Appalachian Figures Why Baker matters Edwin T. Baker served eight years in the California Assembly, then two years on the Los Angeles City Council, during a moment when Southern California was growing fast and demanding a bigger voice in state government.

Appalachian History A round valley with a very old story Stand at the Pinnacle Overlook above Cumberland Gap and look down on the town of Middlesboro. The basin that cradles the streets is strikingly circular. For decades geologists mapped and argued about that circle’s origin.

Appalachian History What happened at Pound Gap On the night of November 29–30, 1927, a white mob seized Leonard Woods, a Black coal miner from Jenkins, Kentucky, from the Letcher County jail in Whitesburg. They drove him to Pound Gap on the Kentucky–Virginia line and killed him there.

Appalachian Figures Introduction Robert Burns “Bob” Conley was born in Mousie, Knott County, on February 1, 1934. He reached the majors with the Philadelphia Phillies in September 1958, starting two games in five days. His brief stay still matters here because it shows how a mountain kid from a small bend of Troublesome Creek climbed all the way to a big league mound.

Appalachian Figures Leila Feltner Begley’s time as Kentucky’s Secretary of State was short, but the paper trail she left behind is unusually clear. Appointed by Governor Louie B. Nunn after the death of her husband and predecessor, Elmer Begley, she served through the fall of 1970 into early 1971.

Appalachian Figures Few Leslie Countians have written a song that climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard country chart. One did it from Hyden. Betty Jean Robinson, born Betty Jean Rhodes on June 17, 1933, grew up in the hills around Hyden and later carried that upbringing to Nashville as a working songwriter and, in time, a prolific gospel artist.

Appalachian Figures Lynch, Kentucky, as a beginning Lynch was carved out of Harlan County by the U.S. Coal & Coke Company, a U.S. Steel subsidiary, beginning in 1917. It grew into a model company town with miles of planned streets, graded house types, a hospital, schools, churches, and one of the most advanced coal loading plants of its era.

Appalachian Figures Born in Knott County in 1942, Elijah Haydn “Lige” Clarke grew up between Cave Branch and Hindman. He carried Appalachian sensibilities into national activism. Historian Jonathan Coleman argues that Clarke’s mountain upbringing shaped a politics that rejected respectability and favored personal freedom and experiment. Coleman’s peer-reviewed study is the deepest scholarly treatment of Clarke’s life and Kentucky roots.

Appalachian Figures Born in Hyden in Leslie County in 1934, Jim Morgan became a hardwood star at Dayton’s Stivers High School and the University of Louisville, then chose the classroom over the NBA before crafting a second, celebrated career as a thoroughbred trainer in Ohio. He died in Dayton in 2019 at age 85. From Hyden to Dayton Morgan’s family left the Hyden area for Dayton in the early 1940s.

Appalachian Figures On paper Charles Counts was a potter. In practice he was a builder of communities who linked clay, quilts, and economic hope from the Kentucky coalfields to the hills of north Georgia and classrooms in northern Nigeria.

Appalachian Figures Leland Eugene “Hammer” Byrd began life in the coal camp of Lynch, Kentucky, and grew up in Matoaka, West Virginia. He reached Morgantown in 1944 as a left-handed forward, became one of West Virginia University’s earliest hardwood stars, and later helped steer college athletics through a transformative era as an athletic director and conference leader.