Black Appalachian Activist, Writer & Dissenter of Coney Barrett Confirmation Tells Her Story

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- Crystal Good.

Daily Kos, May 10, 2022. -Ed.

Crystal Good is an activist who tells the stories of the Black Appalachians she grew up with. In addition to her work as an author, Ted-X speaker, published poet, and member of the Affrilachian Poets group, in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Good launched Black By God, a newspaper for and about Black residents living in the Appalachian region. Good, 47, is a sixth-generation Appalachian. Good tells Daily Kos that her policy work started as she tried to simply figure out her world. “Little Crystal, a girl with a white mom and a Black father who I wouldn’t meet until later in life. Appalachia was always a story for me. I have a history to tap into, but I also know it’s important for me to leave a record,” she says.

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The story of Appalachia is also about Good dispelling the myth that the only people living in the area are “white toothless hillbillies,” she says. When she moved to New York to pursue a modeling career as a teenager, she learned how deep those stereotypes were. “I surprised people with my presence because that's not what they expected.” Good began her policy work in 2014 as a lobbyist after the infamous water crisis in WV. She even named herself the Social Media Senator for the Digital District of WV. In Jan. 2014, a chemical storage tanker leaked an estimated 10,000 gallons of industrial solvent into WV’s Elk River.

The region’s only source of clean drinking water, the Elk River supplied Charleston, the capital. The tap water was contaminated, impacting over 300,000 people across 9 counties— about 15% of the state’s population. “We didn't have water for days. We got our water off of an army truck. It was terrifying. Kids weren't in school. It was winter. I was the lead class rep for that case, & that’s what launched my social media activism. I was telling people where to get water, & where to go to the hospital. Nobody was organized enough to know how to use these platforms,” she says. Aside from opening a newspaper when papers are barely staying alive, Good is determined to continue despite all the odds.

WV is losing the largest population of any state in the nation, so she says the choice to come back to the area & launch the paper was intentional. “When that first paper was delivered, I think we printed about 8,000 copies, they were delivered through a mutual aid network of people. And to me, that's so beautiful,” she says. Good was also a dissenter during Amy Coney Barrett’s Judicial confirmation hearings. “West Virginia is the metaphor because WV is so beautiful, but so full of pain, and so full of abuse. For me to tell my abortion story in front of the US Judiciary Committee on national TV… It's my story. But it was so many other people's stories,” Good says of her dissent speech. She says afterward people reached out to thank her for voicing their stories. People who couldn’t or were too afraid to say anything about their abortion stories...
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/5/10/2097097/-Black-Appalachian-activist-and-dissenter-of-Amy-Coney-Barrett-s-confirmation-tells-her-story

- PBS NewsHour. Crystal Good testifies in Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Oct. 15, 2020. A sexual assault survivor from Charleston, WV, Good spoke about the importance of keeping abortion safe and legal in the U.S., without interference from parental consent laws. “President Trump has been clear that he would only appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Unfortunately, through learning about Judge Barrett’s record, I understand why the president believes she passes that test,” Good said. The hearing came about 3 weeks before Election Day. The judge did not appear before the committee on the final day of the hearing. Instead, both Republicans and Democrats called outside witnesses to speak to her record and approach to the law.

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1. K&R n/t

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2. Crystal Good On Returning Home To Launch 'Black By God'

- Crystal Good at home, Charleston Gazette, 2017.
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/_arts__entertainment/poet-s-identity-quest-helped-her-find-fellow-black-appalachian-poets/article_fe04859a-0422-53f9-9b09-49b389311725.html


- WV Public Broadcasting, 'Crystal Good On Returning Home To Launch the Publication ‘Black By God’, Dec. 16, 2021. Ed.

The first time Crystal Good left West Virginia—like, really left—she was 13. Up until then, apart from trips to Myrtle Beach for vacations, she really hadn’t spent time outside of her small town in Kanawha County. “Growing up in St. Albans was a safe place,” Good said. But the only markers she had for success and beauty were the homecoming queens, the blonde, blue-eyed beauties. She wasn’t that; she’s Black, & said she felt different from most of the other teenagers. Then, Good won a modeling contest, & that took her to New York City to sign with an agency. At age 13, she worked as a model with Ralph Lauren & Calvin Klein.

She says the trip opened her eyes to a totally different world, and a new perception of herself. “What happened to me in that experience was that my idea of beauty shifted,” Good said. “I recognized that beauty was not just my homecoming queen.” Good concluded “that I was a pretty girl too.” That experience in New York gave Good a new sense of a world, bigger than her hometown. “I think St Albans gave me a way to look at the world, & then recognize that it was a very small perspective. It was a valid perspective, but a very small perspective. And I think that's the beauty of hometowns. Is that once you sort of experience a bigger world, you can cherish the things that were special & different.”

Good returned from that modeling trip in New York, with big dreams. She wanted to continue her modeling career & also become a writer. As a teenager, she even considered trying to raise money to purchase the last Black newspaper in West Virginia, The Beacon Digest, which went out of business in the mid-1990s. But it took leaving again, 3 decades later at age 45, to set her back on a path to fulfilling that dream of running a Black paper. This time, she left for California. She moved to Los Angeles in Dec. 2019. Good said her time there was affirming. “I was in a space where people believed in creativity & creative ideas. I needed that energy. I needed to know that things were happening in the world, & that I could be a part of it with my story.”

Good had felt stuck, creatively, while living in WV. Staying in CA for a short time gave her the boost she needed. But she felt pulled back. And she had a plan: to launch a newspaper called 'Black By God,' The West Virginian. It’s the only newspaper in the state that intentionally centers non-white voices. “I know that this is needed, because how many black journalists are working in WV right now?” she said. Good only knows of one fulltime Black journalist currently working in the state. She hopes that eventually, 'Black By God' will grow so she can hire more writers & editors. Her 2nd print issue, which was published in early Dec., features stories about Black culture, health care & history. There are also white voices speaking to anti-racism in the papers’ opinion section. The past several weeks she’s been distributing the free papers across the state...
https://www.wvpublic.org/section/arts-culture/2021-12-16/crystal-good-on-returning-home-to-launch-the-publication-black-by-god