More Historic Screenings

Last week there were two more historic screenings of Rothstein's First Assignment.  On Wednesday, November 9th there was a screening at Sweet Briar College in Amherst, Virginia, while the previous Saturday,  Rothstein's First Assignment was screened at Vinegar Hill Theater in Charlottesville as part of the Virginia Film Festival. 

The Sweet Briar screening on Wednesday evening was important for two reasons.  First, Sweet Briar played its own role in eugenics.  One of the authors of the famous eugenic book, Mongrel Virginians: The Win Tribe (1926), had been a Sweet Briar Professor just before its publication.   The Win Tribe focused on a poor interracial community in Amherst County so called 'WIN'  due its 'White, Indian and Negro' heritage.   Its authors falsely connected the community's poverty to this interracial makeup.  Funded by the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC, The WIN Tribe's lead author was Arthur Estabrook.  Below is a link to an image from Estabrook's photograph's of The 'WIN Tribe. '  Estabrook kept a scrapbook of photographs as part of his 'documentation.'  His photographs reflect the role of photography in eugenic studies. 

"Callie Black" from Estabrook's Scrapbook

http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/static/images/1255.html


The second reason the screening was important was that it was attended by Mary Francis.  To a large degree Mary Francis is Rothstein's First Assignment's central character.  Though her appearance comes at the end of the film, it is her family that was a the center of Rothstein's First Assignment.  Virtually all of her aunts and uncles had children that were sent to the Colony. For reasons that are still not clear, Rothstein gave more attention to her family than any other.

At the age of 7 she was sent to the Colony in Amherst County where she was forcibly sterilized.  As Mary Bishop reported,  the operation almost killed her. Mary wasn't released from the Colony until the late fifties.  She believes her marriage dissolved because she couldn't bear children.



Having Mary Francis at the Sweet Briar screening of Rothstein's First Assignment was also important for Mary Francis.  Mary Bishop, who has reported extensively on eugenics in Virginia and first reported Mary Francis's story,  explained to me that most former residents of the Colony slip into obscurity.  The shame that comes with being labeled "feebleminded"  creates its own exile.   Few are willing to talk about their experiences.  Of the thousands of individuals who were sterilized in Virginia, only a handful have been willing to go on the record. 

When Mary Bishop heard that Mary Francis was going to come, she decided to also attend.  She wanted to witness the event.  It was an emotional experience for everyone.  Mary Francis's caretaker was so moved that she cried. 

Mary Bishop with Mary Francis (seated) at Sweet Briar

The second historic screening occurred as part of the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville.  On Nov 5 at Vinegar Hill Theater in Charlottesville, Rothstein's First Assignment opened to a packed house.  The screening had sold out the day before and by some counts there were over 60 people without tickets who wanted to get in. Even those of us on the panel had difficulty getting tickets for our spouses.

Part of the reason it was so popular was that RFA had received a large amount of press leading up to the event.  The local paper, The Daily Progress led with RFA in its coverage of The Virginia Film Festival ('Rothstein's First Assignment' examines documentary truth).  Sandy Hausman of NPR covered it (A Dark Part of Virginia's Past Comes to the Big Screen) while even the local TV station, Channel 29 picked it up (Experimental Documentary Tells a Different Story).

The other part of its popularity likely had much to do with the fact that Rothstein's First Assignment is largely a local story.  Many elements of the story connect with Charlottesville and the University of Virginia.  The social worker, Miriam Sizer who apparently worked with Rothstein (she was photographed by him) received her Masters from UVA.  While Shenandoah National Park is popular with Charlottesville residents. 

There was also the local support of Madison and Orange Counties.  In what has been a bit of a surprise,  there has been more support than I anticipated from descendants of mountain residents who were displaced when they created the Park.  I had feared that with the unorthodox approach I took in making the film (it was originally intended to be an experimental film), I would lose this local audience.  In my efforts to have RFA structurally explore the idea of documentary truth while it conventionally questions the 'truth' of Rothstein's assignment, I feared I might alienate local residents.

To my surprise it turns out that they have given Rothstein's First Assignment a large amount of its support.  Indeed at a screening in Madison one descendant came to my defense during a Q and A asserting the truth of the sterilizations,  while a viewer at a screening in Orange asked how she could have her daughter see it.  Local screenings have often brought to light stories unknown to me.  

As case in point, though Rothstein's First Assignment  has been screened locally three times, there were still surprises at the Virginia Film Festival.  For one I was able to fill in a missing link in one of Rothstein's photographs.  A woman came up to me after the screening and identified her mother in one of Rothsteins's images.  Most of the children are not identified in Rothstein's captions making it difficult to track them down.  While during the Q and A after the screening, a man made a claim that individuals from UVA were not only connected to eugenics, but also to the famous Tuskegee experiment.  A claim I had not heard before.*
 _________
* It has been brought to my attention that Paul Lombardo explains the link to Tuskegee in an article with Gregory Dorr titled, Eugenics, Medical Education, and the Public Health Service: Another Perspective on the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. 

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An Historic Screening of Rothstein's First Assignment

An early screening of Rothstein's First Assignment was held at Woodberry Forest School.  My intention for the screening was that it be for the residents of Madison County and the community of Woodberry Forest.  I wanted to update the faculty on my latest project, giving them the chance to view it before it went out to the festivals.   But mostly, I wanted the residents of Madison County to see the film since it was largely their story.

Most of those who appear in the film are from Madison County.   The majority are descendants of Rothstein's subjects.  Without their help I  couldn't have made the film.  To thank them I had made a point to invite them to the screening so that they might see the film.  As Woodberry Forest is in Madison County, it was the perfect venue for them to see the film.

