SOURCE: “Fifty Years since Tobacco Road: An Interview with Erskine Caldwell,” in Conversations with Erskine Caldwell, edited by Edwin T. Arnold, University Press of Mississippi, 1988, pp. 218-32.

In the following interview, originally published in 1984, Caldwell discusses his life in the South, his early literary influences, and his opinions about censorship and racism.

On the evening of July 15, 1982, Erskine Caldwell and his wife, Virginia, paid a visit to Wilson Library at the University of Minnesota for the opening of an exhibit celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Tobacco Road. Austin McLean, curator of the Special Collections and Rare Book Library, organized the exhibit and arranged for the Caldwells to come from their home in Scottsdale, Arizona for the occasion. The program, attended by more than one hundred Friends of Special Collections, included reminiscences by Edward P. Schwartz, a book collector, founder of the Henry Miller Literary Society...