whole spectrum of people ( ) down in Pike

County, Eula in ( Floyd? ) County, Nancy in Cole and those

kind of people who later on become these community Vistas it was

quite successful. I can't speak for the United States as a whole,

I don't know. I can talk about this region only. I know I didn't

keep people around me - if they got screwed up, we just kicked

'em out. We'd just send 'em somewhere else if we don't want 'em.

In fact, when I become the field coordinator for the Appalachian

volunteers, we had an office then, right beside of Harry ( ) here in ( ) and just down the street the first thing I done was got rid of all the Vistas. There wasn't nobody left but me. Put a lock on the door,

called Milton Nogle told him what had happened. He said I couldn't

do that. I said, I've already done it. (laughter) He got out and

got me all local Vistas. I just got rid of the whole bunch. I just

shipped 'em all out.

Interviewer - So you had the money, you could hire other help?

Buck - They had the money. I didn't have it. They had it. Milton,

he had that money. We put it all into local Vista activities, is

what we did. And out of that come, you know, you got the big

community center up on Parker(?), is still going strong. It was in

the 60s, you know. They got all kinds of stuff going on up there.

And that was all started by local Vistas. These other guys were

just lollygagging around doing nothing. So we got rid of 'em.

That's what you do.

Interviewer - I'm impressed by the connections you had with a lot

of different organizations that had been involved in these issues.

I noticed here that you worked for the Total Action -

Buck - In the Shenandoah Valley, right.

Interviewer - ...the Roanoke(?) the workers SCLC or Appalachian

volunteers? You kind of in your experience you've seen more of

these different kinds of organizingations. What was the Roanoke

(?)?

Buck - It was just exactly what it said. Total Action Against

Poverty. And that's exactly what they were doing. They were

getting people involved in what to do. It was appropriately named.

I'd taken a vacation and went up to a little town in northern

Indiana, way up in the northern end of that thing. Called Pleasant

Lake. And I had this real pretty little apartment right

overlooking the lake. I was going to rest for a couple of months.

And one day somebody knocked on my door and opened the door and it

was a guy in a goatee and a black suit. He'd flown all the way

from Roanoke, Virginia and to show you what he knowed, I lived

near Fort Wayne is where I was and he flew into South Bend which

is totally on the other side of the state trying to find me. When

he got to Indiana, he had to travel all the way across the state

to find where I was at. And he said I'm Jim Jones and I'm a former

priest of the Cook County jail. I have this program down in the

Shenandoah Valley, I work for a place called Total Action Against

Poverty and I need some organizers to come and work for me. You've

been recommended. I don't know where he got my name or anything

like that. Well I was getting ready to come back to Kentucky

anyway. I'd had about all of Indiana I could take. If you've ever

been there, you know what I mean. (laughter) There's just so many

horseshoes you can pitch. And so many pony pulls you can go to.

(laughter) I'd had about all of Indiana I wanted anyway. I got to

thinking, well bullshit, this is the way to get back to Kentucky

and won't cost me a damn dime. (laughter) So I said OK, I'll come

to Roanoke if you'll pay my way. He said I'll buy you a plane

ticket. I said, I ain't going to fly. I want to drop my family off

at home in Kentucky. So I can't fly from Fort Wayne to Roanoke and

drop them out of the air. Said, no I ain't going to do it that

way. What happened was I picked up a newspaper and run across an

old '53 Plymouth, one owner, '53 Plymouth, this old woman wanted

to sell over in another little township there. And she only wanted

$150 bucks for it. I went over and looked at this thing, mint

condition. I wanted that damn car is what I wanted. And I said I

tell you what I will do. If you will give me the price of my

ticket, round trip, Roanoke to Fort Wayne, I'll drive down there.

