First Sunday Lecture: What’s With All the Peaches?

First Sunday Lecture
What’s With All the Peaches?
How the Georgia Peach Became a Southern Symbol

Sunday, July 8, 2018
3:00-4:00 p.m.
Smyrna Library, Meeting Room

Speaker: Dr. William Thomas Okie, author of The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South

Imprinted on license plates, plastered on billboards, stamped on the tail side of the state quarter, and inscribed on the state map, the peach is easily Georgia’s most visible symbol. Yet Prunus persica itself is surprisingly rare in Georgia, and it has never been central to the southern agricultural economy. Why, then, have southerners - and Georgians in particular - clung to the fruit? In this presentation, Kennesaw State professor William Thomas Okie will explain how the peach became such an important cultural icon for the South even as it became increasingly difficult to grow over the course of the twentieth century, and what that tells us about culture and agriculture in the American South.

Speaker Bio: William Thomas Okie grew up in the Georgia peach belt, studied history at Covenant College and the University of Georgia, and serves as associate editor of the journal Agricultural History. As Associate Professor at Kennesaw State University, he teaches American history, food history, and history education. He lives with his family in unincorporated Cobb County, Georgia. The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South (Cambridge University Press, 2016) is his first book.

The First Sunday Lecture series is sponsored by the Friends of Smyrna Library and Smyrna Library.

FREE ADMISSION.