On the night the film was to screen, there were problems in getting things set up.  For some reason we were unable to get the sound to work.   After working on this for over an hour we ran out of time and were forced to run things through my laptop.  This created its own problem as I hadn't brought my charger.  After getting the film started I had to rush home to get the charger for fear that the battery would die in the middle of the screening.  Because of this we were unable to do a proper sound check. 

As a result,  I was not ready for my first questioner.  I had barely finished apologizing for our sound problems when I was confronted by a very angry spectator.  From the beginning he challenged me on a number of aspects about the film.  No matter my answer, he was  never satisfied.  For what seemed like a long time, his challenges kept coming.  

Eventually the audience grew impatient and requested that we move on.  Most of them readily accepted my findings and wanted to know more.  They knew the story better than I did as it was their story.  It was a story they had been waiting a very long time to hear.


One man in particular asked me if I knew about the graveyard up at the institution in Staunton.  At what is known as Western State or the DeJarnette Center in Staunton, Virginia, there are unmarked graves.  Though the film barely touches on this facility at Staunton, I knew that at least one of Rothstein's subjects had been sent there. Visiting it myself and photographing the graves, I  was disturbed by it.  Though the facility is closed, the stories still circulate about what went on there.  Many locals feel it is haunted.  My questioner himself had a sense of urgency.  I sensed that there was much more I should know about the activities at Staunton that might connect to my film.

Yet before I was able to explore this, my first questioner reasserted himself and began to challenge me again.  He told me that I didn't have proof.  That I was making statements that I couldn't support.  Things started all over again. 

At about that time a woman from the audience spoke out and came to my defense.  Sitting at the back of the theater, in no uncertain terms she confirmed what I had uncovered.  She said straight out that it did happen.  That yes, children were sterilized.  

What I didn't know at the time was that the man who was challenging me was sitting with Rothstein's daughter, Annie Segan.  He was Annie's friend and they had both driven down from NYC to see the film.  I didnt know this because they hadn't told me.  I'm not even sure how they found out about the screening.  Not even my friends in neighboring Charlottesville knew about the screening.   

What I also didn't know was that the woman who came to my defense was the wife of the great-grandson of the man at the center of Rothstein's project.  She knew the true story of what happened to Rothstein's subjects because she had married into the family.  Though Rothstein had written on his caption that this man's great grandfather was to get a new home from the government,  the story I uncovered was that he had been institutionalized at this Staunton facility.  I even found a document stating that he was buried in one of those unmarked graves.

It took awhile for the importance of the screening to sink in.  As a photographer myself, I had sought to attend to Annie.  I knew very well the importance of her father to my profession and I felt somehow responsible for her well being.  I had not wanted her to see the film.  Had she asked me, I would have told her not to come. 

Yet I couldn't deny what I had found while making the film.  There were too many levels of confirmation.  I was skeptical in the beginning.  I even tried to disprove it.   What I found challenged my own understandings of a profession I have both taught and practiced.  But I would only be fooling myself if I denied it.   I couldn't look away,  not with all the evidence I had unearthed.

When the events of that screening finally sorted themselves out, I  realized the historical nature of the event.  For probably the first time since 1935, I had brought together those impacted by the events defining Rothstein's assignment.

That Annie's friend Brodie had challenged my film so strongly, while the wife of a descendant of the man at the center of Rothstein's project had come strongly to its defense spoke volumes.  When I later recognized this descendant he said to me "I told you you were going to stir up a hornets' nest." 

To see footage of this event click here for my student, Peter Chen's, documentation of it.

Nethers Post Office

a still from the film, Rothstein's First Assignment

Rothstein's cover image for his book

Originally I had thought Rothstein's First Assignment might be a re-photographic project. Something along the lines of Mark Klett and William Christenberry's work. I was intrigued by the idea that almost all of Rothstein's sites were now part of a National Park. Instead of the usual routine of documenting the encroachment of development, I thought it might be interesting to document the transformation of previously inhabited land back to 'pristine wilderness.' The whole idea of returning land back to nature seemed problematic. I felt it to be based on what is called, "The Pristine Myth." The false conception we have regarding the origins of much of America. A belief that largely denies the existence of Native Americans.

I started with the Nethers Post Office. The cover image for Rothstein's own book on the depression (see above). I had originally hoped that the building would still be there, but it wasn't. While looking for where it had been, I saw Mr Dodson out in his yard next door. I asked him if the empty lot next to his house was where the Nethers PO had been. He confirmed that it was and told me that his grandfather was in the cover Post Office image. In fact he told me, his brother has the old PO sign. That was how I secured my first interview for the project. The turning point for Rothstein's First Assignment becoming a film.

another Rothstein image of Nethers Post Office

There were a couple of things about Rothstein's photograph that seemed odd to me, even then. If you look closely at the boy in the back picture he's blurred from moving too much. This indicates a slow shutter speed. Everything else is sharp. Also in the top right you can see Rothstein's hand blocking the light from producing flare on the lens. Because of the buildings orientation, he's shooting almost into the sun. These details show that Rothstein didn't shoot this image with a Leica as he talks about in the Richard Doud interview, but with a large format camera on a tripod. The image is clearly staged as even John Dodson would later attest.

Rothstein took a number of photographs of the Post Office. Other images have different people. In some there's a man reading a paper. Some are even taken with a 35mm camera, but the most important were produced with this large format camera.

Rothstein 35mm image of Nethers Post Office

The Nether's Post Office was clearly important to his assignment. In trying to understand this I looked it up at the Prints and Photographs division at the Library of Congress. There the Nether's PO image is simply filed with all the other Post Office photos. The imporatance being that it is a Post Office. But that doesn't begin to tell the whole story of why Rothstein spent so much time there. It wasn't until I found an archival film which also documented the Post Office that I would begin to understand the true reason that Rothstien spent so much time at the Nethers Post Office. The film largely anticipates Rothstein's assignment. Produced before his arrival, it documents many of the same people Rothstein would later photograph. It also tells a story that Rothstein is silent on.

