By Jody Brumage

​Five years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Philadelphia physician, educator, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush, lamented “Among the defects which have been pointed out in the federal constitution by its antifederal enemies, it is much to be lamented that no person has taken notice of its total silence upon the subject of an office of the utmost importance to the welfare of the United States, that is, an office for promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country.” Printed by the African American publisher Benjamin Banneker in his 1793 almanac, the sentiments expressed by Rush are the foundation of a movement that has persisted to the present day in the United States: the goal of creating a Department of Peace. West Virginia has played a significant role in advocating for this cause.

Tuesday, March 19, 2019, marked forty years since the first broadcast of a session of the United States House of Representatives went live on C-SPAN in 1979. Seven years later, Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd introduced legislation to allow for the broadcast of sessions of the Senate on C-SPAN. Prior to the approval of this measure, television cameras had only been allowed on the floor of the Senate once for the swearing in of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller on December 19, 1974. On June 2, 1986, Senator Robert C. Byrd stood at his desk and delivered a speech as the cameras rolled for the first broadcast of the Senate in session.

By Delaney Conner
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​Welcome to Appalachian Aspects, the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education’s first student-developed podcast. I conceptualized, researched, and produced the podcast as part of my public history internship at the Byrd Center this summer.  I hope that this initial episode, which focuses on the development and construction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) during the 1990s, will be the first of a limited series of podcasts that explore West Virginia’s deep and varied history, primarily since the beginning of the 20th century.

By Jay Wyatt

The Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education started its teacher institute program three years ago. Our first two workshops were held at the Byrd Center in Shepherdstown in 2016 and 2017 and drew grades k-12 public and private school educators from the Eastern Panhandle and Potomac Highlands regions of West Virginia.  The teachers learned about and received training with teaching resources developed by the Center for Legislative Archives (a division of the National Archives and Records Administration) and by the Byrd Center. This summer, with the support of a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council, we took the show on the road and conducted one-day institutes at the Cultural Center in Charleston, the State Fairgrounds in Lewisburg, and WVU’s Downtown Library in Morgantown, where we reached a broader group of educators, introducing them to new methods of teaching students about representative government and the United States Congress in the process.

By Jody Brumage

​The small communities of Kearneysville and Leetown in Jefferson County, West Virginia have been a center of scientific research for over sixty years. One of the laboratories centered in the area is the Appalachian Fruit Research Station, a part of the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture. Opened in 1979, the laboratory was the result of over fifteen years of efforts to secure land, funding, and a mandate for the institution.


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Image to the Right: Senator Byrd's 1963 proposal for the scope of research to be conducted at the Fruit Research Station.

By Jody Brumage

​Anyone driving through West Virginia today will see yard signs and billboards expressing support and opposition to the construction of pipelines in the state. The current debate centers largely on pipelines built to transport natural gas, but fifty-six years ago, a similar battle was fought in the state over coal slurry pipelines. The technology for these overland transport systems was developed in the early-1960s. Slurry pipelines operate in one of two ways: the coal is pulverized and mixed with water or it is pressed into logs which are floated through the pipelines to their destination. Soon after this technology became available, West Virginia’s mine operators began exploring ways that pipelines could open new markets for coal extracted from the Mountain State where exportation had always relied primarily upon railroad and river barge transport.