A community potluck organized by Kentucky Peoples Union in Ashland. Community organizing will be one of the themes of the first Hillbilly Jubilee in Hazard on Oct. 9-10(Photo courtesy Beth Howard)
It’s fall festival season in Kentucky, a time when each of our 120 counties has its time to shine, and small town streets are lined with tents, crafts, local food, and music. Each place has its own unique flair, like London’s World Chicken Festival or my hometown of West Liberty’s Sorghum Festival, but no matter what town you’re in, it’s a time to be proud of our home, our people, and our culture.
But this year’s festival season has arrived at a time when it feels hard to celebrate. Just months after the 250th anniversary of the United States of America and only a month before the 2027 midterm elections, too many of us are having one of the hardest economic years of our lives. We are choosing between groceries or medicine because we can’t afford both. Gas prices are hitting above $4 a gallon and we are defending our homeplaces from data centers and Flock cameras. It’s hard to feel like celebrating this year, and even if we want to, who can afford it?
But it’s exactly this moment that is sparking a different kind of celebration in Eastern Kentucky: The first-ever Hillbilly Jubilee in Hazard, Ky. Oct. 9-10, a two day gathering centered on Appalachian history, culture, and community organizing. The jubilee will train up 30 Eastern Kentuckians who will launch a series of potlucks across our region this fall designed to build strong local relationships, celebrate our state’s rich organizing history, and strategize about how we can fight for a better Kentucky.
The jubilee is about being proud of who we are. The word “hillbilly” has been used to degrade us, dismiss us, and dehumanize us. It’s also been used by grifters like J.D. Vance to exploit our people, place, and stories. But many of us reject that framing and instead are reclaiming the word “hillbilly”, and similarly “redneck,” as a political identity. We are in the lineage of self-proclaimed Eastern Kentucky “hillbilly activist” Eula Hall who fought to provide healthcare for her people through the Mud Creek Clinic, a healthcare clinic that serves anyone regardless of their ability to pay, and her relentless campaign for the federal government to take care of its people. We are also in the lineage of the “redneck” miners of The Battle of Blair Mountain who wore red bandanas and fought together, 10,000 strong Black, white, and immigrant, for their right to unionize in West Virginia. As many have said before, Appalachia and Kentucky need no elegy: we, the hillbillies and rednecks here, are very much alive.
We are rooting in the powerful multiracial worker organizing in the Harlan County “Bloody Harlan” Mine Wars, the Brookside Miner’s Strike, and the Pittston strike. We are learning from Anne and Carl Braden, two of the most well-known white antiracists in the Civil Rights movement, and we are celebrating the Fairness Campaign when Louisville won the first fairness ordinance in the state in 1999 after a 15-year campaign, an ordinance that won trans rights before even NYC and Chicago. We are looking to the Louisville International Harvester’s Strike in 1947 where white and Black workers in the segregated South shut down the company and won their contract after a raucous 40-day strike. We are celebrating our teachers, thousands who protested by having “sick outs” to protect their pensions, and we are honoring one of the largest racial justice uprisings in this country’s history in Louisville after the death of Kentuckian Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville police. We know that all of these historical events have paved the way for us to take action today.
Biblically, a jubilee year is when God commands people to celebrate every 50th year by returning property back to the original people who occupied it, freeing all those enslaved and oppressed, and forgiving our debts. Here in the 250th year of the United States of America, a 50th year, we think it’s time we do what our ancestors have done for generations and organize ourselves to win what we deserve. So, fill up your plate, pull up a chair, and join us.
The hillbilly jubilee is co-sponsored by Appalachians for Appalachia, Common Ground Kentucky, Kentuckians for Energy Democracy, Showing Up for Racial Justice, Appalachia Peoples Union and Mountain Laurels Media. If you would like us to reach out about a potluck near you, please sign up here.
Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
