Gilbert Courtland Fite, a South Dakota native, was a Richard B. Russell Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Georgia. He also taught history at the University of Oklahoma and was president of Eastern Illinois University. His works on agricultural history include The Farmer's Frontier, 1865-1900 (1966), American Farmers: The New Minority (1981), and the award-winning Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865-1980 (1984).