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No restrictions. Open for research.

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Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Major Brown and Leona Brown Papers #5603, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Karida Brown in 2014 (Acc. 102106). Acquired for the Southern Historical Collection as a part of the Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project (EKAAMP) directed by Karida Brown.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Laura Hart, July 2016

Encoded by: Laura Hart, July 2016

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Brown, Major, 1898-1978.
• Coal miners--Appalachian Region.
• Company towns--Kentucky--Harlan County--History.
• Households--Kentucky.
• African American coal miners.
• African Americans--Social life and customs.
• Brown, Karida, 1982-
• Brown, Leona, 1916-1987.
• Coal mines and mining--Kentucky--Harlan County--History.
• Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project.
• International Harvester Company.
• Lynch (Ky.)--History.
• Mining camps--Kentucky--Harlan County--History.
• Mountain life--Kentucky--Harlan County--History--20th century.
• United States Coal and Coke Company.
• United States Steel Corporation.

• Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project Collection (05585)
• Eastern Kentucky Social Club Collection (05606)
• Lynch (Ky) Colored High School West Main Alumni Association Collection (05590)
• Lynch Colored School (Lynch, Ky.) and Lynch High School (Lynch, Ky.) yearbooks are available on the Internet Archive for 1950, 1951, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1973.

Born in Pritchard, Ala., Major Brown (1898-1978) migrated to Lynch, Ky., where he worked for U.S. Coal and Coke through the mid twentieth century and raised a family there with wife Leona Myrick Brown (1916-1987). Leona was also born in Alabama. Major Brown and Leona Brown both died in Lynch, Ky.

Karida Brown and the Brown Family

Sociologist Karida Brown (1982-) was born in Uniondale, N.Y., to Arnita Davis Brown and Richard Brown. Karida Brown received a bachelor's degree in administration from Temple University in 2004, a master's degree in public administration in 2009 from the University of Pennsylvania, a master's degree (2013) and doctoral degree (2016) in sociology from Brown University. Her PhD dissertation was titled Before They Were Diamonds: The Intergenerational Migration of Kentucky's Coal Camp Blacks .

Karida Brown's father Richard Brown (1947-) is a sanitation worker residing in Atlanta, Ga. Richard was raised in Lynch, Ky. He is the son of coal miner Major Brown and homemaker Leona Brown.

Karida Brown's mother Arnita Davis Brown (1953-) is a physical therapist residing in Atlanta, Ga. Arnita was raised in Lynch, Ky. She is the daughter of coal miner Thornton Davis and homemaker Mamie Davis.

Born in Boligee, Ala., Thornton B. Davis (1903-1991) migrated to Lynch, Ky., where he worked for U.S. Coal and Coke through the mid twentieth century and raised a family there with wife Mamie Lee Davis (1918-1993) born in Bessemer, Ala. Both Thornton B. Davis and Mamie Lee Davis died in Cleveland, Ohio.

Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project

The Eastern Kentucky African American Migration Project (EKAAMP) is a public humanities initiative directed by sociologist Karida Brown in partnership with the Southern Historical Collection (SHC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2013, the SHC joined Brown in her efforts to document a multi generational African American community with familial ties to coal mining towns in Harlan County, Ky. Brown has conducted oral history interviews with community members and helped the SHC collect manuscript materials from the community and its social organizations.

The community which Brown studies has its origins in the coalfields of the Appalachian South and specifically the surrounding area of Lynch, Ky. Appalachia was a destination for thousands of African Americans, who left the rural deep South in the early twentieth century during the Great Migration.

A company town, Lynch was established in 1917 by U.S. Coal and Coke Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. The company supplied housing, health care, social services, commissary, churches, schools, and recreation for coal miners and their families. At its peak in the mid twentieth century Lynch's population reached 10,000 and included African Americans and whites with eastern European and British heritage. Although the mines were not strictly segregated, most areas of life, including schools, churches, commissary, and recreation, had separate facilities for blacks and whites until the mid 1960s.

Neighboring Benham, Ky. was also a coal mining camp and company town operated by Wisconsin Steel Company, a subsidiary of International Harvesters Company. The Benham mines closed in the 1970s.

U.S. Steel withdrew its operations in the mid 1960s, and the population of Lynch and the surrounding areas dwindled as families, who had spent only one or two generations in Appalachia, began to move across the country, settling in Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, California, Missouri, and other states. Despite the long distances now separating this close knit community, individuals and families from the Harlan County coal towns Lynch, Benham, and Cumberland retained close ties with each other and nurtured what sociologist Karida Brown has called a "post-migration diasporic identity."

The papers of African American coal miner Major Brown and his spouse Leona Brown are chiefly financial items reflecting their household expenses and income from the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s in Lynch, Ky., a United States Steel Corporation company town in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. Bills, receipts, cashed checks, and account balances for utilities, department and specialty stores, medical care, and life insurance form the bulk of the collection. Other materials include employment and pension documents, property records including taxes paid on their home in Lynch, documents related to the Lynch Independent Public Schools, funeral programs and death notices, and vital records for the birth of one of their children, social insurance, and the 1920 census. The collection contains only two letters, both from former Lynch residents, one post card, and a few greeting cards.