The Great Harvest: Remembering Tobacco in the Pee Dee is a recently released book by Dr. Eldred "Wink" Prince of Coastal Carolina and photographer Benton Henry of Latta. On December 7th from 4-6pm, Prince and Henry will be at Hartsville's Burry Bookstore signing books and talking about the Pee Dee's tobacco history and culture.
The story of The Great Harvest making it to print started in 2008, when Prince and Henry were introduced by Bruce Douglas, who was serving as the Executive Director of Black Creek Arts Council at the time. "Wink is widely-known as an authority on tobacco history; he did write 'the book' on it (Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco in South Carolina). I was aware of a collection of tobacco barn photographs by Benton held by the South Carolina Tobacco Trail. It just made sense to connect the two," said Douglas. And that's just what he did.
The trio's first project resulted in the traveling photography exhibit, Tobacco Barns of the Pee Dee. The exhibit traveled from Hartsville to Conway, with a few stops in-between. "The number of people who came out to each of the openings for the photography exhibit is really what inspired the book," notes Douglas.
Douglas, Henry and Prince hope to see the same outpouring for The Great Harvest. Their stop at Burry Bookstore on December 7th will be the first of many across the region. Stop in and enjoy their talk and reminisce about our shared past in tobacco culture. The book will retail for $25.
Burry Bookstore is located at 130 West Carolina Avenue in downtown Hartsville.
The Great Harvest's production was supplemented by a generous grant for design from the South Carolina Arts Commission. Chesterfield-native Nathan Gulledge designed the layout of the book.
About the Book:
For much of the twentieth century, flue-cured tobacco culture dominated the Pee Dee economy. On farms throughout the region, families labored to plant, cultivate, harvest, cure, and ready the crop for market. In the market towns of Mullins, Lake City, Darlington, Timmonsville, Conway, and Loris, warehousemen turned the crop into cash. Between 1988 and 1993, faculty and students-mostly from Coker College-conducted interviews among Pee Dee tobacco growers and warehousemen. Many subjects had been involved in tobacco culture throughout their lives and spoke knowledgeably of producing and marketing the crop. Their stories are here, woven into an engaging and highly readable narrative. The brilliant photographs of Benton Henry, shot on the country roads and city streets of the Pee Dee, provide a poignant visual commentary on the agrarian architecture of another time.
"Benton sees and shows us the beauty of this world in a most singular way." -Sam Abell, Photographer, National Geographic.
"Studies based on memory can be fraught with inaccuracies, but not so with this textural and photographic study of the Pee Dee tobacco culture by Eldred Prince and Benton Henry. They have provided a valuable-indeed indispensable-account of tobacco culture in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Based on oral histories and evocative images, this study arouses sensory details of sight and smell and sound. With a deft hand, Prince places the daily lives of the Pee Dee community within the larger regional discourse on tobacco's role in the culture. And Henry's eloquent and sometimes haunting images are essays in themselves. The result is an extraordinary contribution to historical understanding and photographic art." - Orville Vernon Burton of Clemson University.
South Carolina native Benton Henry makes his living as a commercial photographer, working throughout the Southeast for both individual companies and advertising agencies. Passionate about his career of nearly four decades, Henry finds personal satisfaction with each assignment and especially "feels God's pleasure" as he sees and captures the beauty of modest places that most people miss. His editorial work has been used to illustrate over 400 articles and his fine art photography has been displayed in museums and private collections throughout the region. Henry currently serves on the board of the American Society of Media Photographers of South Carolina. He lives in his hometown of Latta with his wife, Tina, and their daughter, Elizabeth.
Eldred E. "Wink" Prince Jr. is a Professor of History and Director of the Waccamaw Center for Cultural and Historical Studies at Coastal Carolina University. Prince received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina and joined the CCU faculty in 1987. His publications include Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco in South Carolina, and, as co-author, South Carolina: Then and Now (2002) and Tobacco in History and Culture (2005). Prince was an Associate Editor of The South Carolina Encyclopedia. He and his wife Sallye reside in Conway and Surfside.
Bruce Douglas is the Executive Director of the Florence Regional Arts Alliance and coordinator of Pee Dee Arts, an online arts marketing vehicle for Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Florence, Lee, Marion, Marlboro and Williamsburg Counties. Douglas received an MA in Museum Studies from Newcastle University in 2005. He serves on the Board of Directors for the South Carolina Arts Alliance and works to promote artists in the region through two guilds, the Artisans of the South Carolina Cotton Trail and Artisans of the South Carolina Tobacco Trail. In addition to being a constant advocate for business and arts partnerships, Douglas works for Duke Energy as a Continuous Business Excellence Leader. He lives in Hartsville with his wife, Brianna, and children, McKendrie and Lila.
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