The Pride of the Mountains

By Gail Simpkins

Hillbillies live in the coal camps, cotton mill and factory towns of the United States. In this area, women do not recognize or acknowledge the fact that they are hillbillies. This term is used to refer to people born and raised in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Also people from the farming communities in North Carolina and North Georgia are called hillbillies.

The term is spoken with pride by mountain people, but when an outsider uses the term in a disrespectful way, he can be sure of a fight on his hands. City people have always made fun of the way hillbillies talk and live. Hillbilly women are usually pictured as mournful creatures and seen as hopeless and helpless. They are laughed at in the comics, characters such as Mammy Yokum and Daisy Mae. For the purpose of entertainment, the once popular TV sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies" also ridiculed hillbillies for the purpose of entertainment and profit. The reality is different.

It began a long time ago. The poor way of life is tradition for the hillbilly woman. She was usually an uneducated housewife, totally dependant on her husband. Some hill women still are miners' wives who live in the dirt and grime of the coal fields. In these areas, there is almost no employment for women. Women accepted the role of wife and mother, and they carried on with their household chores and raising babies without complaints. Without enough jobs in the mountains, men were happy to go into the coal mines to make a dollar. Money, called "scrip," was printed by the company and could only be used in the company stores. The coal companies owned everything in town. Hill people were taken advantage of by these coal companies. After realizing what companies were doing, the people began to fight back. This was the beginning of the most violent labor wars in this country.

Hillbilly women didn't only take care of the babies but were strong and determined to help their men win the war against these coal companies. Their strength was seen in women like Mother Jones, an elderly gray-haired lady who urged other women to join the fight. Aunt Molly Jackson was a midwife in Eastern Kentucky who robbed a company store to feed some starving families. Granny Hager was a leader who fought to strengthen the Union by walking picket lines in rain, sleet, and snow. Widow Combs laid her body down in front of a bulldozer that had come to strip her land and spent Thanksgiving in jail.

Hill women are not the passive, helpless creatures they have been pictured as. Struggle has brought great changes to the hill country. But some things don't change. Despite the poverty and the problems, hillbilly pride is not easily destroyed. Speaking as the daughter of a coal miner, I'm proud of my heritage and don't mind being referred to as a hillbilly woman.

(English 101, Spring 1993)

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