What I was going to drive was that Plymouth. (laughter) He said,

I'll do it. So he sent me the price of a round trip ticket from

Fort Wayne to Roanoke and I bought that '53 Plymouth and drove to

Roanoke after I dropped my family off at home. I went down there -

God, they was spread out all over the damn block I think it

probably caught fire and burnt the whole town down. They were

like, 15 components there. I bet there was over 200 secretaries,

he had to go through 15 secretaries to get to the director,

whoever he was. I didn't meet him I don't know. Anyway, Jim Jones,

said we need some white organizers to work out with these other

Klansmen down there in the Shenandoah Valley. So I'd been there a

few days and an old buddy of mine showed up from over in

Williamsburg over in Bell County. What are you doing - he showed

up in a big Charger, big wheels on it, you know. He said I come

down here to be an organizer for this program. He said, What are

you? I said, That's what I'm doing here too, Albert. So theres one

of my old buddies down there with me, you know. Anyway, I was

hired to be the senior neighborhood organizer of this big camp

program which covered four counties, spread out all over the Blue

Ridge mountains. Impossible job. And they were going to send all

these Vistas to work with me. I was to train these Vistas. And so

we got started. And we put together a lot of organizations out in

the counties, at that time I think the big issue was welfare

rights, so we put in all these welfare - we started all these

welfare rights organizations in the surrounding counties there,

Bottletop, Rock Bridge, Roanoke and there's another one, I forget,

I can't remember, all the counties was so big. But the biggest

part of the activity was taking part in the black community in

Roanoke which everybody was just ignoring. Even the CAP program,

but there was nothing being done with this black community. So I

moved down in there, near an old house. So I went down in that

black community and got me a house, got familiar with the

neighborhood and got familiar with the people. And these people

wanted to do something. They were getting screwed over by the

welfare system and were getting screwed over by the CAP agency.

They were getting screwed by everybody. They were paying them no

attention. So I ended up working with them, and we started the all

black welfare rights organization right there in Roanoke, right in

the town itself, and worked it around to where we got these black

and whites organized together, the whites out in the county and

the blacks in the inner city. This thing didn't go well at all

with Mr. Jones, I want to tell you it didn't go well at all. Well,

we had 17 components and 17 preachers. Honest to God. Every

component there was run by a preacher. Episcopalians, southern

Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, the director was a Catholic.

I have nothing against these religions but everything there was

run by a preacher. I mean this is all white Shenadoah Valley To

hell with the black population, you know. So these blacks and

whites got to mixing with each other in this organization. It

scared the hell out of the local Klan who were also worked there,

you know, right in the organization. And they started putting the

screws to Jones who was my immediate supervisor. And during this

time the blacks of this organization or somebody firebombed the

building. (laughter) the buses. They had firebombed the building.

Whether it was this group or not, I don't know. But anyway, he

thought it was. So he called me in his office one day, and looked

me right in the eye. He said, from now on you're going to work

only with the people that spit in the eyes of a black man or a

welfare recipient. That was my instruction that I got from my

immediate supervisor. And I told him to kiss my ass. (laughter)

And I left. (laughter) And I went to Highlander after that. So

that was my experience in the Shenandoah Valley. It was good

because we did get the blacks and whites there working together

and who firebombed that building I don't know, I don't think it

was that welfare rights group organization. I don't think they

would have got into something like that. but anyway, Jim Jones

suspected it was, but I don't think it really was. Because they

really tried to work with the program, but anyway he thought it

was. He thought that. I was responsible for organizing 'em so he

would give me my instructions what I could do from then on. ( ) after that. I stayed there about eight months before I got the screws put to me there. That's just the way you have to live if you follow that kind of

work. Theres some good places and bad ones.

Interviewer - What about the Miners for Democracy and the whole

effort -

Buck - That was more in West Virginia. My involvement in that was

very little because, like I say, it was in West Virginia. But we

did get the black lung organization here involved with them. I had

very little dealings with that whole movement there in West

Virginia. ( ) Miller is a personal friend. And we did

have chapters and a black lung organization organized here that

worked with that group, but that was primarily a West Virginia

thing. And Eula was involved in some of that also. I don't know to

what extent. She was probably no more than I was or less, I don't

have any idea. But that was the extent of my involvement in that

Miners for Democracy thing.

Interviewer - So here you are more focused on black lung.

Buck - Right. We didn't have anything here. We didn't have no

union. There was no union here by then at all. But we did have

these old retired miners organizing these various black lung

groups. And they did support that movement and ( ) Miller.

That was the extent of that. I'm very much aware of it. I knew

what was happening. But I did not have that much involvement in

that movement.

Interviewer - But in the organizing drive say in Brookside ( )

would you have been more involved in that?

Buck - We were more involved in supporting them with the black

lung people, the welfare rights people supported that. And that

was people that had already been organized. We started a big

organize drive around that. It was people who were already

organized who would go and support that. 'Course there are always

new people, you can always pick up new people sometime with

something new like that's going on. Whereas most of the people had

already been organized into welfare rights or black lung of

something another like that. Even some of the younger people.

Interviewer - The Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization,

did you help start that.

Buck - Yeah. Me and Eula worked with that, and that's where I got

my organizing experience when I went down into Virginia working

with welfare right recipients.

Interviewer - What was that like? What was the welfare rights

organization like?

Buck - I think it was one of the best organizations ever was in

the mountains. Reason I say that is, it was the only time - here

you already had these old coal miners organized into the black

lung association and it was miners, that's what it was. Old

retired miners, trying to get a bill passed and trying to get some

benefits for their illness. and then all of a sudden you get these

welfare rights people organized which was primarily in a lot of

cases, mothers. The people who stayed home and took care of their

children. Course there was men in there too. They was mostly

dominated by women which I think was really good. And then all of

a sudden they figured why don't we join forces with the black lung

organization. So you had ( ) and the black lung organization

working together as a group. they just about covered the whole

spectrum of people - welfare, mothers, families and before that

there was no way somebody worked for the mines was going to work

for ( ) to be honest about it man or woman. For the first

time, these two groups come together as a unit, as a lobbying unit

and I think after that happened it become much more effective.