Constructing Documentary Truth

The questions I set out to explore with this film revolved around our ideas about documentary truth. Simply put, I was concerned about how documentaries are produced to depict truth. Do documentaries reveal truth or do they construct it?

This question had become especially problematic when I started making films. For me it seemed the only true documentary would be one made with a continuous take. Like the early films of Edison and Lumiere where they just turned on the camera and let it run. To me this was truth. But that was before montage, that was before films came to be constructed. It was before Edison realized he could make money from films.

And that for me was where a documentary's claim to truth breaks down. When you put two different splices of film together who's to know that they have any relationship to each other that constitutes truth? How do you know if the first splice happened before or after the second splice? The whole continuity of a film is an illusion. It only exists in the viewer's mind.

Edison's Film, The Sneeze

Not that the still photographer isn't is without their own problems. For me the most problematic documentary aspect of still photography is that of framing. How does a photographer decide what to put in the frame and what to leave out? How do they decide who to photograph and who not to photograph? What detail is important and which one is not?

To think a documentary photographer just documents the situation is not how it works. Documentary photographers are sent to document a story that has usually been written before they arrive on the scene. If the story doesn't fit what they find (which is often the case), they have ways of making it work. They are not there to contradict the story they have been sent to get. Otherwise they'd soon be out of business. Like their film counterparts, documentary photographers construct their photo essays.

So at the beginning of this project, I was interested in how Rothstein constructed his story from the reality that was presented to him. I knew going into this that Rothstein's story did not fit how the locals saw themselves. Rothstein's story of poverty and illiteracy was a cherry picked truth. It didn't tell the whole story of the mountain people. It wasn't their story, it was an outsider's story. As I was told at the Madison Historical Society, 'Rothstein took his photographs to make everyone look poor.'

Not that anyone doubted there were poor people in the mountains. There were. Madison County already had in place a local welfare system of sorts to deal with the problem. The poor just weren't the majority of the population. As Jimmy Brown put it, it was like going to New York City and photographing Harlem in the midst of its poverty, and then using those photographs to define all the inhabitants of Manhattan. It wasn't the truth.

So I set up a series of formal devices to explore Rothstein's assignment to look at documentary structural issues, devices that came to comprise the basic structure of the film, and I decided not to construct my truth but to find it. I wanted to see what my subjects would give me and see how it fit with the traditional narrative. My only boundaries were to stay within Rothstein's assignment. All I would bring to my interviews would be Rothstein's photographs. I wanted my subjects to reveal their truth as it related to Rothstein's photographs.

On the left is Blanche with an unidentified child. Rothstein identifies her as Mrs Nicholson. On the right is Sam Corbin. Sam and Blanche are sister and brother and they are posing in front of the same house, probably at the same time (with one of the same children ). The camera is a large format camera, not a leica as is evidenced by the frame and the light leaks.



What I didn't expect to find was a story behind the story of Rothstein's first assignment. That Rothstein's story was not only a misrepresentation of the area in which he was photographing, but that it also was probably not the story he was sent to document. About half way through the film I started to find that there was another secret, incredibly sinister story behind the official narrative. A story that I had never heard, nor read about. A story most of the mountain people had never heard about either.

To understand that story I had to study the book Hollow Folk. Hollow Folk is a book that at the time was considered to be an important scientific study. Published in 1933 if focuses largely on the same people Rothstein would later photograph. Though now discredited, it provides an important window into the narrative that must have guided Rothstein.

The Apple Vendor and the Cliser Eviction

Apple Vendor Arthur  Rothstein Oct 1935

Cliser eviction Oct 1935

One the left, the Cliser Eviction photographed Oct 1935 by the Park. On the right an Apple Vendor photographed in October of 1935 by Arthur Rothstein. Both photographs were taken on Lee Highway near what would become the entrance to the Park.



When I began Rothstein's First Assignment (RFA), I looked for writings that Rothstein had left on this first assignment of his career. Rothstein was known for leaving type written notes on many of his assignments. Erol Morris's blog has an example of Rothstein's notes on his famous Dust Storm image. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-case-of-the-inappropriate-alarm-clock/.

I went to the Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division to see if there were any notes on Rothstein's assignment in Shenandoah National Park in October of 1935. I found the dust storm notes, but Rothstein left no notes until about six months after his premiere assignment. I asked Beverly Brannon, curator at the Prints and Photographs, why no notes. She explained that in the beginning things were too chaotic and since the assignment was so close to Washington, there weren't any notes. I checked with the Roy Stryker archives in Louisville, KY and the archivist there also said that Roy Stryker, Rothstein's boss, also hadn't left any notes on this assignment. I even went to a collection of Rothstein's materials downstairs from the Prints and Photographs Department. Nothing there either. About the only thing I could find was the Richard Doud interview recorded in NYC in the 60s, which wasn't much help either.

So I went to the historical record to try to get a sense of the situation. I wanted to know what things were like when Rothstein went up into the mountains. The thing that I found that struck me was the Cliser eviction. On Oct 3, 1935 there was a well publicized eviction near the entrance to the Park. Melachnton Cliser, who owned a gas station, was resisting being moved from the park. More than that he was protesting it. He was talking to the press and writing his congressmen. The locals were behind him and he was starting to get a lot of press.

Since Rothstein's assignment also occured in October of 1935, I thought he might of taken a picture of the eviction. Some type of record even if he arrived too late to capture the actual eviction. Since he was working for what was known as the Resettlement Administration, it seemed the Cliser eviction would be something that he would photograph. But he didnt.

