![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "Investigation Is Made To Determine Basis Caldwell Had For All His Writings" said a front-page headline in the Sunday, March 10, 1935, edition. ![]() The Augusta newspaper – which was celebrating its 150th birthday during the city's 200th celebration – decided to get to the truth of Caldwell's claims. More on Erskine Caldwell: Movie-making brings to mind 'God's Little Acre' The newspaper investigates Monday Mystery: Why did Augusta celebrate its bicentennial the wrong year? Events had been scheduled, costumes rented and a poem had been commissioned. The community still fumed over "Tobacco Road ," and was only two months away from its long-planned, bicentennial blowout. The story got national attention that Augusta certainly didn't want. In an in-depth report for The New York Evening Post, he related to a metropolitan audience the "squalor" among the poorer tenant farmers. Three years later, Caldwell did it again, only this time he focused on Jefferson County, Augusta's neighbor to the south. The book was so scandalous, they quickly banned it in Chicago, which had taken much longer to arrest Al Capone. In Augusta, city fathers, neighborhood mothers, business leaders and just about every preacher with a pulpit expressed disbelief that the son of a local pastor could author such best-selling trash. ![]()
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