Map from Richard Dunlop, Texaco Touring Atlas by Rand McNally: United States, Canada, Mexico (Chicago: Texaco, 1966), 6–7, from the James O. Eastland Collection, Special Collections, University of Mississippi Libraries.
“Mississippi’s white Appalachians may have owned the earth, but they could never own the past.”
In 1966, a retired high school principal named George Thompson Pound reached for his Rand McNally atlas. He turned to page six, took a pen, and drew off Appalachia. Starting in West Virginia, he marked along the Blue Ridge Mountains, through the Carolinas, northwest Georgia, and east Alabama.