Oddly I found that he did photograph an apple vendor on the same road nearby. This meant he had to have passed by the Cliser site. Why photograph an apple vendor, which had nothing to do with Resettlement, but then not photograph a man whom the government was evicting from his land? To me this seemed more important to the government agency he was working for. After all the Park photographed the Cliser eviction. For some reason it wasn't part of the story Rothstein was sent to document.

Cecil Brown, the Roman Coliseum and Fennel

Cecil Brown with Coliseum photograph in background

Cecil's interview was another instance of one thing leading to another. When I had interviewed his relative, Jimmy Brown, Jimmy told me that Cecil had the photograph of the Roman Coliseum in Rothstein's portrait of his grandfather, Postmaster Brown. That was my original intention for interviewing Cecil. Since with John Dodson, I had located the sign for the Nethers Post Office, I thought that adding the photograph of the Coliseum to the mix would give a re-photographic texture to my film.

Postmaster Brown   A Rothstein

It also seemed odd to me that someone who was described as poor would have such a large and wonderful photograph of the Coliseum in 1935. To my mind this indicated education and something beyond poverty. It contradicted the narrative I was familiar with, that all the mountain residents were poor and uneducated. Not to mention Postmaster Brown is posing with a book in Rothstein's photograph.

Mrs Dyer with child  A Rothstein

What I didn't know was that Cecil had guided Rothstein up into the mountians to take his photographs of Mrs Dyer and her children. This came up when I was showing Cecil, Rothstein's book of photographs. When we came to the page with the caption reading 'Mrs Dodson,' he corrected the book and preceded to tell us his story of taking Rothstein to the Dyer home. He didn't remember much about Rothstein. All he could remember was the car that he drove. He agreed to take Rothstein up into the mountains just to get a ride in the car.
That change in identification would later prove important when I went to look up the records, though I didnt understand it at the time. It would also explain Rothstein's curious edit of the this family's images. When looked at as a whole, Rothstein's images of this family tell us a very different story.

Another story came up when we got to Rothstein's picture of Fennel Corbin. The first thing Cecil said about Fennel is that he had shot a man. Its a bit of local lore that Fennel shot and killed a Dodson boy. Everyone seems to have their own version of this story, even Pollock, the owner of Skyland. Cecil's version seems to combine two stories of shootings in Corbin Hollow as Fennel couldn't have been old enough to serve in the Civil war. Yet Cecil's version tells much about Fennel's reputation in the community. Fennel's family seems to have been the poorest in the neighborhood and his neighbors had various responses to that poverty.

Fennel as photographed by Rothstein

Fennel from A Trip to Skyland

What was intriguing to me was how much media attention Fennel's family got for their poverty. They were featured in the film, Trip to Skyland and Shenandoah National Park. They were at the center of the book, Hollow Folk. The Park photographed them both before and after Rothstein's visit and there are even audio recordings of the family made in 1937. Not to mention the newspaper articles in The Washington Post and the New York Times. That Rothstein spent most of his time photographing just this extended family clearly wasn't accidental. It was more likely preordained. The key to this media attention of course was Miriam Sizer.

Who Was With Rothstein on His Assignment?

Arthur Rothstein

In doing my research before setting out, I came across Paula Rabinowitz's "Voyeurism and Class Consciousness: James Agee and Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." The article raised a number of questions for me. Most notably, what was Rothstein's relationship to his subjects? We often think that Rothstein just stumbled across his subjects. That like a city street photographer he came across his subjects in his random walks in the mountains. Rothstein largely makes that claim in the Richard Doud interview.

"I went out there and was in a cabin on the top of a mountain for a few weeks, walked around and became acquainted with these people. At the beginning they were very shy about having pictures taken, but I would carry my camera along and make no attempt to take pictures. "

Oral history interview with Arthur Rothstein, 1964 May 25, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

But I sensed that that wasn't the case. As a photographer myself, I felt that someone must have arranged for him to photograph the people that he did.  It made no sense that he could've have found his subjects on his own.   He was twenty years old and by his own admission had rarely been outside of New York City.

Rothstein's assignment reminded me of an assignment I had done in Nepal on AIDS/HIV. In this situation, even though I had gone to school in Nepal and was familiar with it, I was dependent on an NGO (non government organization) to lead me to my subjects. Though I  didn't usually photograph them, a social worker was always present while I worked. I was dependent on my subjects relationship to this NGO to get my photographs for the story.  

So I was curious, who was with Rothstein on his assignment? What was their relationship to his subjects? Did it reflect the same sense of class consciousness that Rabinowitz writes about? At first I thought Rabinowitz overstated things. After all, the FSA narrative suggests Rothstein was there to help the poor. Indeed the Washington Post article that was published with Rothstein's photographs is titled,  Government Moves Mountain Residents from 19th century to 20th century.  

But then I realized the proximity of Rothstein's subjects to the elite resort, Skyland, and I began to question my assumptions. There clearly was a relationship between the poor residents of Corbin Hollow and their rich politically powerful neighbors nearby. A relationship that had been developing for over thirty years before Rothstein showed up. Many Corbin Hollow residents worked at Skyland and there were also Corbin Hollow residents who begged at the resort.

In my interviews I heard many stories about the financial relationship of Corbin Hollow residents and the resort Skyland.  Some residents cleared trails and supplied firewood for the resort. Other residents even sold  George Pollock rattlesnakes for his famous snake dance.  And there were the begging boards that poor residents used to ask for money.   Everyone it seemed had a financial relationship to Pollock and his resort.

