This evening the NCAA basketball world featured a rematch of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, pitting West Virginia’s finest against those of Kentucky. Mountaineer native Bob Huggins led his team to a surprise upset of the Kentucky Wildcats and the team’s first trip to the Final Four since 1959.
Just a bit south here in East Tennessee folks are jumping for joy as our own Tennessee Volunteers reached the Elite Eight for the first time ever. And with a victory against a physical Michigan State squad tomorrow the Vols could be heading to Indianapolis for the Final Four.
It’s been a tough journey for these Vols, as four of them faced gun and drug charges from a New Year’s Eve bust in nearby Alcoa, TN. Facing potential implosion the team rallied and beat #1 Kansas and #1 Kentucky before petering out in the SEC playoffs. But a few lucky draws and a gritty effort against Ohio State has the Vols within earshot of the Mountaineers in the Final Four.
Oh, and I take special pleasure in this Vols team because its coach, Bruce Pearl, is a proud member of Knoxville’s Jewish community. Nobody has served as a better Jewish ambassador to the largely evangelical East Tennessee community than Pearl. When he made a horrid gaffe about rural Grainger County kids being members of the Ku Klux Klan people around here laughed it off instead of blasting him as a Yankee, Jewish elitist. Times have changed. Or maybe everything’s fine if you’re a Vol and you’re winning…
But that’s not all we have going for ourselves. My own institution, Maryville College, just officially opened a state of the art performing arts center called the Clayton Center for the Arts. The Opening Gala tonight featured a stunning variety of theater, opera, vocals, orchestra, bluegrass music, and even a brief piano piece by Maryville’s own Senator Lamar Alexander. I may be a liberal Democrat but I appreciate what Senator Alexander has meant to this community; he played a short piece on a Steinway grand piano that he donated to the new center. It was a joyous moment for this community and a celebration of the arts for a long time to come.
And then there was the ongoing Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, which features avant guard music and theater from around the world. Suffice it to say, this is not your stereotypical Appalachian musical fare.
And that’s the point.
With all the hemming and hawing about rednecks who ram Obama supporters and poor white folks who vote against their economic interests it’s important to keep in mind that Southern Appalachia is a culturally vibrant and often surprisingly progressive place. And I’m not even talking about Asheville or Boone, NC…
If you don’t believe me read the wonderful United States of Appalachia by Jeff Biggers. This set of essays traces the Appalachian pioneers of civil rights, organized labor, jazz music, modern publishing, and even American democracy itself. It is one of the best correctives for Appalachian stereotypes you’ll ever read. If anything, it should help dispel the misconceptions about Appalachia held by people across the country.