Poverty Tour Returns to Kentucky

Bobby Hall whittles a piece of cedar wood as his niece Bridgett Mitchell looks on in Grethel, Ky., Monday, July 16, 2007. Presidential candidate John Edwards plans to stop in Whitesburg, Ky., on Wednesday as part of his poverty tour. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke) (Ed Reinke - AP)

WHITESBURG, Ky. -- As a 17-year-old living in one of the poorest counties in Appalachia, Evelyn Cosgriff eagerly listened to Robert F. Kennedy's early morning speech on Feb. 14, 1968 at the Letcher County Courthouse.

His speech was brief, but passionate.

"There are great possibilities in eastern Kentucky," Kennedy told the crowd on this stop of his two-day, 200-mile poverty tour. "But there have to be people who are going to fight for eastern Kentucky."

"We thought he would be our savior," said Cosgriff, now 55 and still living in Whitesburg.

Nearly 40 years later, the towns on Kennedy's poverty tour continue to struggle with poverty. This week, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is making them a part of his own poverty tour, shifting the spotlight to the issue and in the process, linking himself to a Democratic icon.

But some eastern Kentuckians are less hopeful this time around.

"I don't think people around here will take it as seriously," said Cosgriff, a secretary for a local arts center.

Indeed, poverty tours are nothing new around these hills. President Clinton, the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Martin Luther King III, son of the famed civil rights leader, have all trekked through central Appalachia on poverty tours _ though many remember Robert Kennedy's as the most genuine and meaningful.

Lyndon Johnson declared his war on poverty here in 1964.

Edwards' tour began Sunday night in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. He traveled to sites in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and plans stops in Virginia on Wednesday before wrapping up with a visit to Whitesburg and a speech in Prestonsburg, Ky. _ where Kennedy ended his poverty tour at the Floyd County Courthouse.

Still, Edwards has lost some of his credibility in this predominantly Democratic region. They don't forget $400 haircuts around here.

"A haircut's a haircut. You can get the same one for $10," said James Rudd, a 28-year-old Whitesburg resident who's spent the past 10 years mining coal. "If he's so big on poverty, then why don't he give the other $390 to some homeless person?"