On this episode of the Lens, Emma and Craig are joined by Lucas Kelley, a PhD candidate in the History Department at UNC – Chapel Hill. Lucas discusses the historical importance of Tyler Childers’ most recent album, Long Violent History. Childers released the album in the aftermath of the widespread protests against police brutality around the country in the summer of 2020. The closing track is a rallying call for White Appalachians to sympathize with the protests. We discuss how Childers’ uses historical understandings of Appalachia to make an argument, and the long history of violent protest in the mountain South.
For further reading:
- Tyler Childers’ Discography
- Ann Powers, Tyler Childers Pushes Back On Southern Values And Our ‘Long, Violent History’
- Marissa R. Moss, How Songwriter Tyler Childers Became the 21st Century Voice of Appalachia
- Bruce E. Stewart (ed.), Blood in the Hills: A History of Violence in Appalachia, (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011)
Produced by Gabe Moss, Emma Rothberg, and Craig Gill
Edited by Ashley Curry
All opinions are the speakers’ own, and do not represent the official views of UNC or the Department of History.