Man has become archivist of TVA’s inf luence
East Tennessee is the heart of energy research and development for the country, and as this part of central Appalachia has altered for the federal government, its communities have both benefited and paid the price. Self-taught historian Leo York has worked to keep account of those impacts to his East Tennessee community and family.
“I think the more that people know and understand the history of their local community, the prouder they are of their community,” York said. “The more I learn about Claxton, the more attached I am to Claxton.”
York, 71, is known not just as a pillar of his community but also as one of few historians focusing on the community of Claxton — and the role of the Tennessee Valley Authority — in Anderson County, northwest of Knoxville.
He’s helped put a historical marker up, cleaned up local cemeteries, run the community’s Facebook group — its main source of digital connection — and given talks to community members about the county’s history.
“More than cares, he loves his county,” Anderson County Commissioner Tracy Wandell said about York. “The thing about Leo, he doesn’t need anyone’s endorsements or accolades to do what he does. He does it for the right reasons. It’s his reasons, and his God’s reasons, and that’s what he does. And I’ve always been amazed with him.”
FATHER AT Y-12
York grew up in Claxton in a house filled with six other siblings. He was the middle child, and according to his siblings, his mother’s favorite. The family had a small farm where they grew food and raised animals, the children attended school down the road, the family every week attended church, where York’s father was a deacon and all the neighbors knew one another and looked out for each other’s children.
At the time, Claxton was almost like any other farming community outside of Knoxville, with one caveat: It was adjacent to Oak Ridge, one of the centers of development for the atomic bomb.
York’s father worked at the Department of Energy’s Y-12 National Security Complex. In 1965, Walter York was diagnosed with cancer, shocking the family. York, who was 14 and knew nothing about cancer, stayed with his father at the hospital, thinking that eventually his dad would recover.
York adored his father. His favorite thing to do was to go with his dad on adventures, whether that was sitting next to his father at church, walking around Claxton or going to Knoxville and experiencing the big city for the first time.
“I can remember the very first time I went to a restaurant with him,” York said, smiling as he
recalled the memory. “I had absolutely no idea that you picked up french fries with your fingers and ate them. And when he explained that to me, and I remember that quite clearly that it was OK to do that, and I thought, ‘Well, these are pretty good.’”
Walter York died within a year of his diagnosis.
Losing his father so quickly at such a young age was traumatic for York. While he has made peace over the situation, there are just some things one never gets over.
The experience was one reason why York became a registered nurse in Knoxville, sympathetic to patients who were also affected by occupational and environmental health impacts. In his role, York pushed himself to study, even when the topic was difficult. The skills he picked up would eventually guide him to his second career researching and recording history.
“I did a lot of reading while I was at work about the types of patients that I was taking care of,” York said. “Always wanted to know just a little bit more.”
BULL RUN
In the 1960s, TVA established its Bull Run Fossil Plant, which was powered by coal, in Claxton. York and his family watched as the surrounding land changed dramatically.
TVA acquired property to build Bull Run and the Melton Hill Dam, according to TVA records. York said his parents bought and moved their future house, in which he still lives, off of a property that TVA acquired.
At the time, most people were excited for the plant as it meant more jobs for the area, and over the years, the plant has been synonymous with the community. But for York, Claxton is more than just its relationship with TVA.
“There is history to this area, there is history to this place, and we didn’t just happen when the Bull Run steam plant was thrown up and families moved into the area for work,” York said. “That’s not when we started. There was a lot of things that happened before all that.”
York remembers the differing opinions that persist today about the plants, from the economic benefits, the pride in being a center for energy production to the environmental concerns. He eventually cared for patients like coal miners, whose health was affected by the environment.
“They suffered with no hope for a cure until death, all while struggling for their next breath. I could only offer comfort until that time came,” York said, “We deserve much, much more. Instead we are left footing the bill to clean up the mess, in unpayable health care bills.”
York’s memories and research on environmental issues are a resource for the community.
“I think Leo has been a really important voice in his local community about how to deal with energy waste and pollution,” said Bri Knisely, director for public power campaigns for Appalachian Voices, an environmental group. “He’s been really driven to push for cleanup efforts or outcomes that protect the health of people in the community and the local environment.”
HADE BLACK
After working as a nurse for 40 years, York packed up his five dogs and moved back from Knoxville to Claxton in 2007 to take care of his mother. Retirement gave him freedom to not only reconnect with his community, but also with his family, specifically family genealogy.
At the time, York said he was ashamed he didn’t know his greatgrandfather’s name on his father’s side. He wanted to know more about that side of the family.
“When I was up in Scott County, chasing down my dad’s side of the family, it was interesting to see how the people in Scott County were with cemeteries and how they were with family,” York said. “It seemed like that was really important to them, because family was so important.”
One of York’s family names is Sexton, which refers to the person who looks after graves. As he tracked down his family tree, York grew into this role.
One of York’s childhood memories is of TVA moving a cemetery of a family whose last name was Black. When he moved back to Claxton, he wondered about the family.
As he combed through TVA records, York deduced that descendants were located in the cemetery and people the family enslaved. But one name in the records confused him: Hade Black.
