Who Owns Appalachia? (1982)

The people of Appalachia know they are poor, and for along time a lot of them have thought they knew why: they don't own their land, they don't control its use, and they don't share in the wealth it produces.

Now, thanks to a massive study of land ownership conducted by the residents of six Appalachian states over the past three years, they have the evidence to prove they've been right. What's more, they're using the evidence in activities all over the Southern mountains to change the system that keeps people poor in this very rich region.

This special section of Southern Exposure is devoted to the land survey and the new activism rippling along in its wake. The study — titled Land Ownership Patterns and Their Impacts on Appalachian Communities — is the work of the Land Ownership Task Force of the Appalachian Alliance, a coalition of community groups, individual residents and scholars, and it runs to seven volumes occupying a good seven inches of shelf space.

Though certainly not the first look at land ownership in Appalachia, this one is the first to consider the whole region in a systematic manner. The researchers — about 100 local residents — collected data on the ownership and taxation of surface and mineral rights of 55,000  parcels of rural land in 80 counties, some 20 million acres in all, in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. Included were all parcels of 250 acres or more owned by local individuals and all parcels of 20 acres or more owned by  nonresidents or corporations, government agencies or nonprofit groups like churches.