Jessica Wilkerson tells their stories within the larger drama of efforts to enact change in the 1960s and 1970s. She shows white Appalachian women acting as leaders and soldiers in a grassroots war on poverty—shaping and sustaining programs, engaging in ideological debates, offering fresh visions of democratic participation, and facing personal political struggles. Their insistence that caregiving was valuable labor clashed with entrenched attitudes and rising criticisms of welfare. Their persistence, meanwhile, brought them into unlikely coalitions with black women, disabled miners, and others to fight for causes that ranged from poor people's rights to community health to unionization.
Inspiring yet sobering, To Live Here, You Have to Fight reveals Appalachian women as the indomitable caregivers of a region—and overlooked actors in the movements that defined their time.
| Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Acronyms Introduction 1. The Political and Gender Economy of the Mountain South, 1900–1964 2. "I Was Always Interested in People's Welfare": Bringing the War on Poverty to Kentucky 3. "In the Eyes of the Poor, the Black, the Youth": Poverty Politics in Appalachia 4. March for Survival: The Appalachian Welfare Rights Movement 5. "The Best Care in History": Interdependence and the Community Health Movement 6. "I'm Fighting for My Own Children That I'm Raising Up": Women, Labor, and Protest in Harlan County 7. "Nothing Worse than Being Poor and a Woman": Feminism in the Mountain South Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index | Herbert G. Gutman Award, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2015Finalist, OAH Mary Nickliss Prize in Women's or Gender History, 2020
Honorable Mention, Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, 2020
H.L. Mitchell Award for Distinguished Book on the Southern Working Class, Southern Historical Association, 2020 — Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA)
Herbert G. Gutman Award, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2015
Finalist, OAH Mary Nickliss Prize in Women's or Gender History, 2020
Honorable Mention, Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, 2020
H.L. Mitchell Award for Distinguished Book on the Southern Working Class, Southern Historical Association, 2020 — OAH Mary Nickliss Prize in Women's or Gender History
Herbert G. Gutman Award, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2015
Finalist, OAH Mary Nickliss Prize in Women's or Gender History, 2020
Honorable Mention, Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, 2020
H.L. Mitchell Award for Distinguished Book on the Southern Working Class, Southern Historical Association, 2020 — Philip Taft Labor History Book Award
Herbert G. Gutman Award, Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), 2015
Finalist, OAH Mary Nickliss Prize in Women's or Gender History, 2020
Honorable Mention, Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, 2020
H.L. Mitchell Award for Distinguished Book on the Southern Working Class, Southern Historical Association, 2020 — Southern Historical Association
|Jessica Wilkerson is an associate professor and Joyce and Stuart Robbins Chair in the Department of History at West Virginia University.