'They'll Cut Off Your Project': A Mingo County Chronicle.

West Virginia and Appalachia

by Jeff Biggers

As the Johnson Administration initiated its war on poverty in the 1960s, the Mingo County Economic Opportunity Commission project was established in southern West Virginia. Huey Perry, a young, local history teacher was named the director of this program and soon he began to promote self-sufficiency among low-income and vulnerable populations. As the poor of Mingo County worked together to improve conditions, the local political infrastructure felt threatened by a shift in power. Bloody Mingo County, known for its violent labor movements, corrupt government, and the infamous Hatfield-McCoy rivalry, met Perry’s revolution with opposition and resistance.

In They’ll Cut Off Your Project, Huey Perry reveals his efforts to help the poor of an Appalachian community challenge a local regime. He describes this community’s attempts to improve school programs and conditions, establish cooperative grocery stores to bypass inflated prices, and expose electoral fraud. Along the way, Perry unfolds the local authority’s hostile backlash to such change and the extreme measures that led to an eventual investigation by the FBI. They’ll Cut Off Your Project chronicles the triumphs and failures of the war on poverty, illustrating why and how a local government that purports to work for the public’s welfare cuts off a project for social reform.

Genres: Nonfiction, Government, American History, Historical

Unknown Binding

First published March 1, 2011

About the author

Jeff Biggers is a cultural historian, journalist, playwright and novelist. He is the coauthor of the novel DISTURBING THE BONES with filmmaker Andrew Davis, and author of numerous nonfiction works, including IN SARDINIA: An Unexpected Journey in Italy (Melville House), TRIALS OF A SCOLD (St. Martin's), longlisted for the PEN Bograd Weld Award. Recipient of the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting, Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, Biggers has worked as a freelance journalist, radio correspondent, playwright, historian and educator across the US, Europe, Mexico and India. His stories have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera America, Salon, The Nation and on National Public Radio and Public Radio International. He blogs regularly for the Huffington Post. Contributing editor at Bloomsbury Review.

His nonfiction works include State Out of the Union, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Top Ten Social Science Book in 2012; Reckoning at Eagle Creek, recipient of the Delta Award for Literature and the David Brower Award for Environmental Reporting; In the Sierra Madre, winner of the Foreword Magazine Travel Book of the Year Award; and The United States of Appalachia, praised by the Citizen Times as a "masterpiece of popular history." He also served as co-editor of No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of Don West, which won the American Book Award, and wrote the foreword to the re-issue of Huey Perry's classic, They'll Cut Off Your Project.

Biggers founded the Climate Narrative Project, a media arts and advocacy project.

For more info: www.jeffbiggers.com

Reviews

[John Tipper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir by Perry, a former school teacher, about grassroots organizing in Mingo County, West Virginia, a rough, challenging place. It's an historical account of political and social dynamics in a poverty-stricken zone. President Johnson started the War on Poverty in the mid 1960s, and Perry applied for a job with the Economic Opportunity Commission. He landed the position. About 50 percent of the population of Mingo County lived below the poverty line, and many were on welfare. Perry and his staff ran into stiff opposition from the entrenched Democratic Machine, headed by state Senator Noah Floyd. He and his associates used voter fraud to keep themselves in office, paying people to vote twice, cheating with absentee votes, providing whisky for votes, etc. The EOC got the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to investigate. And Perry and his team organized community action groups to advocate for more hot lunches in local schools. The book chronicles government obstacles that stymied progress. Perry writes in a direct, personal style

[Natalie]

While an intimate account of poor organizing during the War on Poverty in a small WV county, this was overall very meticulous and not very interesting to read. Perry rehashes entire board meetings detail by detail that probably could’ve been covered in a sentence.

Though best summarized, I think this book is helpful for organizing today, and especially how rural communities can accomplish getting federal assistance they need. There are the typical villains of those greedy and voter fraud - and Perry demonstrates how to work through those problems (and when to be resigned when there’s nothing more to do).

[Sydney Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great read, but only if you’re looking for strictly informational purposes. While Perry was at the center of the war on poverty in Mingo County and provides a unique perspective, his straight forward writing leaves it difficult to stay focused at times if not for the knowledge being conveyed.

[Sarah left GR]

Added because I met the author's son at a holiday party.

[Anna Shuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

had to read for school, but really liked it! it’s more like a 3.5 because i got a lil confused at points, but good book overall!

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for all high school students. In the 1960s, Mr. Perry helped to organize the poor residents of Mingo County West Virginia against a corrupt political system. This book demonstrates why we can't trust government to take care of us.

[Betsy Kalman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good stories of crooked politicians in Mingo County