Appalachian Figures In early 1959 Harvard students opened their campus paper and met a new dean in a faculty profile titled “Governmental Engineer.” The article introduced Don K. Price Jr as a tall, friendly man whose voice still carried the gentle drawl of his native Kentucky, a veteran of New Deal agencies, wartime science boards, and the Hoover Commission who was only then settling into his first full time academic job.

Appalachian Figures On a summer morning in 1982, patients arrived at Mud Creek Clinic and found only ashes. The small community clinic in Grethel, Floyd County, had burned during the night in a suspected arson fire. Instead of closing the doors, Eula Hall dragged a picnic table under a willow tree, called the doctor, and started seeing patients in the yard.

Appalachian Figures On the night of August 11, 1950, a right handed pitcher for the Boston Braves walked off the mound at Braves Field with his teammates crowding around him and Brooklyn Dodgers hitters shaking their heads. Vern Bickford had just thrown a no hitter against a lineup that included Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider. For a moment he was one of the brightest stars in the National League.

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.