Photo Exhibit Focuses On Appalachian Blacks

By Mary Beth Spina

Release Date: April 9, 1998 This content is archived.

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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Blacks in two rural Appalachian communities will come to life in a exhibit of photographs on display through May 29 outside the Mainstage theater in the Center for the Arts on the ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ North (Amherst) Campus.

The exhibit, "It Takes Some Kicking: Voices in Black Appalachia," features 40 photographs by Wilburn Hayden, Ph.D., former associate dean of social work at UB; his brother, Ronald, and one of Hayden's former graduate students, Derek Williams.

Hayden, director of the Master's of Social Work Program at the California ÃÛÌÒ´«Ã½ of Pennsylvania, is recognized nationally for his research on blacks in Appalachia, whom he describes as a "minority within a minority."

The exhibit, which records the lives of black residents of two former coal-mining towns in Virginia, also includes narratives excerpted from interviews with its subjects. It has toured nationally through the Appalachian Consortium's Traveling Exhibition Program.