Sunday, June 26, 2011

Typhoid

A reading of the Pike County News over a period of time will leave the reader with the impression that the major disease problem was typhoid.  Typhoid is an illness caused by a bacteria found in human waste.  The disease is spread when the bacteria enter food or drinking water and are consumed.  Today, typhoid is found almost always in countries outside the developed world and is usually treated successfully by antibiotics.  Unfortunately, antibiotics were not developed until the late 1920s.  So it was not rare to see a short article like that on March 21, 1924, which declared that Pike County was in the midst of a typhoid outbreak.  On November 24, 1924, the paper reported that a family of 12 had been reduced to three in a few weeks due to typhoid.  May 21, 1926 had this report in the Jonancy community news:

JONANCY NEWS
“Floyd Hall, the little son of Mrs. W. T. Hall, who has been suffering with hip and shoulder trouble ever since his attack of typhoid fever last October, went to Pikeville last Friday to consult a doctor and to get relief if possible.  The trouble has become quite serious.”

This statement appeared November 12, 1926:

MOTHER DIES OF TYPHOID; 4 ARE ILL
A mother and four of her children were brought to the hospital suffering from typhoid fever.  Mrs. Merlie Branham of Lookout died, and the four children are not expected to live.

Powell County Has Most Unusal Highway Tunnel

This item is from June 25, 1926.  It sounds like a Jeff Foxworthy joke: no engineer, no instruments, no problem!

POWELL COUNTY HAS MOST UNUSUAL HIGHWAY TUNNEL
“The novelty is a tunnel, 725 feet long, cut through a mountain and originally constructed for a railroad line that was abandoned.  A remarkable thing about the tunnel is that it was constructed without the aid of an engineer.  It has a slight elevation and, having been put through without the aid of instruments, it is an engineering feat without parallel in the state.”

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The Ku Klux Klan in Eastern Kentucky

The Ku Klux Klan had gradually been diminishing in influence going into the twentieth century.  Blacks were still second class citizens, at best in much of America.  But around 1915 the Klan experienced a renewal, thanks in major part to a native Kentuckian and film maker, David Wark Griffith, also known as D. W. Griffith. 

In 1915, a landmark commercial film was released.  Birth of a Nation was a black and white, silent film about three hours long which began at the start of the Civil War and ended during reconstruction.  The more interesting half, for me, was the depiction of post war activities heavily influenced by carpetbaggers. 
 
On one hand, blacks were not shown in a good light.  They were more or less shown as near-savages who posed danger to white folks.  It seemed to require the Klan to save the day each time, coming to the scene in robes and at full speed on horseback.  In scenes where only lesser-character blacks where shown, actual black people were used.  In scenes were both races were shown, blacks were played by white actors in makeup.  The makeup did not create an Al Jolsen-type caricature, but simply showed white actors with very dark skin.  

On the other hand, Griffith took shots at the perceived hypocrisy of white carpetbaggers and Union sympathizers.  In one scene a white man is shaking hands and smiling with a black man.  The black man tells the white man he has fallen in love with a white woman and wants to marry her.  The white man continues his smiling and hand shaking.  The black man then says, “It’s your daughter.”  The white man then reacts as if he’s having a myocardial infarction, similar to the way Redd Foxx often feigned a heart attack on his TV show, Sanford and Son.  

Griffith’s film caused quite a stir in America.  The movie was banned in some cities and blacks rioted.  But the positive images of the Klan launched it into a new era of respectability.  Eastern Kentucky was no exception.  This ad ran in the Pike County News in July, 1924.  It was not a unique event.

 
The July 25, 1924 edition of the Pike County News carried this article about the July 19 event:

"KU KLUX DAY BRINGS RECORD CROWD TO TOWN"
 "Saturday was Ku Klux day in Pikeville and many of our citizens had their first sight of the robed members of the order.  Seemingly all roads led to the city for people began to arrive early by all manner of vehicles, also horseback, muleback and footback, while hundreds came in on special trains from various sections of the Sandy valley. Right after noon the old town was about as crowded as the oldest inhabitant ever saw.
"At 3 p.m. a large crowd gathered at the court house to hear Dr. E. H. Lougher, a national Klan speaker, who dwelt at length on the purposes of the order.
"At night the Klansmen and Klanswomen, several hundred in number, formed a parade at the school house.  Led by several on horseback, the robed figures with folded arms marched over the principal streets.  Music on the march was furnished by Pikeville band, also Prestonsburg's famous band, much to the delight of the crowds on the streets in line of march.
"The march ended at place of beginning then the Klansmen proceeded to the top of Smith hill where a number of new members were inducted into the order.  A brilliant display of Klan fireworks was set off which was indeed beautiful and much enjoyed by our citizenship.
"The only untoward circumstance of the day was when hooded Klansmen stationed themselves at several business houses and diverted trade or patronage away.  TThis action was infortunate and has been severly condemned by leading Klansmen"

Monday, June 13, 2011

A Note on Race

A previous blog post discussed the potential subjective nature of newspapers in general and the Pike County News in particular.  That newspaper provided a consistent and probably accurate reflection of racial attitudes in eastern Kentucky in the early twentieth century.  The black population at that time was about double its current level.  Some were descendants of Kentucky slaveholders.  Others, of all origins, came in search of employment, which was plentiful. 

