“‘Honey, in our way of life, there ain’t no banker’s hours, and I don’t find in the Bible there’s no such thing as an eight-hour day.'”

In 1986, as I began conducting oral histories with older southern farmers about changes in rural life, I asked an agricultural extension agent in Florence, South Carolina, to recommend some likely narrators. He was eager to help, but his first list included only men. “What about women who farmed?” I pressed. Without hesitating, he replied, “You need to see Mrs. J. W. Murray.”