“Population estimates of Briceville, an unincorporated town, place the size at about 1100 people with several hundred more living in the hollows and on the mountains surrounding the town itself. A former mining town, Briceville serves as the center of the 1300 square mile coal field in the northwest half of Anderson County. The land is owned almost totally by three land and mining companies: Coal Creek Mining and Manufacturing, Tennessee Land and Mining and Consolodated [sic] Coal. Though strip mining has been heavy in recent years, indicated coal reserves in the area evidence that the stripping has just begun.
Many of the people of north Anderson County are leaving to seek employment in the North[…]. Some subsistance farming and a few large industries like Union Carbide in Oak Ridge provide support for those remaining. A record of the Briceville area income tax returns from 1966 shows that fifty-six per cent of the people completing the forms earned under $3000 a year. With the closing of the major deep mines in the ’30s and ’40s, however, the essential services they once provided (housing and medical care) were curtailed. Social security, food stamps, welfare, and black lung benefits now provide the primary resources of the region.” — Excerpt from “A Summary Report by the Student Health Coalition–Appalachian Project: June 1971-June 1972,” PDF page 18.
Related People:

David Morrow on the personal legacy of his student activism

J. Thomas “Tom” John, M.D.

Karen Blaydes

Byrd Duncan

John E. Davis
Related Stories:

David Morrow on the personal legacy of his student activism

Notes from the road: Mountain People’s Health Councils

One of the Best Days Ever

“I don’t think I could have made up the memory of crawling through barbed wire with 40 pounds of squealing, snapping, struggling pig in my arms”
Related Resources/Links:

Interview with Kate Bradley and J.W. Bradley by Evangeline Mee, 29 May 2012, Southern Oral History Program, UNC Chapel Hill

Deborah Cogswell Photograph Album, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill

Irwin Venick Subject Files, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill

Richard Davidson Photograph Collection, Southern Historical Collection, UNC Chapel Hill
