The people that benefited from keeping the Appalachian culture down were usually businesses. These industries suck as coal and timber benefited from having an uneducated labor force which kept them from rising up and forming unions against them.  This allowed the area to be exploited for its resources without much resistance from the simple hillbilly. This allowed the eastern businessmen to keep wages low and make huge profits. It also benefited the psychs of easterners in general an allowed them to feel superior. But all of this was simply propaganda, as with every time a certain portion of the population is oppressed. You make one group look inferior and the population stats to believe it and eventually those people will start to believe it and it will make them more submissive and easier to exploit for labor and resources. I think that with the study of Appalachia in university today will help turn the tide and erase some of the propaganda the has falsely portrayed the area as backward. People are beginning to realize that Appalachia is very modern and that those stereotypes are largely un true. we must continue to talk about the important intellectuals that cone from Appalachia.