Dee Davis

This week we have a virtual conversation with Dee Davis. 

Dee is a lot of things...
He is the president of the Center for Rural Strategies, executive producer at Appalshop (a documentary production company that also established a media training program for Appalachian youth), a member of the Rural Advisory Committee of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation and Feral Arts of Brisbane, Australia. He is also a member of the Institute for Rural Journalism’s national advisory board, a member of the Board of Directors for the Institute for Work and the Economy, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. As well as the former Chair of the board of directors of Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, and the list goes on....

An author and writer for The Daily Yonder (dailyyonder.com) He's also a native Appalachian and lives in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

To learn more about Dee and his work go to: 
dailyyonder.com
https://www.ruralstrategies.org/


We will be releasing new episodes bi-weekly, sometimes even more regularly, for the remainder of 2021! 

https://coalfield-development.org/

Transcript

Brandon Dennison: 0:11

This is Change in the Coalfields, a podcast by Coalfield Development, all about change in Appalachia. What change has happened, what change is happening and what change still needs to happen? I'm your host, Brandon Dennison, founder and CEO of Coalfield Development. I'm really excited to have with us, Mr. Dee Davis. Dee is the Founder and President of the Center for Rural Strategies. He has been active on many boards and many efforts on behalf of rural America, generally, Appalachia, specifically and also done a lot of work in for the arts and journalism sectors. I'm not being flattering when I say Dee is, really something of a living legend when it comes to Central Appalachia and creative endeavors here in the region. So Dee, thank you so much for your time today.

Dee Davis: 1:05

Yeah, I don't think it's flattering. I just think that means I'm old. It's good to be here, Brandon. I'm happy to be in this conversation.

Brandon Dennison: 1:13

Tell us did you grow up in Kentucky?

Dee Davis: 1:15

I did. I grew up in Hazzard, which is 30 miles from Whitesburg where I live and work now and I know when when I was moving from Hazzard to Whitesburg, that that would be good. That would improve the IQ of both towns. And so I think I've endeavored to do that.

Brandon Dennison: 1:33

And growing up in Hazard, was your family connected to the coal industry?

Dee Davis: 1:39

Not really. I mean, everybody's connected in some ways, but my grandfather came in on the railroad. He was an orphan who came up from a lot of the people from the coal operations in Alabama. So he came from Georgia and Alabama, working on the railroad and played saxophone in a honky tonk band and studied electronics by mail and ended up creating a radio repair shop and then the cablesystem for Hazzard. My other grandfather was a merchant and the two of them kind of joined in partnership when my folks got married and created a furniture store and and so I grew up in the moving furniture in the in the furniture business from the time I was in seventh grade, I delivered linoleum rugs and warm morning heaters to a lot of families, a lot of coal mine and families all around the area. So we're all pretty connected to the coal industry in lots of different ways. And I can remember being a kid when everybody was burning coal when you walk down the streets, main streets and in Hazzard in in you'd feel you'd see the billowing smoke and you'd smell it. And then you would see a lot of miners who've been crippled up there was no no way to take care of them other than they'd be on the street with a coffee can shake in it, you know, waiting for people to drop coins in as they pass by and, and at that time, you know, pre-Walmart downtown's were where everybody was and so they it would be like pushing through a mall I guess now or somewhere three, four people across all the time on the streets. And it was it was pretty crowded. So it's a it's a different era. Now when you go down on these main streets in Kentucky or West Virginia, or Virginia, and you see a them all hollowed out and you see the streets empty when you try to explain that to somebody you feel like a relic.

Brandon Dennison: 3:36

Did your family think of themselves as entrepreneurs?

