By Mike Templeton
The Urban Appalachian Community Coalition is the home of the Frank Foster Memorial Library, one of the premier resources of the study of the history of urban Appalachian life and culture. UACC also has our own Research Committee which continues to reveal and illuminate the vast history of urban Appalachia. And so, it is with no small measure of excitement that we stumble upon something that forms a crucial piece of urban Appalachian history such as George Stoney’s short film The Newcomers. This film, made in 1963, gives us a window into the lives of urban Appalachian migrants of the time, and vividly shows us the lives and struggles of these people in Cincinnati. This film also shows, yet again, the positively central role Cincinnati plays in the emergence of what we now understand as urban Appalachians.
The Newcomers is a rather crucial piece of the grand mosaic of urban Appalachian history and culture. When George Stoney made the film in 1963, he reportedly said to himself that he held some common middle-class prejudices toward Appalachian people, and that making the film completely changed the way he viewed Appalachians. In making a short film for a church audience, an educational film that would reveal the ways Appalachian migrants lived and how they were perceived in their new urban environment, Stoney also revealed some of the most important moments in the evolution of urban Appalachian advocacy. The film includes footage of Ernie Mynatt, a founding member of what would become the Urban Appalachian Council.
Stoney’s film is a curious bit of history in itself. It was made for the United Methodist Church and was intended to be an educational film, which was Stoney’s specialty as a filmmaker. Although a dramatization, Stoney employed a real urban Appalachian family to dramatize the story lines that show us the ways Appalachian migrant families relied on each other to make their way to cities like Cincinnati and find their bearings. These bearings included, most notably, employment. The voice-over explains that changes in the southern Appalachian region, mechanization in farming, and the automizing of some aspects of coal mining made life in the region impossible for many families. They had no choice but to migrate to urban areas to find work in industry in order to survive. It is all a familiar story to us, but this particular document lends a startling newness to our history.
The film shows us footage of our own Ernie Mynatt reflecting on the conditions in his home place in Eastern Kentucky. He tells us that most folks had no real desire to leave their home, they just found the economic conditions of the southern mountains had become insupportable. Mynatt explains the migration had been going on for decades, but recent changes had left entire towns completely vacant after people migrated north to cities like Cincinnati to find work. The Newcomers also shows Ernie Mynatt working on the streets with urban Appalachian youths who found themselves facing a world of problems and difficulties they never knew before. It was Mynatt and others who stepped in on behalf of Appalachian young people, among a myriad of other social and economic issues, which laid the groundwork for the Urban Appalachian Council. This is what makes The Newcomers such an important document to urban Appalachian history. The film offers us a window into those early days when disparate individuals and families were beginning to coalesce into an identifiable people, urban Appalachians, who would be capable of speaking for themselves as a powerful and independent group, one which forms a significant part of the urban population.
George Stoney’s film, with its direct window into real urban Appalachian families from 1963, helps us to understand both the unique difficulties urban Appalachians faced and the steadfast ways they worked to overcome these challenges. Stoney’s film shows us how the migration worked as new families depended on those who had come before them. The film says that people helped out “the newcomers with what little they had with no thought about tomorrow.” It was simply a foregone conclusion among Appalachian people that the immediate needs of their kith and kin came before all other considerations. We have heard these stories again and again within our own Kith and Kin Story Gathering Project. It was precisely these kinds of strong bonds that made it possible for the newly emerging urban Appalachians to persevere and take hold in their new environment. These kinds of moments in the film work to show audiences realities rather than stereotypes, and made it difficult if not impossible to cling to bigoted ideas about Appalachians. Stoney reflected on his film and explained that “being exposed to them [Appalachian people] I felt was exposing myself to people I had always held in contempt. Getting to know them changed my attitude and I hope it also did for the middle-class audience we made the film for. I suspect those class attitudes exist today and I hope that this film can continue to help change those attitudes.” Even today, Appalachians and urban Appalachians must contend with these kinds of attitudes, and one of the primary purposes of the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition is to continue to debunk ignorant attitudes toward Appalachians.
Filmmaker George Stoney began in 1946 with the Southern Educational Film Service writing and making short documentary films. Of his many short films, nearly all are oriented toward urban educational topics. His 1953 film All My Babies, A Midwife’s On Story won numerous awards for telling the story of an African American midwife as she attends to the needs of people in an urban area. The film helped promote cooperation between midwives and the medical establishment, a legacy that continues to this day. Stoney remained dedicated to educational filmmaking right up until his death at the age of 96. His work with the Alliance for Community Media led to an award given out each year, the George Stoney Award, by the ACM for promoting civic engagement through media. Stoney’s story of urban Appalachian families in Cincinnati forms a key part of his legacy and the many parts of contemporary urban educational media.
It is definitely exciting for folks within the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition to get this rare glimpse into our history. Watching Ernie Mynatt working with young people on the streets of Over-the-Rhine and hearing him reflect on life back in Eastern Kentucky is endlessly fascinating. But the real significance of this film is much more far-reaching. We can see how people from the southern mountains struggled to adjust to their new urban world as “newcomers.” We get a glimpse into an enormous demographic change that occurred with the migration of Appalachian people into cities like Cincinnati. And it is powerfully important to take note of the central place Cincinnati played, and continues to play, in the formation of what we now fully understand as urban Appalachians. The phenomena are of national importance, but the early work in recognizing who we are and how we would stand up for ourselves is rooted in greater Cincinnati, and that is yet another reason to celebrate our urban Appalachian heritage.
George Stoney’s The Newcomers is owned by Documentary Educational Resources and can be purchased through their website: https://www.der.org/. Unfortunately, it is quite expensive, so you may prefer to watch a preview here. Perhaps someday soon we will be able to offer a screening of this historical film as part of UACC’s Frank Foster Library.
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, forthcoming from Iff Books. He is also the author of Collected Apoems, forthcoming from LJMcD Communications and the awaiting of awaiting: a novella, forthcoming from Nut Hole Publishing. 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.