Okies of the '60s

In Chicago they know them as WASPS (for White Appalachian Southern Protestants), in Cincinnati as SAMS (for Southern Appalachian Migrants). St. Louis calls them, among other things, swamp turkeys and hoosiers. In Columbus and Cleveland they are simply called hillbillies (the name they dislike most). By whatever name, more than a million impoverished white Southerners, comprising 20% of the population of the 250 Appalachian Mountain counties in nine Southern states, *moved northward between 1950 and 1960 to eke out a precarious living in the big cities. Packed into secondhand cars loaded down with their meager possessions, swarms still arrive every day in such cities as Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and Springfield. With them arrive the hopes, problems and frustrations of a new U.S. minority. They are the Okies of the '60s.

Mostly descendants of Scotch-Irish immigrants who settled in the Appalachians in the early 18th century, the migrants were long isolated by their mountain barriers from the mainstream of U.S. life. Settling down to a slow-paced, hand-to-mouth and inbred way of life, they became famed chiefly for moonshine, revenooers, family feuds and hillbilly music. They became the inspiration for Erskine Caldwell novels and such comic-strip caricatures as Snuffy Smith and Li'l Abner.

Still in the Hills. But civilization, of a sort, has reached the mountains. TV has penetrated into many Appalachian shacks that have little other furniture. It has brought with it a glimpse of jobs, salaries and luxuries that the mountaineers never dreamed of. Dressed in their mountain "uniform"—tight blue jeans, white sweat socks and open-necked shirts for the men, simple print dresses for the women—they have turned to the cities for a new life.

Most of them find the city a strange and unfriendly place. They long for the hill country, talk of returning to it as soon as they have saved a chunk of money to start anew. "I don't believe Appalachian whites ever get to like the city," says Bernard S. Houghton, director of Cleveland's West Side Community House. "It's simply wages that bring them here. They never get out of the hills." Asked to take part in any community affairs, the mountaineers almost invariably refuse, arguing that they do not intend to be around long.

With that attitude, they are the despair of law-enforcement, welfare, health and academic officials who try to help them become assimilated in the city. A proud people, they are slow to accept relief—but they often hand over their money to credit gougers (poorly educated, many cannot read the large print, much less the fine) for 21-in TV sets and for the chrome and aluminum baubles they have seen on the screen. Most of them live crowded together in slum tenements, but family ties are so strong that relatives from the South are always welcome—even when their visit turns out to last for years. Used to tossing out garbage to be devoured by the ever-present mountain pigs, some newcomers throw garbage out the windows; when told that garbage should be wrapped before it is discarded, some wrap it all right—then throw it out the window.

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