Charlene Ledbetter Dalton

Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson

Charlene Ledbetter Dalton’s family moved to Cincinnati from Harlan, Kentucky when she was nine, in 1957. She has gradually made an uneasy truce with the city, and is now a respected neighborhood activist and an administrator at the Northside Community School.  But even after almost forty years, she doesn’t consider herself a permanent resident: she and her husband, who is from Jackson County, Kentucky, are building a home near London and hope to move there someday.  

“As you’re growing up, you know you romp and you tromp and you enjoy everything, but as you get older there’s not a whole lot to do. So you kindly want to spread your wings, see what this big city’s about. And then somehow, when you get up here, you get stuck in it, and then it’s hard to get back. I think that most Kentucky people want to go back, because they got something nobody else has got. “  

Perceptions of Home: The Urban Appalachian Spirit ©1996 The Urban Appalachian Council (now Urban Appalachian Community Coalition)

Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson; Interviews ©1996 Don Corathers

Photographs digitized by the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. Genealogy & Local History Department.