In reading the Pike County News, it quickly becomes evident that blacks were second class citizens, at best.  Whenever a story dealt with a black person, his or her race was always noted.  A headline of a story about a white person might say, "Man falls from train," for a black person it would say, "Negro falls from train."  The body of the story would identify a black person by saying either "John Doe, colored,..." or "John Doe, a negro...." 

The Pike County News

A significant amount of the information on this blog comes from the microfilm of newspapers from the period.  They can be rich sources of information, but today's reader must remember that a newspaper is for-profit enterprise and that there usually were at most a handful of staff generating its content.  They did not have a perceived civic duty to report the news objectively.   

Eric Burns, in his book, Infamous Scribblers, wrote of the newspapers operated by the founding fathers in the 18th century that saw “His newspaper was a business, and the news to him was the same thing that silver was to Paul Revere or glass to Henry William Stiegel – which is to say a product of his own manufacture, to be molded into whatever shape he thought would be most pleasing to his customers and thus most profitable to him.”

The local Pike County newspaper was known at one time or another as The News or The Pike County News.  Its exact beginning is not known, but only a few issues before 1925 have survived.  It was a weekly paper published in Pikeville, but carried news from throughout southeastern Kentucky.  Much of the local news was found on the front page, and consisted of civic matters, crime, deaths, and marriages.  But there was also a personals section inside that contained short statements about recent visitors to town and activities of local people who would otherwise never have their names in print.  These entries were obviously submitted by the persons involved or someone close to them, but they still said much about them.  They established their existence at a time and place and sometimes identified whom they associated with, what they did for a living, or what their interests were.  They imply that they were literate and were attached to a social structure in the community.  These are a few actual example entries:

-          Mrs. Linton Trivette was elected Vice Regent of the DAR chapter
-          Frank Trivette, Whitley Smith and others went hunting
-          Linton Trivette was a visitor to Jonancy last week
-          Arthur and Ella Trivette of Jonancy were the guests of Mr. and Mrs. M. L. Sowards Sunday

A related section of the newspaper was community news.  Here one could read information about goings-on in numerous rural areas throughout the county.  The information sometimes rose barely above the level of gossip and appeared to be provided by unnamed individuals who were the social gadflies of their communities.  These communities included, among many others, Jonancy, Vi, Greasy Creek, and Mouthcard.  

Thursday, June 9, 2011

War and Disease

The July 4, 1919 edition of the Pike County New presented a box on the front page above the fold just below the masthead, with the title, Our Heroes – Killed, Wounded, Captured.  These were Pike County soldiers serving with U.S. forces in World War I:

OUR HEROES --- KILLED, WOUNDED, CAPTURED
“Below is given a partial list of our noble boys who were killed in action, died of disease and wounded in the recent war.” 

Counts of the named soldiers by cause of death produced these totals: Died in service: 30 – 16 killed in action or died from wounds; 14 died of disease; Wounded: 83; Captured - 1

The population of Pike County in 1920 was under 50,000, so to lose 30 men in a relatively short period was a great sacrifice.  However by comparison, if the percentage of soldiers to perish was the same as that of the entire country in the Civil War, over 800 men from Pike County would have died.

The years 1916 through 1920 were troubled times for this world.  There was, of course, the ruinous World War I, which multiple sources claim was the first American war in which more soldiers died from combat than disease.  That may be true, but I believe it was due to the achieved proficiency of killing more than advancements in the field of medicine.  For example, Britain lost over 20,000 men in one day - July 1, 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.  Aircraft were first used in this war, and the damage from the bombs dropped from them could be horrific.  But something else was going on in the world that would kill more people globally than all wars combined:  the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.

Heart disease has been the biggest killer of American men and women every year since 1910, with the exception of 1918-1920 when influenza took over.  Notice above that almost half of the WWI Pike Co. soldier deaths were due to disease.  At Camp Zachary Taylor in Louisville, Ky., which provided training for soldiers from all over the country, 1500 soldiers died of the flu pandemic, which ironically was about twice the number of Kentuckians who died in combat.     

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Important Traffic Ordinance Passed by Council

In July, 1926, Pike County continued to struggle with this new experiment called the automobile.  At a meeting a resolution was passed “requiring horse drawn vehicles to follow the one-way traffic henceforth and thereby eliminate the element of danger and the discrimination that has existed in the past.”  At a previous meeting, the council passed an ordinance “requiring all cars to stop before turning into the main channel of traffic.”