Gilbert Fite

Gilbert Courtland Fite (May 14, 1918 – July 13, 2010) was an American historian and university president known for his work on the history of agriculture in the United States. He was a professor at the University of Oklahoma 1945–1971, then president of Eastern Illinois University from 1971 to 1976, and next held the Richard B. Russell Chair in American History at the University of Georgia until his retirement in 1986.

Fite's books included works on how farmers affected the political environment and broader economic history of the United States, examining the political power that farmers wielded in various eras. His best known books in agricultural history included The Farmers' Frontier, 1865–1900 (1977), American Farmers: The New Minority (1981), and Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865–1980 (1984). He was president of the Agricultural History Society 1960–1961, of the Southern Historical Association in 1974, of the Western History Association 1985–1986, and of Phi Alpha Theta 1981–1983.

Early life and education Fite was born on May 14, 1918, in Santa Fe, Ohio, to a couple of poor homesteaders, Fite spent his childhood and teenage years in western South Dakota. He graduated from a Free Methodist secondary school in Wessington Springs, South Dakota, and attended Wessington Springs Junior College. By 1937, Fite attended Seattle Pacific College until medical issues forced him to attend an institution closer to his family's farm. He enrolled in the University of South Dakota at Vermillion, SD, and graduated with both his bachelor's degree and master's degree in history in 1941 under advisors Herbert S. Schell and Bert Loewenberg. His advisors were Elmer Ellis and economic historian Lewis F. Atherton. He served as chair of the history department 1955–1958 and rose to the named chair of George Lynn Cross Research Professor in 1968. after which he took the Richard B. Russell Chair in American History at the University of Georgia. In 1990, he entered the South Dakota Hall of Fame. and in honor of his influence in shaping American agricultural history, in 2000 the Agricultural History Society created an annual award for the best dissertation on agricultural history named after Fite.

Personal life and death In 1939, Fite met Alberta June Goodwin while in a hospital in Mitchell, South Dakota. The two married on July 24, 1941, and later had two sons.

Two other influential works by Fite regarding American agricultural history were American Farmers: The New Minority (1981) and Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865–1980 (1984). Both books focused on how the political and economic power of agricultural peoples shrank in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In American Farmers, Fite argued that those who made their livelihoods on agriculture held less power at the end of the twentieth century than in the early decades of the century due to increased farm consolidation and greater technological innovation, which put more money into the pockets of a select few who were fortunate or smart enough to keep expanding. Additionally, this new economic environment coupled with political changes and a decline in the cultural myth of Jeffersonian agrarianism to shift political attention away from farmers and farming political organizations. Cotton Fields No More continued this analysis, shifting focus to the southern United States after the Civil War and arguing in a similar vein that political and technological changes caused small-scale farmers to leave agriculture. Cotton Fields No More won the Agricultural History Society's 1984 Theodore Saloutos Award for Best Book in Agricultural History.

Selected works Fite, Gilbert C. Peter Norbeck: Prairie Statesman. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1948. Fite, Gilbert C. Mount Rushmore. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952. Fite, Gilbert C. George N. Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954 Haystad, Lee and Gilbert C. Fite. The Agricultural Regions of the United States. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963. Fite, Gilbert C. The Farmers’ Frontier. 1865–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977. Fite, Gilbert C. American Farmers: The New Minority. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. Fite, Gilbert C. Cotton Fields No More: Southern Agriculture, 1865–1980. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1984. Fite, Gilbert C. and Jim E. Reese. An Economic History of the United States. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. Fite, Gilbert C. Richard B. Russell, Jr.: Senator from Georgia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.