In the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) on a frigid January afternoon, Sherry Ferguson found herself stretched across space and time. She was far from home, but right there in front of her were pictures she had seen a thousand times.
"They look just like they did in Dad's living room," she said.
Carefully arranged in display cases in the corner of the Great Hall, photographs and artifacts shone bright with scenes of daily life from the mining community of Balkan, Kentucky: a chain of young women holding hands ankle deep in the river, dressed in white, “Baptizing at Balkan” scrawled in blue ballpoint; a young child crouched among chickens in her front yard; the basketball team, the school band, the class of ‘28; workers, machinery, railcars filled with coal.
Established in 1912 by the Southern Mining Company near the Cumberland River about 15 miles east of Pineville, today the town of Balkan lies almost entirely abandoned. It was named for the region where the company recruited many of its miners, whose families and descendants called it home for 70 years.
Ferguson’s father James Walters grew up there, where his own father was a foreman for the company. Over the course of his life, he collected hundreds of photographs documenting the history of his hometown and bequeathed them to the SCRC in 2014.
As nature overgrows the tracks and reclaims the town, memories of the tightly-knit community who spoke different languages, shared divergent cultural traditions, and forged meaningful lives in the face of exploitation and adversity live on in the James Walters Photograph Collection.
Ferguson, together with seven other members across four generations of the Walters family, made the trip to Lexington for the opening of a special exhibit highlighting the collection, Chain of Wooded Mountains: Remembering the Coal Town of Balkan, Kentucky, on display in the Great Hall through the end of the Spring semester.
The exhibit was curated by students from Dr. Miriam Kienle's seminar, History, Theory, and Practice of Curatorial Studies. Kienle’s students chose the Walters materials from among several competing collections. The Balkan photographs were particularly resonant, Kienle explained, because many of her students had roots in former mining communities.
“There are places all around the world with histories just like Balkan’s,” said Kienle. “We hear a lot about the challenges these communities face, but what made this experience so moving for my students was understanding that Balkan’s story is not only a story of marginalization. The archives provide a window into history that allows us to celebrate the vibrant lives of the people that called Balkan home. What we saw is a vital community of many people supporting one another, full of small moments of joy, connection, and thriving.”
One of Kienle’s students, Zach Hall, found a particular familiarity in the Walters collection: many of his own family members have mining ephemera in their homes. “My dad's side of the family is from Hazard, and family members across generations have worked as miners,” he said. “As we dug through the collections I was particularly struck by a mining headlamp, because a very similar headlamp is sitting right now in my grandmother's living room. For some people who see this exhibition the story of Appalachian coal mining might be history, but for others, like my family, it is very much alive.”
To student Hannah Miller, who grew up in Wisconsin, coal mining had much less personal significance, but the collection shed light on the moments of daily life that forge connections not only between members of a community, but also across humanity writ large. “Seeing photographs of mothers cooking, children playing, and friends spending time together put such a human face on the idea of coal,” she said. “These are moments we universally share, and these communities are so much more than the coal companies that owned them.”
Kienle emphasized the tremendous power arising from the physical interaction between her students and the archive. “It’s so much different than reading a history where you’re told what to think,” she said. “Students were able to make connections to the community of Balkan in a very tactile way. There are traces of daily life in the archive that have a real tooth to them, and allude to a different kind of story than is usually told. It’s powerful to be touched by a photograph or feel the texture of a wooden spoon.”
But the most important takeaway from the process, said Kienle, was experiencing first-hand the tremendous power that narrative plays in defining a community, a place, or an entire region. “Getting to the primary sources opened up my students’ ability to imagine and tell this story in a different way than it’s often been told,” she said. “They were able to tell the story of Balkan from the bottom-up, starting with families, labor, and community ties. There’s a lot of empowerment in that.”
Education Archivist Matthew Strandmark worked closely with Kienle’s class throughout the semester, providing guidance on everything from the accessioning process to the proper mounting of the delicate materials. “This project has been such a great example of the importance of understanding, studying, and using archival materials to support student learning,” he said. “This exhibition is an outstanding example of what is possible when you join unique collections with student creativity. The success of this project is not only a testament to the thoughtfulness and dedication of UK students and faculty, but also reinforces the importance of archival collections that provide connections to our shared past and humanity.”
For all of these reasons, the Walters Collection is one that Strandmark has returned to repeatedly when leading class sessions at the SCRC. “I’ve utilized this collection a hundred times over the past seven or eight years,” he said. “These materials have been seen by thousands of students, who have all benefited from it as they learn about archives and archival research.”
As she looked at the familiar photos, Ferguson reflected on the journey they had taken: from families across Balkan, to her father’s personal collection, and finally to their permanent home at UK Libraries.
“It’s just so wonderful knowing that they’re safe here,” she said. “And to think that these photographs are now a small part of the lives of so many students, and making an impact here: it’s an incredible feeling.”