“His name stumped me. It didn’t fit in with any of the family lines. For two years I wondered off and on who Hade was,” York said.
As he started researching more, Hade’s story began to unspool. He was formerly enslaved by the family but inherited some of the land.
York paid for a cemetery marker for Hade, while the community paid for the one for his wife, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Cross Black, who was buried in the Knoxville pauper cemetery. York took some soil from around where Lizzie was buried and brought it back to be buried next to Hade’s grave.
“The headstones will not allow a complete loss of that story,” York said.
By this point, the community recognized York’s work at the cemeteries, research on the Anderson County Poor Farm and historical knowledge. He was invited to speak at the county’s retired teacher’s association.
“The older I get, I realize how very important it is to have a local historian, to record and save that information because that could easily be lost information,” said DeWayne Emert, Tennessee president-elect of the retired teacher’s association and former Clinton High School teacher.
‘UNFORGIVABLE’
Between tracing his dad’s genealogy and cleaning up cemeteries, York was also able to connect with his mother over her family history. Jeanette Prater York grew up in a log cabin in Union County on her grandmother’s land during the depression, York said.
At that time, this portion of Appalachia subsisted off the land. Some families sold livestock and crops such as tobacco, corn and beef to a wider market to earn profit. There were buses that would take people to Knoxville, said Aaron D. Purcell, director of special collections and university archives at Virginia Tech.
Development was gradually unfolding in the area. There were electric companies slowly covering some locations, but not fast enough for some.
Though the land provided for existing families, there wasn’t enough to cover future generations, Purcell said, not to mention the damages from the river flooding.
It wasn’t an easy life, but people were raised into it. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt created TVA to help the Tennessee Valley with flood management, electrification and land preservation. One of its first projects was creating the hydroelectric Norris Dam.
“It’s decided that the area is nonproductive because of its lack of industrialization, of a manufacturing economy, and by extension, its relative lack of electricity,” said Bob Hutton, an associate professor of Appalachian studies at Glenville State University.
Creating Norris meant flooding land, which meant displacing communities like Jeanette York’s. TVA sent caseworkers to interview those families. York asked his mother about the experience of being moved out and also dug into TVA’s records.
“My opinions of TVA changed and began to become negative the more records I reviewed,” York said. “Removing and relocating/scattering an entire community during the Depression as a social experiment is unforgivable.”
And those displacements were very much an experiment, Purcell said.
“They (TVA) very much were paternalistic, and they saw themselves as saving the people and this whole region,” Purcell said. “They justified their actions many times based on this belief that they were superior in a way.”
Families were financially compensated for their land, if they owned it and the University of Tennessee Extension Service tried to help them find a new place.
However, Jeanette York moved twice because of TVA, Leo York said. According to property records, TVA requested properties owned by both Jeanette York’s grandmother, Helen Prater Turner, and grandfather, William Harvey Turner.
Eventually, William disassembled the house and moved the family to Anderson County, where TVA would eventually need land for Bull Run and Melton Hill Dam. Thankfully TVA didn’t ask him a third time.
“I think if they had, he probably would have shot them,” York said. “because he was so over it.”
REVERENCE
And it wasn’t just the people who were moved for Norris, it was also their cemeteries.
“The people living in the valley maintained an unusual reverence for these graves, even the unknown and unmarked ones,” TVA’s book, “The Norris Project” said.
TVA asked living family members for permission to dig up and move their family members before the area was flooded.
“Dad said that was the hardest thing he ever had to do, to go and authorize the digging up of my sister,” York’s cousin, Eva McCarty said. McCarty was 5 years old when her family was moved out of Union County.
Both McCarty and Jeanette York told York they didn’t get electricity until about 15 years later. Both properties Jeanette York grew up on are not fully under water. These facts upset York even more.
TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks said the utility would not have been responsible for directly providing electricity to homes and businesses. It would have been the responsibility of local power companies to connect the customers.
There are mixed feelings about the Norris displacements. McCarty said she was bitter with TVA for a long time but she also said TVA’s actions eventually led to people having electricity.
York said lifestyles were already evolving.
“In all other parts of the country, it slowly changed and without the force of a federal agency,” York said. “All 12 of (great great) grandma Kizzy Sweat’s children had already moved to either Michigan to work in factories or to Knoxville in the 1920s and early ’30s prior to TVA taking the land.”
Whether the displacements were worth it depends on who you ask, but for York the connection to the land persists. After finding his mother’s childhood land, York made trips to the area, including one during which he took Jeanette with him.
“She was tearful because she had this flood of memories coming back as a child,” York said. “It helped me to understand her more and where she came from and her thoughts.”
Today, he, McCarty and family continue to visit, find cemeteries where kin rest and trace genealogy to people scattered across the country.
“When you do the genealogy, even if it’s in your own mind, you’re bringing them back to life just for a little bit. It’s sort of like you build up that story. That idea who that particular person is,” York said.
“They (TVA) very much were paternalistic, and they saw themselves as saving the people and this whole region. They justified their actions many times based on this belief that they were superior in a way.”
— AARON D. PURCELL, DIRECTOR OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AT VIRGINIA TECH