That's when the law started getting passed. That's when free

textbooks were brought into the schools. That's when free lunches

was brought into the schools or reduced prices. All that started

happening after these two groups combined. Got together which was

very positive and then when the black lung law was passed in '69

was just as much an effort of the welfare rights people, just as

much a victory for them as it was those miners because they was

working on the buses going talking to the congressmen and the

senators and things along with these. And I think that made a big

impression on congress and Washington at that time. Hey, we'd

better do something or these people have really got their shit

together. We better pass some damn mine health and safety and get

these people off our backs. I thought it was a very effective

thing. I don't know whether it was planned like that or it just

happened. I think it just gradually happened. Said hell, we've got

a lot in common. You know, we're all out to get a better shake out

of this deal. You know it really is how that fused together and

become so effective it really is. Most moving thing I've ever

seen. And the black lung bill come out of that plus all the

reforms to welfare. They come out of that also. but that was the

biggest economic boost that Eastern Kentucky has ever had. That is

the mainstay of the economy right now in eastern Kentucky. If you

took all the people in eastern Kentucky, took all the benefits

away from these miners, there wouldn't be a Wal Mart in eastern

Kentucky. There wouldn't be an A and P in eastern Kentucky, there

wouldn't be a Kroger. If you took that one program away from these

coal miners. They're the people who not only draw those black lung

benefits, they also draw UMWA pensions and they also draw their

social security benefits. They're better off now economically than

they've ever been in their life. They're the people who buy the

big items. They're the people who buy the big trucks. They're the

people who buy the fancy shotguns from the sporting goods store.

And they're the ones got the money to spend at the local Kroger.

It ain't these guys working in the mines. They just barely getting

by. So if you took those out of eastern Kentucky you wouldn't see

a shopping mall between here and Raleigh. So I think its been the

biggest economic shot that eastern Kentucky ever had was that

bill. Its for millions of dollars in this economy. That's what

this economy is based on. Its a welfare state. If you look at this

section ( ?? ) County has got 45% unemployment. 45%!! These

people don't have nothing. They're existing on food stamps.

Interviewer - What do you think of the prospects for - talk about

where you think things are now and where they need to go in terms

of these problems.

Buck - Well. Where they are now, course you only got a glimpse of

that area, driving up from Lexington is awfully pretty on the

parkway, so you may have seen the good and the bad. But if you

really look at the - fly over it sometime in an airplane. Strip

mining what we preached ever since we started has destroyed the

economic base of the region, of this particular region I'm living

in. Not only destroyed the economic base you got to hold it

responsible for the declining deep mine industry. Its cheaper to

strip it than it is to deep mine it. So not only did you destroy

the environment, you also destroyed that whole economic base.

Instead of maybe forty years of working in coal in this part of

the country you may have had a hundred year or a hundred and fifty

years of deep mining. Deep mining has its problems, theres no

doubt about that but it does employ more people. Other little

businesses sort of flourish, you know like the lumber companies

and all the small business, they always done business with the

deep miners. Take strip mining, they don't buy 2 by 4s from

lumber, ?? cloth and all this stuff. These are local businesses

and need it. So the economic base, strip mining has destroyed the

economic base of the region. I'm speaking about the region that me

and Eula live in. They destroyed any potential that we may have

had in terms of tourism. Nobody's going to drive to New York and

see a strip mine. They're by here one time, they never come back.

And in terms of other factories coming in, strip mining has

destroyed the water. We don't have drinking water in eastern

Kentucky now. I got a well a hundred and twenty foot deep. I can't

drink the water out of it. I have another one 70 foot deep. I

can't even use it. Its full of oil. Just driving over the roads

here looking at the infrastructure of these cities, we don't even

have adequate sewage for our cities, you certainly can't entice

industry in if you don't have sewage and can't take care of a town

population of 1200. What's the future? I don't know. The

education system's bout one of the worst you'll ever find. That

new school reform act may or may not make a difference. I don't

know. Hopefully it will. To be honest about it , the only thing I

would see right now in the immediate, next ten years would be some

kind of a massive program which can only be financed by the

government 'cause I know private industry is not going to do it,

is the reforestation and the cleaning up of this environment here

in eastern Kentucky, I think, create thousands of jobs. I mean

really jobs to put the trees back on the mountains, to clean up

the streams, to build sewer and sewage treatment plants, put in

water. I think immediately you could solve the unemployment

problem in eastern Kentucky at least with just a program like

that. And not only that, look at the people it would give jobs -

it'd be heavy equipment operators, it'd be carpenters, it'd be

pipe fitters, I mean really skilled jobs could be created. Which

would create other businesses around there. And I think in the

long run - it'd be a costly program- but I think in the long run

the cleaning up of the environment here and bringing in these

other businesses, as a visitor that would feed itself. And then

you could talk about bringing in industry. There's no way you

could seriously talk about bringing in industry into this area and

really take a good look at the landscape around you and what all

has to be done before we can get into the talking stage of going

down talking some manufacturing company into putting in a plant.

