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.
RELATED STORY: Legendary reproductive justice activist advises women to start talking openly about abortion
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 West Virginia. She even named herself the Social Media Senator for the Digital District of West Virginia during that time
January of 2014, a chemical storage tanker leaked an estimated 10,000 gallons of industrial solvent into West Virginia’s Elk River. The river was the region’s only source of clean drinking water and supplied Charleston, the state’s capital. The tap water was contaminated, impacting over 300,000 people across nine counties—affecting about 15% of the state’s population.
“We didn't have water for days. And when I said we didn't have water for days, people think, ‘Oh, you boil it.’ No, 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, and that’s what launched my social media activism. Because it wasn't just social media. I was telling people where to get water, and where to go to the hospital. Nobody was organized enough to know how to use these platforms,” Good says.
What makes Good unique, aside from opening a newspaper when papers are barely staying alive, is her determination to continue despite all the odds.
Good points out that West Virginia is losing the largest population of any state in the nation, so she says the choice to come back to the area and launch the paper was intentional.
“It was an overwhelming moment of joy when this paper launched that it lets me know people believe in it. And when that first paper was delivered, I think we printed about 8,000 copies, and they were delivered through a mutual aid network of people. And to me, that's so beautiful,” Good says.
Good was also a dissenter during Amy Coney Barrett’s Judicial confirmation hearings.
“West Virginia is the metaphor because West Virginia is so beautiful, but so full of pain, and so full of abuse. For me to tell my abortion story in front of the United States 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.
“Those are the silent voices I carry with me because that's a big deal. We have an entire population of people that are afraid to speak out, for whatever sort of weight is upon them. A lot of us folks out here that are a lot louder in this West Virginia space, we have those stories,” Good says.
When I ask Good about staying hopeful, particularly these days with the possibility of an overturn of Roe v. Wade. Good says she does worry. She says she has a trans daughter and so she worries a lot for her. She says she believes that “hope is on a spectrum.”
“I think there are places that are much more safer and accepting. But one of the things that I've learned in my life is wherever you go, there you are. And if you're constantly thinking of, like, the grass is greener on the other side… I’m also just kind of real stubborn. There's opportunity everywhere, you know what I mean? Sometimes it really does make a difference when people choose to stay,” she says.
Good has fought most of her life, even starting at a very young age when she was sexually abused by her stepfather. But even after nearly three decades of fighting, she refused to give up.
“I know that it took me a long time to get justice. And even when I got that justice, standing in front of the courtroom saying what he had done, with him apologizing, and then getting sentenced to a short term, I knew I had told the truth. And I had always been telling the truth.
“I look back at that today and think, ‘what if I had given up?’ I always tell the story, especially to women, that just because I got a conviction and I got this validation, I still had to make peace with the fact that it might not have happened. And that once you sort of win the battle, it still doesn't mean that you feel fantastic afterward, that everything is just rainbows and unicorns,” she says.
The Good Fight is a series spotlighting progressive activists around the nation: Those who are battling injustice in underserved communities and the folks fighting for democracy everywhere.