Dee Davis: 3:39

I think they probably just thought of themselves as trying to make a living, trying to lead a decent life. You know, I had one granddad who took care of me and he played second base on the city ball team and and you know, my dad would listen to records about salesmanship. And so I think he you know, he wanted to be able to look in the eye and sell you a television set or a mattress and my other grandfather who ran the radio shop and and did the cable system. It was just that since he was from the south, it was a gathering place. So many people in the coalfields came from places like Alabama and Georgia and they would congregate in his store and just talk southern you know, they'd love to hear the accent and talk to each other and and I think both black and white would get there and and they would recount the news of the day and it didn't seem like it was substantially different from anybody else's news, except it came in a different language. And I remember getting to sit in his store and just kinda all that conversation and I value it now.

Brandon Dennison: 4:46

Would they talk politics or would they stay away from politics?

Dee Davis: 4:49

No, I mean, they talk everything. I spent a lot of time around older men listening to politics from the time I was in grade school, I think and then by the time I was in High School I was working in different campaigns. And so I valued listening to these guess, it was problem solving in different way what the intricacies were of getting out the vote, or why somebody should be for this person and not that person and even up to buying half pints to give out on Election Day. So I think back to all that time. And to me, it's kind of is growing up here and being around all that was like getting to go to Disneyland. It was like being able to be in rich conversations and to see history unfold.

Brandon Dennison: 5:36

I asked the question, because I feel like today in community development, there's so much focus on entrepreneurship, and maybe an assumption that it's harder to do in the Appalachian context than other places. I don't personally think that's true. I just maybe it looks a little bit different here. I think as a people, we have the entrepreneurial vein, maybe we just need better systems to draw that out.

Dee Davis: 5:57

Yeah, I think people have the instinct, you know how to make a buck, how to get your goods and services to market how to tell the story so that somebody will want to trade with you, I think all that is, is a kind of a community transaction. It's a cultural transaction. And it's a business transaction, how we find a way to take care of each other, look after each other and make a buck at the same time.

Brandon Dennison: 6:25

So you are a fantastic writer, I've read over the years, a lot of what you've written and still write, I'm curious how you as a youngster, how you came to love writing and words and reading and storytelling, maybe you just gave us a little bit of insight, I wonder if you can go deeper on that?

Dee Davis: 6:42

Well, I grew up in a family of musicians, and I didn't have the gift, right? They were singers and pickers and people who could navigate that world. But what I always loved was people telling stories. And even from the first grade on if, if a teacher started telling the story, I would go into some land of enchantment, I would just depart from my surroundings, and I can remember teachers saying you're a good listener, or he's a good listener. And it would not be something I could control. It was something I couldn't avoid. And I think in some ways, just loving to hear people tell stories, made me want to tell stories and made me want to lift up stories that other people were good at telling. And so I think in a way, one of the great benefits of living in a place like Appalachia, from Pennsylvania to Alabama, is that there are all these people who have a cool way of talking about life and experience and challenge. And not that they don't have good ways of talking about it in Chicago, or the Bronx or in Paris. But nonetheless, there's a particular way the language we grew up with. And so getting to hear stories in that language are comforting and encouraging.

Brandon Dennison: 8:08

Did taking the storytelling craft and applying that in the written form? Was that easy and seamless for you? Or is it harder, harder to get them written down?

Dee Davis: 8:16

Well, I don't think it's easy. Writing is not easy. It's it's always kind of trying to pull something out. Least from me, but I think that if it's what you enjoy, if it's what you're dreading, you know, still, if I sit down to write something, I can turn around and it's three hours later, four hours later, and I won't I have realized that the time has passed. And so I think it's engaging. And I do love that.

Brandon Dennison: 8:45

That's what about what all of us could hope out of a work life right to have somebody enjoy so much that three, four hours pass and we didn't realize it.

Dee Davis: 8:51

Yeah, that's right in and somebody doesn't come by and wrap you on the knuckles and say, 'Where have you been?' So that's the other end of it.

Brandon Dennison: 8:59

You grew up in Hazzard, when did you move to Whitesburg?

