This is an affecting, evocative, and visually stimulating homage to the forgotten laborers, at least two-thirds of them African American, who died because of their involvement in the construction of the three-mile Hawk's Nest Tunnel between 1930 and 1935. Ably assisted by poetry, photographs, and an engaging narrative, this book calls to me, and I suggest it will do so to anyone who is conversant with the history—even in a general sense—of the unprotected Black industrial worker in southern West Virginia.
~Cicero M. Fain III, author of Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story
A very powerful intersection of archival materials, visual response to the historical events, literary invocation, and a scholarly context for the events at the Hawk's Nest Tunnel and surrounding communities. Thompson's photographs are expertly executed to create images that are powerful indictments of the harm that befell these workers, and yet, they are also hauntingly beautiful. The contradictions (painful and beautiful) are stark reminders of the invisible lives that were sacrificed. Appalachian Ghost is a séance for lives lost and a forgotten narrative in the building of modern America.
~Wendel A. White, author of Schools for the Colored
A gut-wrenching account of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster, one of the United States' worst industrial accidents. Thompson explores this largely unknown subject through a visual history that repeoples the story of Hawk's Nest, carefully sifting an archive to expose the human suffering buried in a West Virginia valley. ... Appalachian Ghost reminds readers of the depth and folds present in all narratives. What we think we know is at the mercy of an archive's construction or sometimes deliberate masking and erasure. There is no clean story, no single dimension event. Triumphs and tragedies both come at the expense of people. Good history makes the forgotten or hidden dimensions of a historic episode visible. Appalachian Ghost is that type of history.
~Change Seven
Thompson strives to highlight, in particular, the Black men who worked on the Hawk's Tunnel who are all too often left out of the history of the tunnel's construction. While thousands of Black men worked on the tunnel, there is little visual documentation that they were ever there..... In some of the images, we see archival photos of the work camp, the gravesite, and the tunnel itself. In some, Thompson has edited in enlarged images of Black workers, as if putting them back in the recorded history where they belong.... Thompson's reimagining these images of Black men in work gear covered in dust brings history to life in such a stark and completely arresting way.
~Book Riot
When it comes to documenting the past, focusing on people and events that have been systematically obscured or even erased in the official story, a pro like Raymond Thompson Jr. applied creative techniques to resurrect Appalachian ghosts from the 1930s. His powerful testimony illuminates one of the worst industrial disasters in U.S. history, the Hawk's Nest Tunnel and Dam.... Thompson's book, Appalachian Ghosts is a brilliant reimagining of the people and the landscape of West Virginia's Hawk's Nest. Through a mix of photos, prose, and poetry, he strips away layer upon layer of history to expose cynical corporate cultures that extract what they need from the land and the people, and then turn away from the detritus.... Published by the University Press of Kentucky, Appalachian Ghosts defies collective forgetting by illuminating a shameful past."
~Constance Alexander, Hoptown Chronicle
Classic photojournalism at its best. The visual impact is truly memorable and moving.
~Midwest Book Review
A beautiful record that is lamentation and resistance, history and hymn.... An artist's discipline is sometimes what is needed to turn data—5,000 workers, 764 dead—into something else, something that moves us, that we cannot shake or put aside. Thousands of Black men moving into a rough mining camp to work a dig. Hundreds of those men dying from silicosis, feeling like the weight of the Appalachian mountains are collapsing their chests. Thompson brings these men to life and honors these lives through art. Open this book and enter into a wholly new exploration of a hundred year old tragedy, the men, the place, the project, the needless suffering and the way that nature adapts, adjusts and reclaims.
~Jody DiPerna, Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism