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New Premises For Planning In Appalachia, Richard A. Ball

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The Appalachian Region, particularly Southern Appalachia, has lived through several hundred years of frustration related to its history and geography. The history of the area has become better known during recent years, and it is a history of documented exploitation and socioeconomic disillusionment, a "biography of a depressed area" (Caudill, 1962). Geographically, the region has been regarded essentially as a barrier between the settled East and the fertile lands of the West, a place of rugged terrain and harsh conditions of life. This history and geography have played a large part in the problems which now afflict region and which …