Eddie Nicholson home 1933 or 1934

Eddie Nicholson 1935 (Rothstein)

There also was a curious photograph in Audrey Horning's book, In the Shadow of Ragged Mountain. In the chapter on Corbin Hollow there is a picture that shows a group of 'outsiders' visiting Corbin Hollow. This picture was significant to me because it showed what is normally cropped out of a picture, the photographer and the 'others' who are with him. Instead of the normal framing, it showed a group of men with a
photographer, probably Dr Sexton, visiting Eddie Nicholson's house and filming his wife, Blanche. You can see Sexton leaning over in the foreground looking into his viewfinder.


When I finally tracked this image down at the Park's Archives in Luray, the caption on the back said they were visiting the 'Hollow Folk,' a direct reference to the book Hollow Folk. It spoke volumes to me about the relationship between Corbin Hollow residents and their benefactors. It was starting to look like Rabinowitz was right. When I realized that Rothstein had gone up to that same house less than three years later and photographed Eddie Nicholson sitting on the back porch I wondered,  could he have been accompanied by a similar entourage?

I found my answer in a Washington Post Article published on November 3, 1935. In a feature article, Rothstein’s photographs are used in what is presumably his first published piece.  Titled, Blue Ridge Hillbillies Get a Transfer-From 19^th to 20^th Century, the article by Virginia Warren highlights the upcoming Resettlement of mountain residents to make way for the Park. 

Warren’s article provides a clear idea of how Rothstein worked. She tells us that she was accompanied by, ‘a Rural Resettlement Official, a photographer and a reporter for a great British newspaper.’[1] With the added information that they had a guide, the local school teacher, Warren presents us with scenario similar to what we see in the Sexton photograph.

 

Like Hollow Folk, Warren’s article focuses on the same extended Corbin Hollow family.  At times paraphrasing the book, Warren’s article is clearly influenced by it.  She even repeats the odd assertion that the happiness of Corbin Hollow residents is a sign of their backwardness.   Though she changes the names from the book, names that have already been changed by Hollow Folk’s authors, it is clear that she is talking about the same people.  ‘Mazie,’ a central figure in Hollow Folk becomes ‘Mattie’ and is likewise central in Warren’s article.  She is also central to Rothstein’s archive on this project.  

Yet in her description of Rothstein’s working situation, Warren seems to contradict Rothstein.    From Rothstein’s description we are led to believe that his selection criteria was random and that he was alone.  But with Warren’s article it’s clear that the Corbins essentially all lived next door to one another in upper Corbin Hollow.  In her article Warren describes going door to door in what appears to be an organized tour, 
 

 “The party halted at every cabin in the vicinity…[1]” 

Further contradicting Rothstein’s account, this ‘party’ has been set up to promote the Resettlement Project and had gone so far as to invite a foreign reporter.  In sharp contrast to Rothstein’s description, his subjects were part of a display that had been selected for him to photograph.

Indeed it would have been difficult for Rothstein to get to know the Corbins. There were a limited number of outsiders who could venture into Corbin Hollow.  Outsiders needed an introduction to the community, they reportedly could not wander in freely. Additionally Rothstein would have had difficulty communicating with his subjects.  They were well known to have an Old English dialect.  Only one outsider, Miriam Sizer, is reported to have learned this dialect.[2] That Rothstein could have just wandered around and gotten to know this extended Corbin Hollow family contradicts Warren’s article and all other accounts I could find. 

 

But even Warren’s article is wrong on its most basic point. The residents of Corbin Hollow did not participate in the Resettlement Project. Despite all comments to the contrary, the Corbin’s were not moved to any of the Resettlement camps.  Though the government still characterizes Rothstein’s project as,

 ‘to document the lives of some Virginia farmers who were being evicted to make way for the Shenandoah National Park and about to be relocated by the Resettlement Administration,’ [3]

this was not what happened.   

The Corbin’s were not even farmers.  Though Rothstein does photograph a number of farms in the region, they have no known connection to the Corbin Families at the center of his project.  That he photographs these farms and not the farmers who worked them is curious.[4] Given the characterization of Rothstein’s project by the government, it seems Rothstein’s photographs of these farms are meant to imply falsely that these were Rothstein’s subjects farms.        

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[1] Ibid.

[2] A recording I found of one of Rothstein’s subjects, ‘Mazie,’ made in 1937, makes clear that Rothstein could not have understood her.  This recording was made by UVA Professors Atcheson Hench and Archibald Hill and has Miriam Sizer doing the interview. 

[3] Documenting America.  Tenant Farmers. Library of Congress.  memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fachap05.html. Accessed May 26, 2013.

[4] Further complicating this issue is the Via Case where a group of Apple Orchard owners were contesting the condemnation of their land to build the Park.  At the time of Rothstein’s project this case was before the Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court ultimately chose not to review their case.   

   

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[1] Warren, Virginia Lee.  Blue Ridge Hillbillies Get a Transfer -- From 19th to 20th Century

The Washington Post. Nov 3, 1935

[2] For reasons that are not entirely clear, the authors of Hollow Folk changed the names of both the locations and their residents.

Hollow Folk and the Objective Observer

One of the most troubling aspects I confronted in making Rothstein's First Assignment was the myth of the objective observer.  In both Rothstein's depictions of his subjects and  Hollow Folk's findings about the same subjects, the presence of those 'documenting' residents of Corbin Hollow is cloaked in a shroud of invisibility.  The assumption of those doing the  documentation is that their presence does not impact the events they are studying.  The writers of Hollow Folk are detached scientists,  Rothstein is using an 'unobtrusive camera. '  We are given a story and a set of photographs in which the creators are absent. 

