"He would not even consider going elsewhere to live, even though he were offered a chance to work another man’s farm on shares. Even to move to Augusta and work in the cotton mills would be impossible for him. The restless movement of the other tenant farmers to the mills had never had any effect on him. Working in cotton mills might be all right for some people, he said, but as for him, he would rather die of starvation than leave the land.
In seven years his views of the subject had not been altered; and if anything, he was more determined than ever to remain where he was at all cost."
~ Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road
Since the colonial era, small-scale tobacco farming sustained many of the families living among the Sauratown Mountains of North Carolina.
The Sauratown Project, through fine art photography and rich oral histories, captures the essence of this culture - one certain to disappear completely within the next decade.
