Who will be heroes in fight to save mountains?

As we celebrate Black History Month, I see interesting parallels between the great civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s and today's struggle against mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia.

The documentary film Briars in the Cotton Patch explores what happened at Koinonia, a communal farm founded in 1942 in Americus, Ga, during the early days of the civil rights movement.

Koinonia was a peaceful "experiment in Christian living" founded by a courageous, gentle white activist named Clarence Jordan. At Koinonia, blacks and whites worked and lived as equals.

At first, the white residents of Sumter County, Georgia ignored the communal farmers as harmless and slightly weird people with strange ideas. But following the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, the fear of integration, escalated by the Ku Klux Klan's hate-mongering, led to violent attacks against the farm.

Buildings were bombed, houses were strafed with gun fire, and fruit and nut trees were chopped down. Community leaders organized an economic boycott of Koinonia, and a store that broke the boycott was bombed.

Amazingly, the farmers endured the threats and the terrorism, and Koinonia survived and grew.

In the late 1960s, under the leadership of Jordan and newcomers Millard and Linda Fuller, Koinonia began building homes for the area's poor black residents. Eventually it became the inspiration for Habitat for Humanity, which today has its headquarters in Americus and is one of Sumter County's largest employers.

One of the most interesting parts of the documentary is footage of today's white residents of Americus equivocating and making excuses for their actions and bigotry during the civil rights struggle. Their eyes shift and dart as they try to explain how they once allowed white terrorists to live among them.

Yes, they knew about the bombings and shootings, but of course, they weren't involved. A reporter for the Americus News said that he thought it was in the community's best long-term interest to minimize reporting of the violent attacks on Koinonia. In the 1960s, the president of the chamber of commerce in Americus asked Koinonia to leave "for the good of the community."

In the film, the chamber president states his regret, admitting, "I didn't have any guts at the time."

All this was pitiful and somewhat embarrassing to watch, but it made me think about the documentary films that will be made 20 years from now about the campaign we are waging to protect the people and culture of Appalachia from utter destruction.

One day we will look back with horror at photos of exploded mountains, just as we look upon the photographs of civil rights leaders being blasted with fire hoses. We will revile the people who put corporate profits ahead of the life-support systems this planet provides.

So who will be the heroes and villains of these future films about mountaintop removal?

Instead of Sheriff "Bull" Conner and the White Citizens Council, we will have the spokesmen for the Friends of Coal and International Coal Group. Instead of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, we will have U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

But who will be the heroes? Kayford Mountain Keeper Larry Gibson? Maybe Judy Bonds of Coal River Mountain Watch and Teri Blanton of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

Only time will tell. And there is still plenty of room in the anti-mountaintop removal movement for heroic leaders.

Want to make the world a better place? Want to end injustice and discrimination? Want to help right a grievous wrong? Join the movement to end mountaintop-removal mining -- and make history.