The actual theory behind Hollow Folk was especially troubling in its misuse of the idea of objectivity.   In the five Hollows that are 'studied' by its authors, it is reasoned that Corbin Hollow is the most backward (poor) because of its isolation from society.   That Corbin Hollow's current state of affairs can be explained by its isolation from society. 

Yet the idea that Corbin Hollow was the most backward mountain community in the area due to its location ignores the fact that Pollock's resort, Skyland, was right next to Corbin Hollow.  At the time of the writing of Hollow Folk, Corbin Hollow had a long established relationship to Skyland.   Some families had been employed by Pollock for decades,  while others had traditionally sold him firewood, moonshine and even snakes for his famous snake dance. 

Though Hollow Folk notes this employment of Corbin Hollow residents by Skyland, it does not take its influence on the community into account.  Perhaps because Miriam Sizer and other researchers stayed at Skyland, Hollow Folk extends its objective observer status to Pollock's resort thereby maintaining its central thesis of Corbin Hollow's isolation.  

George Pollock in A Trip to Skyland

An equally plausible explanation of Corbin Hollow's problems could actually be the presence of Skyland. Indeed when the depression hit, Skyland stopped providing the income Corbin Hollow residents had come to rely on.  George Pollock reduced his employment of Corbin Hollow residents as his resort lost business.  Since  many Corbin Hollow residents no longer  farmed, they had become dependent on this income to obtain food and other necessities.  As there were few if any alternative sources of income in the mountains, Corbin Hollow residents quickly descended into poverty with the advent of the depression.  In Audrey Horning's book, In the Shadow of Ragged Mountain, she notes a FERA report published in 1935 that recognizes this connection. 

Skyland Guest Dressed as an Indian (Native American)

To display this issue of objectivity in the film, I placed some writings from Hollow Folk with some archival footage from the film, A Trip to Skyland and Shenandoah National Park.   I did it in reverse to display that Hollow Folks authors could just as well be talking about themselves and other guests at Skyland.

Skyland Guests from A Trip to Skyland.

Pollocks parties at Skyland worked well to illustrate Hollow Folk.  In another instance of role reversal -a major theme that runs throughout Rothstein's First Assignment; I found that I could easily recast Pollock's guests as the subjects of Hollow Folk.  Pollock's costumed parties more clearly 'illustrated' the authors 'long journey from primitive ways of living to modern social order,'  than did the residents of the five hollows they were studying.  Even Pollock's famous snake dance reflected a common stereotype of the region, that of religious snake handling.

Fennel's Bed

Fennel sitting on his bed as photographed by Rothstein in 1935

Fennel's Bed in the Park in 2010

It was difficult to find the sites in the park where Rothstein had taken his pictures. There were many ruins, but after 75 years and a major fire much of the remains were gone. It wasn't until the end of my project that I was able to find the site of Fennel's home.  With an old USGS map of the park showing where the home sites had been and the current Potomac Appalachian Trail Club map, I was finally able to determine where Rothstein took his photographs. 

I was startled to find Fennel's bed still on site in the Park. After 75 years, his bed was still there and only about 10 yards from where Rothstein had photographed him sitting on it. There was a lot of stuff still at the site. Much more than at other sites I had visited. I saw remains of a cast iron cookstove, pieces of leather from an old shoe, and shards of pottery from coffee cups. There was even a second bed. I'm not sure who owned the second bed.  But it might of been Dicie's as it was close to Fennel's.  

Finding the beds troubled me, why would someone move and not take their bed? Whenever you see someone move, they always take their bed. Considering Fennel was poor, it didn't seem to me likely he would leave his cast iron bed behind if he could help it. Instead it confirmed what information I had already found. Namely that Fennel had no choice on where he went when he was moved out of the park. It seems pretty clear that he wasn't resettled like Rothstein's caption said. Documents I found indicated he had been institutionalized. 

Photographing Fennel's bed in the Park felt like photographing a crime scene.   Fennel did not benefit from the government program Rothstein's image of him was used to promote.  Though his image was used to promote Appalachian Culture, the Appalachian Culture of which he was a part was destroyed when they made the Park.   For all these years his fate has largely been kept secret.  Family members tell me they don't even know where he is buried.

Margaret Dodson, Uncle Benny and Pollock's Snakes

Margaret Dodson ©RRobinson

Finding Margaret Dodson turned out to be an incredible stroke of luck. While scouting to see if I could figure out where the mountain people had been settled in Madison County, I discovered that there was a road in Madison County named Resettlement Rd. On a lark, one day I decided to take a drive and see what I could find. I took my camera with me just in case.

While driving down Resettlement I came across a man named Wayne who was working in the yard. He was the only one outside so I pulled over and asked him if this was where they had sent the mountain people after moving them out. Surprising to me, he confirmed that it was. If fact he told me, his mother had lived up in the mountains before it was a Park. She was inside and he said he would ask her if she would agree to being interviewed. She did and so I went inside with my camera and a small microphone.

At the time I didn't really know what questions to ask, so I let Rothstein's images stir up Margaret's memories. It was clear when she got started that Wayne and her daughter Kitty, had been told all her stories many times. They seemed to know them almost better than she did and they often corrected her. And were a lot of stories to tell. She told me about how her mother (Wayne and Kitty's grandmother) had worked at Skyland, Pollocks resort for over seventy years. How she used to walk over two miles each way down a mountain trail to get to work.

'Uncle Benny' Arthur Rothstein

As we were going through Rothstein's book, unexpectedly, she came across a picture of her brother sitting on a porch with a guitar. No one knew this. The Dodson's had never seen Rothstein's book and he had simply captioned the picture, "son of a squatter." Luckily the camera was rolling and we got it on film. You can hear Wayne and Kitty's surprise to have their mother identify their uncle Benny.

