By Mike Templeton

The Urban Appalachian Community Coalition in partnership with the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library (CHPL) will be hosting the opening reception on Sunday, October 19, 2-4 pm for UACC’s Kith and Kin: Appalachians and the Making of Cincinnati, a multi-media exhibit with photographs, audio, video and printed words documenting the lives of urban Appalachian families in greater Cincinnati. The opening reception will be held in the exhibit space at the Catherine C. and Thomas E. Huenefeld Story Center,  800 Vine Street, Cincinnati. Everyone is invited to come celebrate this singular feature of the history of urban Appalachians and an essential component of Cincinnati cultural history.  A short presentation at 2:30 pm will include a poem by our Cincinnati Poet Laureate, Richard Hague and a song by Jennifer Brierly (both of whom are featured in the exhibit) and brief comments by those who helped make the exhibit possible, including Malcolm J. Wilson and Don Corathers, artists for Kith and Kin’s traveling exhibit, Perceptions of Home. Then music by Vine Street Jam (Sherry Cook Stanforth, Dale Farmer, and Jeannie Thieken Creamer) can be enjoyed by all library patrons on CHPL’s “Social Stairs,” a unique performance space between the downtown library’s first and second floors.

This event is in many ways the crowning moment for a project that spans nearly thirty years (across two millennia!)  It has its origins in the Perceptions of Home traveling exhibit which first came into existence in 1996. Photographs by Malcolm J. Wilson and interviews conducted by Don Corathers tell the stories of twenty-two families and individuals who, through choice or circumstances, made greater Cincinnati their home. The people profiled in Perceptions of Home include artists, musicians, educators, business people, blue collar workers, and students. This is about the most precise cross-section of individuals who made up the mid-twentieth century Appalachian migration to Cincinnati as one could likely find. Their stories and images reveal the very real lives of Appalachian people who had to find their way in an unfamiliar place and in a world that was not always friendly.

Appalachian photographer Malcolm J. Wilson still makes photographs that tell the stories of Appalachian people. With this event coming up, I took a few minutes to ask Malcolm what he thought of it all. Malcolm Wilson’s thoughts are particularly instructive because he is both one of the people behind the exhibit, and he is one who lived the life of a displaced Appalachian in Cincinnati. He told me, “When I came to Cincinnati in 1982, I came to go to college. I ended up staying for 18 years. I did not realize how homesick I would get. For the first few years, we went home every weekend.” Malcolm knows that feeling of being cut off from home but having a specific need to be in the city that creates an internal tension that can be all-consuming. After all these years, though, he looks back on his time here with fondness, as “meeting people from the Urban Appalachian Council and others involved was like meeting an extended family.” His feelings about Perceptions of Home are so dear that he has even decorated part of his house in the manner of its rough wood and corrugated metal exhibit panels. Tom Allison, creator of those panels, will also be at the opening.

UACC was not content to tell only the story of the twentieth century migration from the mountains to the city. Kith and Kin also shows how, over the years, Appalachian migrants transformed themselves into Cincinnatians while transforming Cincinnati into a city that is defined in some measure by its Appalachian heritage. UACC’s Kith and Kin Story Gathering Project includes over 100 video and audio recordings of short interviews conducted with greater Cincinnati residents from 2021 to present, and captures who we are as urban Appalachians today. This ongoing oral history project forms one of the pillars of Kith & Kin. Project director Pauletta Hansel had this to say: “I can’t wait for folks to see the Perceptions of Home exhibit in the Library’s Story Center. It is nestled beneath a mural of the Cincinnati Panorama of 1848, and it looks as if the Story Center was made for it! Which, in a way, it was, as that part of CHPL’s renovated space is all about preserving and celebrating the many stories of our region. It seems altogether fitting that our intentionally rustic exhibit from the late twentieth century is accompanied by interactive digital display boards featuring our 21st century Story Project—just like the library itself offers all the best of both paper and digital literature and information.” Hansel truly sums things up by reminding us that the library itself seems to meld with the presence of urban Appalachia in ways that mirror how the city itself has become defined by the presence of urban Appalachians.

Countless people have been involved in making this project and bringing into the world via the physical and digital spaces provided by our magnificent public library. CHPL librarians Clarity Amrein and Chris Smith have been of particular assistance, with many of their colleagues working behind the scenes (as librarians are wont to to!) Library staff have chosen Appalachian books from their circulation collection to display in the Story Center alongside the Kith and Kin exhibit, and one floor up, Cincinnati Room librarians have created a pop-up exhibit of Appalachian material from CHPL’s Special Collections, including vintage cookbooks, sheet music, photographs from the Cincinnati Enquirer repository, and other items seldom seen by the public.

Kith and Kin: Appalachians and the Making of Cincinnati will remains open and accessible at the Main public library through December (the Cincinnati Room exhibit is October only,) but we want to remind you that UACC’s  Kith and Kin website is a permanent feature on the CHPL Digital Library. It has taken its place as part of the permanent fabric of the library and our collective cultural memory in the central place for intellectual, creative, and cultural life in greater Cincinnati, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. That said, Pauletta Hansel reminds us: “While folks can visit all of this anytime this fall, we really hope you’ll come to the Opening on October 19 and spend some time with us. It is sure to be a great gathering of friends from throughout the Urban Appalachian Council’s history and UACC’s present. Plus music, food, poetry and stories—what more can you ask for!” The opening reception and the long-term presence of Kith & Kin solidify for many of us the extent to which urban Appalachian people have come to define greater Cincinnati as much as we have come to be defined by the city. The opening reception will be on Sunday, October 19, 2-4 pm for the digital collection of UACC’s Kith and Kin: Appalachians and the Making of Cincinnati at the Catherine C. and Thomas E. Huenefeld Story Center,  800 Vine Street, Cincinnati. We look forward to seeing people there.

Michael Templeton is a writer, and independent scholar. He is the author of The Chief of Birds: A Memoir published with Erratum Press and Impossible to Believe, published by Iff Books. He is also the author of Collected Apoems, forthcoming from LJMcD Communications, The Ohiomachine, forthcoming from Dead Letter Office/Punctum Books, and Nod: On Digital Exile forthcoming with Erratum Press, the Academic Division. Check out his profile in UACC’s Cultural Directory. He has published numerous articles and essays on contemporary culture and works of creative non-fiction as well as experimental works and poetry. He lives in West Milton, Ohio with his wife who is an artist.