I must credit Mr. Levengood with pointing out my oversight.  Yes, the article 
on Floyd County (vol. 108, #4) does cover Southwest Virginia.  However, I 
had to chuckle when he mentioned the issue devoted to the Kanawha salt 
industry (vol. 107, #4).  Sorry, even if the region had not left Virginia in 1863 
to form the state of West Virginia, Kanawha would be considered western 
Virginia, not southwestern Virginia.

I examined every issue of the VMHB from 1984 to the latest issue.  In those 
22 years - now going on 23 - the VMHB has published 332 articles (in order to 
be fair I omitted from consideration vol. 114, #1, which is devoted solely to 
the 175th anniversary of the Virginia Historical Society), of which only THREE 
deal exclusively with Southwest Virginia:  the one mentioned above, another 
in vol. 110 #1, and one published in 1997, vol. 105, #2.  I find it difficult to 
believe that in 22 years the editors of the VMHB have found room for only 3 
articles on southwestern Virginia.  

However, they have found plenty of room in those 22 years for colonial era 
history - that is, colonial era history focusing on Virginia east of the Blue 
Ridge.  By my count the VMHB has published 94 articles on Eastern colonial 
Virgina history (including a couple dealing with the "backcountry", although 
those "backcountry" articles do not deal at all with Southwest Virginia), or 
approximately 28% of all articles published.  In that same time period they 
have published 37 articles related to the Civil War, or approximately 11%, and 
14 articles (approximatley 4%) focusing on the city of Richmond

And as far as UVA is concerned, the editors somehow found room in the past 
22 years for 6 submissions on Mr. Jefferson's University:  vol. 92, #3; vol. 100, 
#3; vol. 103, #3; vol. 105, #1; vol. 110, #4; and vol. 115, #1.  And in that 
same time period they also managed to find room for 15 articles on Mr. 
Jefferson himself.  One has to wonder what else one could possibly need to 
know about our 3rd president given the countless monographs that have 
already been devoted to him?  By the way, when one combines the number of 
articles devoted to UVA and the number devoted to Mr. Jefferson, the total 
comes to 21 articles in 22 years - roughly one article per year - or 
approximately 6%.

No wonder, then, when the VMHB rejected my colleague's article for 
publication they said the following:  "It [the rejected article] is well 
researched and closely argued, but the topic is far too narrow to fit the scope 
of essay we're looking for.  We receive a far larger number of manuscripts 
than we can publish in our limited pages."  Well of course they do not have 
room for anything on Southwest Virginia, especially when approximately 49% 
of the pages of the VMHB have to be filled with telling us more about Eastern 
colonial Virginia, the Civil War, Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, 
and the city of Richmond!

The Aristotelian Method teaches students to look at the facts and then draw 
conclusions.  By examining the facts above, I think the conclusion is clear - 
there is a bias AGAINST publishing articles in the VMHB dealing with Southwest 
Virginia history.  Perhaps those of us in Southwest Virginia who belong to the 
Virginia Historical Society (which publishes the VMHB) should cease 
membership in the VHS.  If they do not care about the region, why support 
them financially?