Later Margaret Dodson told me a curious story. A story about how George Pollock, the owner of the Skyland, used to perform with snakes. And not just any snake but rattlesnakes and copperheads. It was the thing that she most remembered about him. She told me about how he kept his snakes in a bathtub. Until that is, one escaped and climbed into bed with him. That marked the end of it.

It was this snake story that would help me understand an important discovery. After interviewing Mrs Dodson, I went to the National Archives in College Park to see if they had any archival footage that I could use for my film. I was looking for anything that would help give context to Rothstein's images. Something to help tell the story and put things in context.

George Pollock from A Trip to Skyland

What I found was this strange film titled, A Trip to Skyland and Shenandoah National Park. Dated with a question mark 1936?, the film at first seem to be just what I was looking for. It had black and white footage of the Park from the 30's. The perfect sort of thing a filmmaker wants. But as I watched it further it started to become very strange. At one point, all the people in the film were dressed up in costumes. They were performing what appeared to be a ritual all dressed up as Arabs in black face. There was even a man performing with snakes who was at the center of this ritual. For awhile this puzzled me. I thought it might be some unrelated footage. But then I realized it was Pollock performing his snake dance up at Skyland. This was what Margaret Dodson had told me about, Pollock's famous snake dance. Without Margaret Dodson I might have overlooked it.

Later I would return to interview Margaret Dodson again to see if she could tell me more about this film. It was then that she would tell me her story about Miriam Sizer and the seven Corbin Hollow children who were taken to Washington DC to have their tonsils taken out.

Miriam Sizer, Erskine Caldwell and The Kallikaks

Erskine Caldwell (Carl Van Vechten)

What I thought would be a major theme in the film, but ended up being an undercurrent was that of social worker Miriam Sizer's connection to the bestselling writer of Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell.

Miriam Sizer

When I first started hearing about Miriam Sizer, I couldn't understand her motivations. She seemed to be putting far too much effort into her studies of the mountain people. I knew about her contributions to the book, 'Hollow Folk'  and the government study that preceded it.   Yet there seemed to be nothing else that came out of her studies. Though she does get some credit in the book, that didn't explain the sustained effort that she put into her studies over several years. 

Again I went to the historical record to see what was going on. I wanted to see if Miriam Sizer reflected her times.  What I found that seemed to explain things was a book titled Tobacco Road. At the top of the NY Times Bestseller list during much of the thirties (a list that only began in the thirties), Tobacco Road seemed to dominate the literary scene. Written by Erskine Caldwell, the book told a sordid story about a poor southern family named the Bunglers.  

What eventually became clear to me was that this book exemplified what the literary world was doing at the time of Miriam Sizers' study of the mountain people. Everyone who was anyone was writing about the poverty of the south.  The book had even been turned into a major Broadway play, launching Hollywood careers for many of its actors and making a fortune for Caldwell.  It seemed Miriam Sizer might have thought 'Hollow Folk' could be her Tobacco Road.

Later I would find that Erskine Caldwell had been Miriam Sizer's classmate at the University of Virginia. Caldwell had attended UVA at the same time she was completing her Masters in English. More than that, her thesis adviser, Atcheson Hench, was the same man whom Erskine Caldwell credits for teaching him how to write.

In fact, two years after Rothstein's assignment, Atcheson Hench would himself work with Rothstein's subjects. With the help of Miriam Sizer, he and Archibald Hill would in 1937 make twelve audio recordings of many of Rothstein's subjects up at what had been the popular resort Skyland.

What bothered me about this was that it seemed to be driving a stereotype about the mountain people.  There was a Hillbilly stereotype that pervaded the way the mountain people were perceived by the very people trying to help them.   Even the title of the discredited scientific study of the mountain people, Hollow Folk, spoke to this stereotype.

In turn the park also appeared to promote this stereotype.  For one they sold the book Hollow Folk up until 1995.  Only when a group of park descendants protested did they remove it from their shelves.  This was odd considering that Hollow Folk had long been discredited.  Additionally  I found in their archives an image of a woman smoking a pipe.  This was such a clear reference to the  Lil' Abner stereotype that it startled me.   With the image being used by the Reeders for the cover of their book Shenandoah Heritage, The Story of the People Before the Park, it too promoted this stereotype.  The Hillbilly stereotype is also on display in the Department of Interior film, A Trip to Skyland and Shenandaoh National Park.   In the film there are scenes of people dressed up as hillbillies.  In my interviews I was told that mountain people had been paid by  Pollock to dress up as Hillbillies for events at Skyland.

The Beverly Hillbillies

To illustrate the influence of this background stereotype,  I used the TV program, The Beverly Hillbillies.  Since the program takes two of its characters from Tobacco Road, Pearl and Ellie Mae, it had a clear connection to Caldwell. Though Ellie Mae no longer has a harelip and there is no public seduction scene in the front yard, there is much that reflects on Tobacco Road.

The episode I chose, "The Clampet Look, " has a storyline that closely matches that of my film.  With a plot that explores the perceptions of those endeavoring to feed and clothe the poor,  it provided an ideal undercurrent to my narrative.  In this episode, the Clampets' misjudge the situation of their 'poor' neighbors.  They do not realize that their neighbors are not poor but only want to dress like them.  This reflects the misperceptions of Miriam Sizer and the guests of Skyland towards their 'poor' Corbin Hollow neighbors.  Hollow Folk is full of its writers' biases and repeatedly ignores facts that contradict its main thesis.  As the story of "The Clampet Look" is being told through an obvious Hillbilly stereotype, using The Beverly Hillbillies  also worked to raise important questions about that stereotype.  Indeed it worked so well that it troubled me.  