There's just too much has to be done. I don't see that being done.

I don't see the local leaders taking the initiative, saying look

let's clean these rivers and these creeks up. Lets build 'em and

lets get our water systems up to par. Plant trees back on the side

of this mountain instead of this old ugly vegetation they got. And

really do something. And then seriously talk about bringing in

industry. That's all I can see happening.

Interviewer - What about community groups- is there a chance for

doing the kind of organizing you've done over your life, to have

the pressure brought by the people who live here an unemployment

league maybe.

Buck - Yeah. I think its going to take a bigger effort than what

we've put forth in the past. I really do. I think its going to

take a lot more people to deal with it, and God knows we've got

'em because you know we've got 45% unemployed. A lot of people

ain't doing nothing. I'll bet they're getting bored. Yeah, its

going to take that. And take a bigger effort than what we've put

forth in the past. And another thing we got to do, its got to cut

across racial lines. Forget about what color people are, what sex

they are and really work together in some kind of unity. Just be

people, not while, black, female, and all that kind of stuff, you

know. I think everybody knows who they are, and just work together

as people and not have all this other rhetoric bullshit that keeps

people apart. Just be yourself, you know. Get out there and do

something. I think its what its going to take. I really do. This

thing was organized out of the OEO here. Its the second biggest

employer in the state. I'm sorry, county. The City of

Whitesburg(?) right now school system is a bigger employer than (

Apple?? ). That's how bad the coal industry is this year. We

only employ 38 people. You can see how bad off the rest of the

county is. Real bad.

Interviewer - Thanks.

Buck - No big problem. Nothing happened. You didn't ask me how

many kids I have. I got six. (laughter) Five married one at home.

Interviewer - Do they live ihn the area?

Buck - Yeah. I live within - Come and eat dinner with me. No, they

all live within about 4 or 5 miles. Its pretty neat all around. We

got one teenager at home, a 15 year old boy.

Interviewer - So you can see your grandchildren -

Buck - Got 7 of 'em.

Interviewer - Got more time to spend with them.

Buck - No, I really stay busy. I really do. I do get to see more

of 'em, but you know, never as much as you want to. Yeah, we work

14 and 16 hours a day here. But, you know, if I really go home and

see 'em for an hour I can always do that too.

Interviewer - It seems like the radio show that you're doing -

has the potential of doing some of the things we've been talking

about.

Buck - We believe that too. I believe that. I thought of this

thing about a year ago, and the first one we'd done. We have

people who underwrite us. We had this one lumber company in

Greenwood(?) Virginia which is in Dickinson County. The oldest

underwriter we had was the first underwriter we had, (like retail

station??). And all of a sudden it just dawned on me, Id love to

go to that old lumber store and do a live broadcast, just go

there, you know. And so I called over, said Sure. Anytime you

want to do it just come on over. And so we feel were going to have

four or five people show up and talk to 'em you know. Have a

little radio show and that'd be it. We went over there and there

was about 60 people showed up. With banjos, and they had fiddles

and ( ) and we just had the worst time there was between the

shelves, you know, linoleum and paint, nails. People were dancing

in those spaces and all kinds of story telling and all that shit.

I said, God damn, this is fun, let's do this again. We got to do

it a more organized manner, you know. That's great. And from that,

like I say, I'm really experimenting just to see how it can go and

- it takes quite a bit of work. It really does. And then usually

we have to take somebodys program away from them, all kinds of

little nit-picking shit, you know. But we will get more into it,

and hopefully get more and more into especially environmental

issues and the economic issues later on. But right now, we're just

kind of feeling our way through it, learning how to do it

technically and all that, just the logistics of the thing takes a

lot of work.

Interviewer - Sounds like a good forum.

Buck - Yeah. I'm real excited about it. In fact, we just had one

two weeks ago and I got another one scheduled for the 20th of next

month. I'm going to take a little time off in the middle of the

month and then coming back. I hope to do one around this thing

over in Harlan County around where they dumped all this toxic

waste and dumped soil in the water systems when that company moved

out over there. Hope to do one there in November. I'm working on

that right now. That issue, you know theres a group of people

fighting over the toxic waste dump over here, and all that kind of

stuff. And we got to do the senior citizens stuff too, I think.

That's important too. They got problems.