For generations, Siouan-speaking Monacans lived in the foothills and mountains of Appalachian Virginia until the arrival of the Europeans forced them from the land.
Next came poor white settlers and their enslaved African American neighbors, followed later by immigrants from Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
The languages, customs and cultures of Appalachian Virginia have changed throughout the centuries. But one constant has remained: Whoever has called Appalachia home has been subject to those residing elsewhere.
Monuments to these and other untold histories will soon populate the landscape thanks to the work of two Virginia Tech professors who have received a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
“Appalachia is a robust, complex, diverse set of people and interests and desires and ways of life,” said Katrina Powell, a professor of rhetoric and writing in the Department of English, and founding director of the Center for Refugee, Migrant and Displacement Studies at Virginia Tech. “There’s a sense from other parts of the country that Appalachia is a certain thing. And that stereotype has been used to extract and exploit its people and resources.”
For Emily Satterwhite, an associate professor and director of Appalachian Studies in the Department of Religion and Culture, the grant will help push back on what she feels are the powers that seek to uproot Appalachia’s people and places.
“It shouldn’t take a prestigious grant from the Mellon Foundation to do that,” Satterwhite said. “But if it takes leveraging that prestige, I think it can renew our stewardship of those places and affirm our efforts to collectively protect those places.”
The three-year project will allow Satterwhite and Powell to work with community groups across Virginia’s Appalachia region to commemorate untold stories of peoples who haven’t received historical recognition. Six to 10 monuments — envisioned and designed by the community groups — will ultimately be erected by the end of 2025.
The design of each monument will be driven by the communities in which the “untold history” took place. Powell cites as an example the glass “stumbling stones” that dot cobblestone streets in Berlin, each etched with the name of a Holocaust victim.
Examples of other Monuments Projects in the U.S. include completing Freedom Park in North Carolina, which honors the history of Black North Carolinians, and the expansion of artist Judith Baca’s Great Wall of Los Angeles, a large mural depicting the city’s history.
“I’m really inspired by … not only to what a monument can look like but how we interact with spaces that commemorate or memorialize that particular event,” Powell said.
Both praised Virginia Tech’s universitywide commitment to its mission of “Ut Prosim” (“That I May Serve”) for supporting the grant application.
Added Tom Ewing, a professor of history and associate dean for graduate studies and research: “This project builds upon the established and highly successful program of Appalachian studies of Virginia Tech … while also taking advantage of new technologies to find innovative ways to recover, display and commemorate historical memories.”
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Powell, 56, grew up in Madison County at the base of Shenandoah National Park. From childhood she heard stories from descendants of the 500 families who were displaced by the federal government in the 1930s to create the park. It was a story that the National Park Service shied away from until Powell, by then a scholar, was appointed to the park’s board to improve relations with the local community.
“Talking about that history really helped connect visitors to the park in a deeper way, and when people become more aware of that history — even if it’s a really difficult or hard history — they actually want to become better stewards of the land,” Powell reflected. “With all the land issues going on in our state, more community members, more residents of this state, more business owners in the state can become better stewards of the place we’re in by understanding the complex and complicated and often hurtful history of the state.”
For Satterwhite, 50, that “hurtful history” isn’t just a relic of the past.
She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where stereotypes of Appalachia abounded. It wasn’t until attending Transylvania University that she began to discover what she considered the unjust histories and hierarchies regarding race, class and society rooted in the region.
From her point of view, one of those is the Mountain Valley Pipeline that, if completed, will cut through 303 miles of West Virginia and Virginia. In 2018, Satterwhite locked herself in protest to pipeline construction equipment and was arrested.
“This is home and I think, with all the rhetoric about red and blue, we forget about how purple all our places are and how much we depend on each other and need to support each other and understand each other’s histories and experiences in order to create better futures for all of us and future generations,” Satterwhite said. “It’s all connected for me that disregard that some in power have for people and places. Pushing back on that is part of what this project can do.”
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Communities throughout Appalachian Virginia — as well as as representatives for Eastern Siouan Indigenous peoples — are eligible to participate in the “Monuments Across Appalachian Virginia.”
Monuments may take the form of public art, historical markers, theatrical performances, festivals or public exhibits like “The Land Speaks,” a digital exhibition hosted by University Libraries at Virginia Tech about the history of the Monacan Indian Nation.
Virginia Tech itself plays a complicated role in this history.
The More Than A Fraction Foundation was created by the descendants of people enslaved at the Smithfield plantation, which today is part of Virginia Tech’s campus.
According to founder and executive director Kerri Moseley-Hobbs, The Roanoke Times reported on Dec. 14, 1892: “Thomas Fraction, a well-known … colored man, died early Tuesday morning.”
“Well known for what?” Moseley-Hobbs asked herself. Her inability to find records of Fraction or his community inspired, in part, the founding of More Than A Fraction.
“Our hope is to support and gain support from Emily and Katrina’s Mellon Foundation grant funding project ‘untold history’ by following the enslaved families of Smithfield into neighboring counties of Southwest Virginia after emancipation with a special focus on Roanoke County/Salem,” wrote Moseley-Hobbs.
Satterwhite is hopeful the Mellon Foundation grant will create a monument to this legacy while praising Virginia Tech’s land-grant mission of not just educating undergraduates but being a good neighbor as well.
“For Virginia Tech to have an opportunity to demonstrate its good will and respect for its interwovenness with the surrounding region is really important.”