Harry Monroe Caudill (May 3, 1922 – November 29, 1990) was an American author, historian, lawyer, legislator, and environmentalist from Letcher County, in the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky. A common theme explored in many of Caudill’s writings is the historic underdevelopment of the Appalachian region (particularly his own home area of southeastern Kentucky). In several of his books (most prominently Night Comes to the Cumberlands, 1962) and many of his published articles, he probes the historical poverty of the region. Harry and his family were close personal friends and exemplars of what Appalachian self-awareness means.

Dr. John B. Stephenson (1997-1994), my academic advisor and college mentor, became a professor of sociology at the University of Kentucky in 1966. Beginning in 1970, he served as the dean of undergraduate studies. He established a center for Appalachian studies through the grant that he received from the Rockefeller Foundation. From 1973 to 1974 he was a fellow at the American Council on Education. In 1979, he accepted the position of director of UK’s Appalachian Center. In 1984, at the age of forty-six, Dr. John Stephenson was selected as the seventh president of Berea College.

Professor James S. Brown was a sociologist on the faculty of the University of Kentucky from 1946 to 1982, whose pioneering studies of society, demography, and migration in Appalachia (including his ethnography of “Beech Creek”) helped to establish the field of Appalachian Studies at U.K. and beyond.

Dr. David Walls (1941-2020) was an academic who made significant contributions to Appalachian studies and to the popular understanding of social movements. At the University of Kentucky, Walls worked toward a doctorate in sociology and edited Appalachia in the Sixties with his faculty mentor John B. Stephenson. He was a keystone figure in the creation of the Appalachian Center. He retired as professor emeritus of sociology at Sonoma State University (SSU) in California, where he was dean of extended education from 1984 to 2000.