Dee Davis: 9:01

I came over to Appalshop several times. And I guess in a way, I think I came three different times, once to work on films and once to work on a magazine and then later as President of Appalshop and did some different things and then ended up being Executive Producer of the film and television part of it in and ended up working there from off and on for maybe 25 years. So it was a lot of a lot of time. And so first time I came I was 22 I think then we started real strategies about 20 years ago, so I just moved down the street.

Brandon Dennison: 9:34

Just in case folks listening aren't familiar. Could you just say a little bit about what Appalshop is what it does?

Dee Davis: 9:40

Appalshop shop is a cultural center that started as a film workshop to train young Appalachian people in the filmmaking craft for jobs in an industry that turned out wasn't in here. So it was it was once again training people for jobs they'd have to leave to enjoy. Early on, it was reincorporated from Community Film Workshop of Appalachia to Appalshop as not just a training center but as a production facility and then later people came with ideas to start a theater company started a record company started magazines photography project, a radio station and and so it grew as a kind of way to document Appalachian life and to create artifacts and documents of the experiences of people who lived here and there were people from West Virginia and Virginia and Tennessee who would find their way to be part of it and that enriched the experience I think, and in my wife who I met there, made the film about the Buffalo Creek flood, and you know, and also her film, Chemical Valley is about Institute and the chemical industry in West Virginia. So you know, I think I'm one county away from West Virginia so we seem pretty close and and and my grandad when he was bringing the cable system in we always got West Virginia TV in Hazzard so I grew up watching the same ball games that people in Charleston and Huntington were watching.

Brandon Dennison: 11:17

Okay, and did you went to UK [University of Kentucky]? Is that right?

Dee Davis: 11:20

I did. I went to UK and the University of Pittsburgh. But yeah, UK is where I started out at the community college in Hazzard, which was then part of the university system. And then, and I went on there, I've never really lived anyplace except where I went to school and, and back here in the mountains and, and so I'm on the road a lot. And I enjoy, I used to enjoy when I was on the road a lot before the sickness. And I get to see a lot of the world but it's nice to come back here.

Brandon Dennison: 11:51

I noticed on your bio, there's something about an arts festival in in Brisbane, is that Brisbane? Australia?

Dee Davis: 11:57

Yeah, yeah, I'm on the board of an outfit called Feral Arts, which is a wonderful institution, which started out as a as a way to use communication software to solve problems, particularly problems between indigenous community and farmers who had the had claim on the same land, and they had no way to talk to each other. So they created a way to tell stories so that they could hear each other's stories without creating a brouhaha. And then they really evolved into a way to engage communities and artists around the country. And that's, that's a big country, you know, it's about the size of the lower 48. And so not as many folks but it's a big, sprawling, interesting place to be. And I've enjoyed getting to go there to learn and to listen to stories.

Brandon Dennison: 12:51

Do you feel like your presence internationally in your travel internationally, the more you've been exposed to different cultures, different places? Has it changed how you look at Appalachia, how you think about Appalachian problems, or?

Dee Davis: 13:03

Well, in some ways I remember at Appalshop, we were showing films at the Rotterdam Film Festival one time, and they were kind of doing a retrospective of Appalshop films and a guy from Bulgarian TV came up, and I'm sure he was a [spy], right. I mean, he's in Bulgaria, some kind of spy. And he was just like tears in his eyes. He said, he had never seen a picture of American life where people had chickens. And you know, to see somebody with chickens in the yard made him feel like connected to Americans in ways that he had no clue that people lived here. And so in a way, I think you sort out what's different, and what's the same. And you know, people are people everywhere. I had a radio show once, and there will be this guy who would call it come you know, call in every four or five months, and he was telling me he wanted to tell the story about aliens coming in and they were all going to land in Southern California. And they were going to have a broadcast system that was gonna tell talk to everybody in the world at the same time. And I would engage him and ask him about people's lives on different planet and, you know, what kind of pickups did they drive things like that? I think in a way people are people pretty much all over and they have different sets of experiences and different ways to talk about it. They're facing the same challenges. How do you make a living? How do you raise your kids? How do you get a cold beer at the end of the day?

