7 Questions With Lee Lancaster, Agricultural Historian and Author

 

Lee Lancaster was born and raised in Milan, Georgia and attended Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and the University of Georgia, earning a degree in Agriculture Education.  He started working for the Georgia Department of Agriculture in 2003.  In 2017, he began writing a regular column in the Georgia Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin called "Georgie's Drive Thru Agriculture" about agricultural and historical points of interest found in rural Georgia.  In July 2023, he published The Georgia Farmers' Strike:  The American Agricultural Movement vs Jimmy Carter.  In October of 2023, he published Vidalia Onions:  A History of Georgia's State Vegetable.  He and his family reside in Eastman, Georgia.  

(Personal connections:  My hometown is Vidalia, Georgia, and although my family didn't grow onions, we definitely ate hundreds of pounds a year, and my aunt was the first Vidalia Onion Queen, hand-picked by Mr. Moses Coleman, the first planter of Vidalia onions, about 1950.  If I remember correctly, a classmate of mine was the very first to portray Yumion, the official Vidalia Onion ambassador character. And we always subscribed to the Market Bulletin.)

1. How and when did you get hooked on history?

      During the first Gulf War, I started really paying attention to the news and history. I learned a lot about the military and the Middle East at that time. I did not take any extra history courses in high school or college. When I began to write articles for the Georgia Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin, I began to dig into Georgia and agricultural history. I use the research I've done to finish my stories. Most of the research materials I've used were UGA research materials and minutes from historical society meetings. There's not much to choose from in agricultural history, so I have been able to expand the category a little bit.

2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

      Whenever we plan a trip, we always look for the historical points of interest along the way. When we went to Louisville, Kentucky this summer, we were able to visit Abraham Lincoln's birthplace, Shiloh Battlefield Military Park, Churchill Downs, and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. I hope to pass this interest on to my children, Nate and Caroline.

3. How does history play a part of your professional life/career?

      I participate in a lot of outreach programs for the Georgia Department of Agriculture. When I talk to people at events, I am disappointed at the amount of knowledge and interest in history and agriculture people have. I wrote these two books to educate the public about agricultural history. The Georgia Farmers' Strike took place in the late 1970's through the mid 1980's. No one my age, except for the descendants of the participants, knew about the events of the book until I had it published. The reason these events are not well known is simple: interest in agriculture was been left behind by the public when they left the farm for the bright lights in town. It's not flashy or sexy and doesn't hold their interest even though we need farmers for three meals a day. 

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

      Knowing history's importance is playing out in the national news right now. If you don't know the facts firsthand, you can be led down any road like the blind leading the blind. "Googling information" is a dangerous thing since anybody can put anything on the internet that's wrong, slanted or occasionally right, but one can tell the difference. Go to the library and find out for yourself. The libraries are drying up and dying because the internet has taken its place.

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

      I love the Revolutionary and Civil War periods but also learning about the way things were before cell phones, electricity, tractors, etc. I like to read about how people survived before the cell phone was invented because I'd like to go back to those days...

6. How did Georgia’s agricultural history specifically become a part of your life?

      The books I wrote have become a huge part of my life. I enjoy educating people about the subjects I researched and reliving the events experienced in the books with some of the people I meet that were there.

7. You’ve written a new book about the history of Georgia’s famous official state vegetable, the Vidalia Onion.  What will readers find as they read your book?

      Readers will read about the struggle it took to establish the communities around Vidalia first and then the struggle to establish the crop itself. I also wrote about the legal and legislative process it took to establish the Vidalia onion. Everything that is written about in the news is contradictory to the facts about migrant workers so I took it upon myself to research and explain the legal process of obtaining workers from other countries, known as H2A. 

Yumion