 In fact, he had first-hand experience observing the day-to-day challenges facing poor cotton farmers.He had lived for two months in Alabama with sharecroppers in the summer of 1936 and had recorded in great detail their families' troubled histories and meager existence at the time.Later that written record, accompanied by the photographs of Walker Evans, formed the highly acclaimed book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men", which was published just four years prior to the release of "The Southerner."