They'll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle (WEST VIRGINIA & APPALACHIA)

In old England, if a king didn’t like you, he would cut off your head. Now, if they don’t like you, they’ll cut off your project!

As the Johnson Administration initiated its war on poverty in the 1960s, the Mingo County Economic Opportunity Commission project was established in southern West Virginia. Huey Perry, a young, local history teacher was named the director of this program and soon he began to promote self-sufficiency among low-income and vulnerable populations. As the poor of Mingo County worked together to improve conditions, the local political infrastructure felt threatened by a shift in power. Bloody Mingo County, known for its violent labor movements, corrupt government, and the infamous Hatfield-McCoy rivalry, met Perry’s revolution with opposition and resistance. 

In They’ll Cut Off Your Project, Huey Perry reveals his efforts to help the poor of an Appalachian community challenge a local regime. He describes this community’s attempts to improve school programs and conditions, establish cooperative grocery stores to bypass inflated prices, and expose electoral fraud. Along the way, Perry unfolds the local authority’s hostile backlash to such change and the extreme measures that led to an eventual investigation by the FBI. They’ll Cut Off Your Project chronicles the triumphs and failures of the war on poverty, illustrating why and how a local government that purports to work for the public’s welfare cuts off a project for social reform.

• Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)
• Daydreams and Nightmares: A Virginia Family Faces Secession and War (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era)
• Daydreams and Nightmares: A Virginia Family Faces Secession and War (A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era)
• Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend
• Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies)
• What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia
• Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia
• Born in the Country: A History of Rural America (Revisiting Rural America)
• Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945
• High Mountains Rising: APPALACHIA IN TIME AND PLACE