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Borders, Boundaries, And Edges: A Southern Autobiography, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

I was born in the mountains of North Carolina of parents who were textile mill operatives a the time. My father, Tommy Ayers, and my mother, Billie Lou Buckner, had known their days of working tobacco and hooking rugs. My father, although only twenty-one when I was born, was a veteran of the fighting in Korea. The first year of my life we lived on a farm in Micaville, North Carolina, where the red-clay driveway grew so slippery that my mother feared sliding into the ditch every time it rained.