Appalachian Figures Appalachia has long been a place where national arguments about crime, punishment, and poverty arrive wearing local faces. In the spring of 1997, one of those faces belonged to a fourteen-year-old boy from Pike County, Kentucky. His name was Jason Blake Bryant, and his life became tied forever to one of the most haunting crimes in modern East Tennessee history: the Lillelid murders near Greeneville.

Appalachian Figures In January 2025 news spread through Nashville and across classic country circles that Melba Joyce Montgomery had died at eighty six after a long struggle with dementia.

Appalachian Figures When people in Appalachian churches open an old shaped note songbook, the name B. C. Unseld often appears in small capitals above a tune title. For most singers he is only a set of initials.

When we say "AI-powered search engine," we're conflating at least four different things—and your concerns about one may not apply to another.

The Digital Commons EDIC was launched on 11 December 2025 in The Hague.

Closing reflections on the series and the world that birthed it

Appalachian Figures On an old Knoxville News Sentinel video, an eighty five year old man in overalls sits in his living room with a fiddle tucked under his chin. His bow arm moves with an easy swing that suggests a lifetime of tunes. The caption simply calls him an Appalachian fiddler, but old time musicians around the world know the name behind that bow: Clyde Davenport of Wayne County, Kentucky.

Appalachian Figures On a cold Saturday night in February 2014, worshipers gathered on a narrow Middlesboro side street and filed into a low white church that most people in town knew by sight even if they never stepped inside. The sign over the door read Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name.

William Manon Cornett’s name surfaces in Kentucky history at curious moments.

Appalachian Figures When the Jackson Times printed the obituary of Wilson Edgar “Willie Bill” Terry in February 1968, it introduced him as the oldest native-born Kentucky veteran and as a familiar figure to readers in Breathitt and Owsley counties.

Appalachian Figures On a winter night in Dayton, Ohio, the voice coming through the barroom speakers still sounded like Perry County. Harley “Red” Allen might have been standing under neon instead of a coal camp sky, but the high, fierce edge in his singing carried traces of the hollow where he grew up, Pigeon Roost in eastern Kentucky.