Image from Goddard's  The Kallikaks

Later I came to learn that after The Beverly Hillbillies ceased production in the early 70's it was replaced by a sitcom called  The Kallikaks.  Staring Bonnie Ebsen, the daughter of Buddy Ebsen (Uncle Jed) from The Beverly Hillbillies, and Peter Palmer who starred in the film  Lil Abner, the TV program depicts an Appalachian Family that has moved out to California to run a gas station. 

This was stunning yet confirmed the logic of using the Beverly Hillbillies in my film.  To understand why you have to look to the origin of the name Kallikak.  Kallikak is an invented name created for the famous eugenic book titled, The Kallikas.     Written by Henry H Goddard in 1912, The Kallikaks was the model for eugenic thought before it was soundly discredited.  Prior to the book, the name didn't exist.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the family at the center of Caldwell's book, Tobacco Road, was also part of a eugenic study.  Before the publication of Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell's father, Ira,  had written about the 'Bunglers' in three separate articles for eugenic periodicals.  It is believed that his father's studies of this family formed the basis for Tobacco Road.  Paul Lombardo writes about Caldwell's link to eugenics in his book, A Century of Eugenics in America. 



IMDB Link to the TV Show, The Kallikaks
Wikipedia Description of Goddard's Book, The Kallikaks 

Mary Frances and The Colony

Mary Frances Corbin in her home

Finding Mary Frances was another one of those stunning discoveries that came to define Rothstein's First Assignment. At this point in my interviews, the aspect of eugenics was starting to loom large. There was Steven Fender's article in the book, Popular Eugenic's of the 1930's that stated the resemblance of the book, Hollow Folk with prior eugenic writings.  Many of Rothstein's subjects were featured in this book and it didn't seem to make the break with eugenics that it claimed.  Then there was my interview with Jesse Meadows, a man who had been sterilized as a boy and was from what is now Shenandoah National Park. His story indicated that many children from the mountains had been sterilized.   I had even been told by a scholar that one child in Rothstein's cover image of the Nether's Post Office had been sterilized.

But I hadn't quite figured out how Rothstein's assignment figured into all of this. There was a strong resemblance but no direct connection.   Jesse was from Dark Hollow and didn't recognize anyone in Rothstein's photographs. Rothstein hadn't gone over to Dark Hollow.  While the one child in Rothstein's Post Office image could have just been a coincidence.  

But I noticed that Mary Bishop had also written about a woman with the same maiden name as the family who was at the center of Rothstein's assignment. Though it was a fairly common name and I didn't have any real reason to believe that she was connected,  I was willing to take a chance.  Call it whatever you want but I sensed a connection.  So Katrina Powell and I traveled to Lynchburg to meet Mary Bishop one Saturday and see if we could find Mary Francis Corbin.

Mary Frances

At first even  Mary Bishop was doubtful we would find her.  She hadn't talked to Mary Frances for awhile.  When she first interviewed her, Mary Frances had lived next to Jesse Meadows with other former Colony residents.   In her interview of Mary Frances for the Roanoke Times, Mary Bishop had reported that she had been sterilized as a child.  It was a disturbing story.  Sent to the colony at age 7, Mary Frances was just 13 when she was sterilized.  As Mary Bishop reported, the operation had almost killed her.

Mary Bishop

Since that interview,  Mary Frances  had moved away and Mary Bishop wasn't sure if she had the right address.  For a time we wandered around the parking lot of where we thought her building was.  It felt like we were going in circles.    Eventually we figured things out.   After making a call and then scrambling to get permission from her caretaker,  we were able to find Mary Frances and start our interview. 

At this point in the project, in addition to Rothstein's images, we carried the Corbin family chart as published in Audrey Horning's book, In the Shadow of Ragged Mountain.  Katrina Powell, being a scholar and Professor at Virginia Tech, thought it was  the important to bring it along.  I was skeptical.  I  felt we were repeating the routine of the eugenicists.  The last thing I wanted to do was to chart  Mary Frances's family history.  After looking at the eugenicists family trees,  I wanted to stay away from all of that.   In the end I would learn that was exactly what we wanted to do if we were to understand things.  Katrina was right, we needed to know where Mary Frances fit in.   

"The Colony"

At the beginning of the interview we thought it was another wild goose chase.  Mary Frances was not in good health.   Though she was alert mentally and she could clearly understand us, we often couldn't understand her.  We had to ask her the name of her parents more than once before we understood what she was telling us.  It didn't help matter much that she wasn't recognizing the people in the photographs at first either.  Though her story was important, it didn't seem to fit in with Rothstein.

Then Katrina asked Mary Frances one more time who her parents were.  We understood her this time. When we located them in the family chart we were stunned.  Mary Frances was directly related to the family Rothstein has spent so much time photographing.  The man at the head of the family was her grandfather, her father's father.  Rothstein had spent a lot of time photographing him.  In fact it seemed Rothstein had photographed everyone from Mary Frances's grandfather down to her aunts and uncles and even her cousins.  There was even a good chance he had photographed her, though she would have been a baby at the time and Rothstein did not identify many of the children in his photographs.

The full realization of what this meant would come a few days later.  Later in the week I received an email from Mary Bishop.  She told me that Mary Frances was stirred  by the pictures we had shown her and that she wanted copies.  She was starting to remember her days in Madison and she wanted to have copies of the pictures to look at again.  

When I started going through Rothstein's archive to make her copies,  it was  then that  I comprehended how closely related the majority of Rothstein's subjects were.  Rothstein's archive on this assignment was essentially Mary France's family album. Most of Rothstein's photographs were of her family.  This realization was all the more stunning since Mary Frances didn't have any family photographs in her home.  Her life had been so disrupted, she hardly knew who her family was.