Brandon Dennison: 14:39

You know, Australia has a lot of extraction, at least parts of it similar to Appalachia, or or parts of out west. Do you? Are there any key similarities or differences with other extractive areas that you visited?

Dee Davis: 14:52

In lots of ways because there's so much coal in Australia and because they're so close to the Chinese market, which has been the most robust coal market that they have continued there, even when a lot of European countries or other countries were cutting back on production and consumption. And though Australia has cut back on consuming coal, they certainly have created these big mines and big systems to export it. And it's been a huge part of their political landscape. Because even when the industry has had a lot of kind of controversy or hit the skids in terms of national acceptance, you've seen politicians go around with a lump of coal say and talk about men's jobs and how important it is. And that seems to win the political argument with voters in the same way that we see it here. I mean, the reality now is the coal industry somewhat necrotic here in the central Appalachian coalfields I saw a couple of coal trucks the other day and was like, all of a sudden, I'm stunned, right, but the power of that message of miners, people who are working hard paying their taxes, pitching in, it's very hard to create a kind of a message that would deny them the opportunity to do their work. Even if the works no longer there were cultural miners, right? We are in the same way that if you go to Kansas, and not that many people are farming anymore, but they are cultural miners, if you go the Northwest, there's not that many people logging, but they are cultural timber people and, and in some ways, I think how we adjust to what's next. I was thinking too, about seventh and eighth grade science back in Hazzard and my teacher, Little Dacker Combs, where we were our school, we could look across to the railroad yards, and we could hear the clang of the trains during school. And I remember him saying, if they would discharge 15 cents, a coal car, for every load of coal they take out of here, we'd have enough money in our schools to have Bunsen burners on every desk and like I, so wanted a Bunsen burner on my desk, I would probably just lit the hair on fire that girl in front of me, but I was like, I was so excited. And I thought about, you know, so early on, I was a real advocate of severance taxes in ways. And you know, when they did bring severence taxes to Kentucky, it was very exciting. First, that we're going to create new ways for development, and they were going to keep it out of the hands of local politicians. But that eroded and before long, they were buying[base] ball shoes, and you know, to make sure that when teams would go play in Louisville, they wouldn't look poor. And you know, it was like, all the sudden the idea of infrastructure capacity investment, that could could actually change, transform, our life here ended up this being, putting all your money in a '82 Mercury Monarch that's going to be on blocks, you know, someday. And I think in some ways, that's hard to be able to make the kind of investment that's really going to pay off because the world is changing. It's a risk. It's, you know, you're betting on something. But the other thing is in a place like ours where there is so much need, and people have lived hard, they deserve a good shot, and they deserve a good lemon. It's hard to know what's the smartest and best.

Brandon Dennison: 18:29

In your role as a journalist, as a researcher, as an Appalachian person who's been involved in campaigns at different points in time, you know, there's a stereotype that Appalachia has a lot of corruption, maybe more so than other parts of the country might experience. Is that fair? I mean, has corruption held us back as a region?

Dee Davis: 18:46

There's a great book on rural child poverty, called Worlds Apart, written by Cynthia Duncan, I think is what it says on the book. And what this book looks at is at the Mississippi Delta, at Appalachian, New Hampshire, and it looks at these different rural areas and why child poverty is bad in Mississippi, why it is bad in Eastern Kentucky and why it's not bad in New Hampshire. And the most salient part for me was that in these poor areas like the Delta and Appalachia, when people are getting by, we have a tolerance for, 'That guy needs a job,' or 'Let's does not collect this bill," you know, those, those folks are not doing good. And so they're these little petty corruptions where one or two might not have been too bad. And it might not be so different than what they're doing in in Chicago or other urban neighborhoods, but the margins are so low, in our places we might have enough to get by and to do well, but if we start knocking down, we end up not being able to take as good care of ourselves as we need and in New Hampshire, where she looked, she saw that there was a very high intolerance for any kind of corruption. And although those communities weren't wealthy, they were able to generate enough to take care of schools and roads and infrastructure. So I don't know, I don't think we're any more corrupt than other places. But I do think we have developed a tolerance over an aversion to dealing with small sums disappearing.

