McKINLEY MASSEY AND HIS FAMILY HAULING TOBACCO PLANTS TO THE FIELD FOR PLANTING

Burley tobacco was the mainstay of the area, and for most of the twentieth-century Madison County was the leading producer of burley in North Carolina. Tobacco paid the bills. Up until the mid-1980s, most families with a tobacco allotment raised the crop themselves, often trading work with their neighbors on the labor intensive crop. Tobacco has many problems: it's hard on the soil, susceptible to disease, and the end product is bad for people. But cultivating tobacco has promoted a sense of community and a pride in making a living from the land. It provided mountain people with the means to stay on their land and assured the continuation of a rural, agrarian way of life.