The Town and Country Roots of Modjeska Monteith Simkins’s Activism

ADRIENNE MONTEITH PETTY is a historian of the American South who examines the transformation of farming since the Civil War. She is an associate professor at the College of William & Mary and Vice President of the Agricultural History Society. Petty and Mark Schultz co-direct the oral history project “Breaking New Ground: A History of African American Farm Owners,” and are writing a book that draws upon the interviews. Petty’s book, Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina since the Civil War (2013), won the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Agricultural History Society and the H. L. Mitchell Award of the Southern Historical Association.