Brandon Dennison: 20:33

Sometimes it even originally originates with good intentions, what one person calls corruption, you know, another person might call a good friendship, right?

Dee Davis: 20:40

I mean, yeah, I just need to help that guy out. I think Sinclair Lewis says,'Every labels a liable.' Oh, you know, I don't want to say it's like that everywhere. And every community, but I'd say that, as a general way of looking at it, I think we could be tougher on ourselves. You work on development, you had all these successes, and we look at a lot of rural communities around the country in and across borders, and the kinds of things that we see might be slightly different, but probably not unusual to you. But there was a time when you had this traditional industry like coal or farming, that you that would keep the communities going. And then when people saw that it was gonna disappear, they started investing in different kinds of widget factories in ways that they could either subsidize or track an industry from a different kind of community that would come in for cheaper wages. And now we're in a situation where the widgets are all being made. In some other country, our traditional industry has, has fallen on hard times. So when I think about what's really available, and what can be the driver in the next manifestation of the American economy, in a knowledge-based economy, what I really see is that our advantage is taking care of ourselves, taking care of our communities, if we can make our communities the best communities to live in, well then that gives us an edge. There are a lot of people who would love to live in West Virginia, a lot of people have had to leave West Virginia, because they couldn't make a living. There's a lot of people who've left Kentucky and Virginia and Tennessee that would love come back, if they could just get a few things straight, you know, if there was some amenities, if there was the broadband and good health care and good schools and some kind of cultural life that made it entertaining, in a way, in an economy where more and more we're going to approximate density by using technology, and where we're going to be creating the next industries from our laptops, then the real opportunity to create new industry doesn't have to be tied to one location or one industry in the same way that it was before. And if you look at really what signifies prosperity in a lot of communities, it's really value of land, value of homes if if you have a place that people want to live, if they're coming into your place, then you're going to have those values go up and you're going to be able to transform personal wealth. And so in a way, we made a lot of mistakes, right? We thought that coal was going to be around for longer than it was, and we didn't really spend as much time thinking about what would happen afterwards, and we sent a lot of kids to school, and we built a lot of small businesses and we bought a lot of 84 Mercury's that are on blocks. And so it wasn't like we were terrible people or not that smart. We just we took chance and and this is how it came out. And now we've got to take a different kind of chance. We have to imagine the trajectory, this is a good place to live for our kids, what we have to do if we're going to bring that about and I think part of that is trust in our own communitarian instincts, trust in our ourselves to look after each other, to help each other to make a place, good to live in to try to use the precious resources that we do get from our tax base from investments like we're now seeing with the American Rescue Plan and use that money smartly. Use that money, not for next week, or for next year, but to use it in a way that will benefit of folks who will come along next.

Brandon Dennison: 24:41

And it needs to be attractive for all different kinds of people, right? I mean, I I wonder over the course of your lifetime, and have you seen Appalachia get more welcoming or less welcoming, talking about diversity here, or a mix of the two?

Dee Davis: 24:54

When I got the Whitesburg was pretty white, but Hazzard was the most diverse town in the coalfields.

Brandon Dennison: 25:00

So you mentioned your grandpa's radio shop people gather and talk.

Dee Davis: 25:03

Yeah, that's right.

