I'm very tempted to take this tour next time I drive through this region!

Some fun facts about African Americans in my corner of Appalachia:

• Cheryl LaRoche's book talks some about how in Southeast Ohio and Northern Kentucky, the iron furnaces were an important part of the region's Underground Railroad network. Ironton was founded by a white abolitionist, and many African Americans worked in the iron industry on both sides of the river, so that became a mode of mobility and a geographic guide for freedom seekers.

• Lewis Woodson, regarded by some as the "father of Black nationalism," lived with his father and siblings for a number of years in Chillicothe and later in Jackson County, Ohio. Woodson later advocated for African Americans to move to Ohio and places like it, and used his father's rural Ohio community as an example of the possibilities for Black self-determination that didn't require moving abroad. Woodson felt that the rural landscape would allow African Americans to live away from racists, but also felt that there was some moral and spiritual value in that.

• Richard L. Davis was born in Roanoke, Virginia, and moved to Rendville, Ohio, notable for being an integrated mining town in the 19th century. Now, for some important context, Hocking Valley's coal industry had experienced labor strikes in that area, and at least some were temporarily broken by Black strike breakers, because coal companies new they could exploit racial labor issues by bringing in Black workers from Southern States to work for a much cheaper price, given that white unions excluded them. Davis helped to found the United Mine Workers Of America, and focused his energy on securing Black members, and in doing so made significant progress in breaking the caller line in the region.

That's not even scratching the surface, and clearly I am only talking about one tiny pocket of Appalachian Ohio. I'm sharing this because, particularly among people outside the region, there are these popular assumptions that Appalachia is just white people, or that any Black history began with the Great Migration. But across the region, if you know where to look, you can find so much early Black history.