One photographer wants to show that the face of coal country might not be as white as you think.
The conventional portrayal of people who live in Appalachian coal country, a part of the United States that has ballooned in the national consciousness after its support
One photographer wants to show that the face of coal country might not be as white as you think.
The conventional portrayal of people who live in Appalachian coal country, a part of the United States that has ballooned in the national consciousness after its support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election, has generally focused on a few key characteristics: Rural, mostly poor and mostly white. Lynch, Kentucky, might fit the bill for the first two—but its racial diversity stands in stark contrast to the popular perception of Appalachia.
In the early 20th century, when the coal industry was booming across Appalachia, coal companies used labor agents to recruit a racially and ethnically diverse labor supply for the mines. Those efforts weren’t exactly progressive: For the companies, a demographically diverse workforce and the racism that likely followed hindered the formation of strong unions. So labor agents looked abroad to southern Europe and southward to Alabama, where they made arrangements to sneak poor black sharecroppers off their land and ferry them to the heart of coal country. Now, after a decades-long decline in the coal industry, many of those black families have left for urban centers on the coasts, leaving behind shells of former coal towns. Lynch, Kentucky, with its mere 800 residents left behind from the collapse of coal and the resulting out-migration, is one such community.
A scholar who focuses on Lynch, Kentucky, and other communities like it invited Sarah Hoskins, a photographer with experience documenting black communities in Kentucky, to visit the town of Lynch last year, and Hoskins came away with a picture of Appalachia that was much more complicated than what she had heard and read about the region. “I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know there were black people in Appalachia,’” she says.
All photos by Sarah Hoskins.
Lynch is located in far southeastern Kentucky on the border with Virginia and was founded in 1917 by the U.S. Coal and Steel company. The company bought 19,000 acres for the town and built everything from houses and stores to a hospital and baseball field. At its peak, Lynch had about 10,000 residents, but is down to below 1,000 today. Above is a side road in Lynch.
Ever since Trump put on a hard hat and pretended to mine coal at one West Virginia rally, his promises to coal miners became a proxy for his promises to the newly scrutinized white working class. But coal miners have never been a racially homogeneous group. The Eastern Kentucky Social Club has long been at the center of African-American life in Lynch, and since 1970, it has hosted meetings for former and current black residents of the town to reunite and honor the contributions of black coal miners. As many as 1,500 people come to the annual meetings, held in Lexington. Above, a sign hangs outside of the club in Lynch.
Lynch's sc