Brandon Dennison: 25:03

You said both white and black, right? That's

Dee Davis: 25:05

And my grandmother, saintly woman who grew up in in right. Alabama, she would have a little table in a dining nook, and I would go in and listen to stories, and there will be all these women black and white. They're telling stories, drinking coffee, smoking Viceroys, and Old Golds. And now just fascinating, okay, you know, they'd let me have a cup of coffee with milk and sugar in it. And I would just sit there and listen to them gab along and that enrich my existence for sure. And so when I got here, and I was surprised, I mean, I live for playing basketball, you know, every day after work, I would just try to get down play ball, and I play ball with people and community and, and I was noticed when it was all white that there was a lot of ethnic slurs, and it was disturbing, but it sounds so like, I'm a stranger, I just wouldn't try to model good behavior. But I didn't want to confront everybody, every time I heard something. But the other thing is you're paying attention, and you know, over time, it changes. You know, when people play ball, it's pretty rough talk anyway and brutal to each other. You know, it's, it's, it's smack talk, but it's, it's humorous, it's a way to welcome everybody. And you saw the change over time, as the game would get more diverse, the language would all change, and then even the jokes and stories and the meanness would change, you know, where you would hear racial meanness and say, the 80s, by the 90s, that was kind of, had really mostly disappeared. And, and then, you know, by the 2000s, you you wouldn't hear I mean, somebody said something about homosexuals, you would somebody would stop them. Yeah, as a lot of kids went to college, you know, I play ball with a bunch of kids who did play college ball, and they would come back or, you know, it would be miners, and different guys, it just changed and, and, to me, it was something I was always monitoring, and it made me feel much better about the community I lived in to see this evolution, you know, it's like I was trying not to fall over with these guys. And so, as a as an observer, I think that I've seen a lot of changes. And I think those have been mostly for the good. There's a lot of meanness, you know, there's, there's I'm not saying that Appalachian culture is woke. But I think if it comes down to basic, looking after each other, helping each other people don't really draw these lines of distinction. And you know, I keep thinking about, I was getting out of the car, go to the grocery store one day, and I saw this guy walking, and he just had this enormous pride. And I was like, 'What is going on with this guy, he's just coming in,' and you see him above these cars two or three, and he's just walking, so proud is it something seemed different. And then following right behind him, it's about a three-year-old African American girl, which was obviously his granddaughter, and the pride of being there at the grocery store, together, just you know, it lifted his life up. And it made me feel like there's there is a welcoming, inclusive nature in our communities, if we nurture it, if we nurture it, and we don't give into the meanness,

Brandon Dennison: 28:31

Well, Dee, you have lived a rich life and you've given so much I wonder if there's anything I should have asked you that I didn't think of or any any thoughts on change in the coalfields of Appalachia that you would like to share? Before we wrap up?

Dee Davis: 28:43

I don't think any of us know for sure what's going on, and if you had asked me 20 years ago, what was gonna happen? I might have got some of it right. But I think my my hope is that we can build greener, smarter, more inclusive communities and that there are a lot of communities in the world have gone through what we did you know, what we are going through right now places, and a lot of them have succeeded wildly beyond what they could have predicted a big part of that was taking care of their place, looking after their own place, looking after each other. In a world where we think we have to create something and sell it or we don't have value. We're missing the bigger themes of history, which I think are going to be able to endure if we can create communities that people want to be in.

Brandon Dennison: 29:33

Great note to close on. Dee thank you for your time. Thank you for all you've done for our region and just for who you are, and I look forward to staying in touch.

Dee Davis: 29:39

Thank you, Brandon.

Brandon Dennison: 29:40

All right, take care. Change in the Coalfields is a podcast created by Coalfield Development at West Edge Factory in Huntington, West Virginia. This episode was hosted by Brandon Dennison, and produced and edited by JJN multimedia. Become a part of our mission to rebuild the Appalachian economy by going to our website, coalfield-development.org, to make a donation. You can email us anytime at info@Coalfield-development.org and subscribe to our newsletter for up to date information on the podcast. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn by searching for Coalfield Development. Check back soon for more episodes.