A perspective on LBJ's launch of the 'War on Poverty'

We thought this was a good perspective on a piece of American history. From West Virginia's State Journal we find this interview with Barbara Bayes, a woman who has spent a lifetime helping the poor in the Appalachian Mountains. The interview focuses on the start of the "War on Poverty" when President Lyndon Johnson created programs to try to help the poor.

Writer Christine Miller Ford had Bayes recall when college aged strangers arrived to Appalachia in the 1960's.

Growing up in eastern Kentucky, 60-year-old Bayes got her first glimpse of LBJ’s anti-poverty initiative when she and fellow teens began to spot Volunteers In Service To America, or VISTA, workers in their community.

“We started noticing these young college kids coming around who didn’t talk like us or look like us,” said Bayes, a lifelong social worker who heads the Good News Mountaineer Garage, the statewide program that provides motor vehicles to low-income West Virginians. “They’d come through asking for directions, and we loved to send them off the wrong way. Our reaction was, ‘Who are you to look down on us because we’re different? Because we have an outhouse?’”

But with each repaired roof, free meal program and other project completed by the young people involved in the VISTA program — a domestic version of the Peace Corps created through Johnson’s Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 — Bayes said she and her neighbors began to see these visitors in a new light.

“We saw how much good they were doing for people who were really struggling,” she said.

Now thanks to the range of programs begun with the War on Poverty and Johnson’s Great Society, low-income citizens, seniors and others can live more dignified lives, Bayes said.

“So many of the programs begun in the 1960s have become so integrated into society that we don’t think about what life would be like without them,” said Bayes, who has lived in Charleston since 1984. “But before the War on Poverty, there was no mechanism for low-income senior citizens to have nursing home care paid for. Grants and loans weren’t available for low-income students to go to college. No job training for a displaced homemaker trying to get back on her feet. No legal aid for a woman trying to leave an abusive marriage. No money for winterizing an elderly person’s home for fuel efficiency. It’s a long, long list.”

Visiting the Lend a Hand Center in Kentucky

Some time ago we found a video at USA Today that profiled two women who have dedicated their lives to fight Appalachian Mountain poverty. Peggy Kemner and Irma Gall founded the Lend A Hand Center in Kentucky. The center is devoted to health and well-being of the poor in the area.

Someone else read that USA Today story as well, and was so moved by it that he and his son paid a visit to the Center. From The Daily Globe, writer Julie Buntjer, tells us about the trip Martin and Michael Lucin made to the Appalachian Mountains.

Recalling his first glimpse of poverty deep in the Appalachian Mountains, Martin said it was stark.

“It was abject poverty, plain and simple,” he said. “The face of poverty is different now than what it used to be. (Kemner and Gall) made a huge difference. Fifty years ago, I think people just didn’t have enough to eat. Now, some people might not have enough to eat, but people who have a little money to buy food don’t know what food to buy.”

Some of the families they encountered live on fast food and Mountain Dew, and they have health issues to prove it. Tooth decay, diabetes and associated ailments are common among those who visit the local clinics. There were also a number of people being treated for issues relating to tobacco use, which is quite common in the region.

“The reason I asked Peggy to set (the visit) up was I thought that an experience like that would impact the kind of doctor (Michael) will become,” said Martin. “What Michael ended up doing … was seeing the health and the medical (aspects) of poverty.”

Michael is slated to graduate in spring 2010 from the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and then plans to attend medical school. He remains uncertain of the type of practice he will pursue.

After working alongside medical professionals for a week in Guatemala last November, Michael said he noted some similarities about the two experiences.

“The trip kind of built on (the fact that) different areas have different health issues,” said Michael. “Follow a family doctor here and you’ll see a lot of colds, common things. But if you go to Guatemala, you’ll see a lot of parasite-type stuff.

“At the same time, if you go to Kentucky — the area we were in — you see a lot higher prevalence of the things that are associated with smoking, like emphysema and a lot of lung problems,” Michael said.

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The Appalachia mountains grow thru politics

Over 40 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson began the war on poverty. He made the speech to introduce the "war" from the Appalachian Mountains. An area in the eastern US that has had deep problems with poverty for generations.

A great story from the Associated Press explains the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal program that tries to fight poverty in the mountain region.

Thru the years the area served by this commission has expanded. It grows either to get the necessary votes to pass the funding. Or by politician who want to get that same funding into their districts.

The Appalachian Regional Commission now spreads to areas in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and Tennessee, that do not have the deep seeded problems of the mountain.

Our snippet wont do the story justice, so I encourage you to read the entire piece from Roger Alford. Our clip explains how expanding the area effect who it was originally intended for.

The Appalachia served by the ARC is political, not geographical, said Ron Eller said, an Appalachian scholar and former director of the University of Kentucky's Appalachian Center.

Eller said Johnson recognized that when in 1965 he agreed to add portions of New York to get enough votes to push the Appalachian Regional Development Act through Congress. The geographical expansions have helped the ARC politically by increasing its clout in Washington.

The legislation signed this month not only expands Appalachia's boundaries, but also calls for $510 million to be spent in the region over the next five years to build roads, install water lines, fund educational improvement projects, encourage economic development, even purchase computers for poor children. The proposed spending total is a $64 million increase over the last 5-year allotment.

That could have meant more money for core Appalachian counties, Eller said, if politicians hadn't opted to spread it across a larger area. "When you continue to expand the counties, ultimately it creates a smaller pool of resources for use in the most severely distressed areas of the region," he said.

Nicholas County's top elected administrative official, Judge-Executive Larry Tincher, has been lobbying for the past seven years to get the communities he represents declared part of Appalachia so that they can tap into the funding source. He said job losses in Kentucky's textile industry have hit Carlisle hard over the past decade. The state has lost more than 7,000 jobs since 2001 in apparel manufacturing.

Eller doesn't dispute that the additional counties have economic problems that may even rival conditions in the heart of Appalachia. But, he said, the core Appalachian counties have had long-standing problems.