Paul Green was born 17 March 1894 on a farm in Harnett County, near Lillington, North Carolina. He learned early what he has believed all his life--that the people who live on the land develop a richer philosophy of life than those who are reared away from it. He loves to tell how he worked a mule-drawn plow, holding the handle with one hand and a book of poems in the other, reading to the elements. This background he dramatizes in his plays, stories, and novels--the history of the earth's enduring people.

He attended Buies Creek Academy (now Campbell University, Buies Creek), down the road from where he was born. One of his teachers there was Hubbard F. Page, a poet, who encouraged Green in his poetry writing. Green graduated from Buies Creek Academy in 1914 and then served as principal of a small country school at Olive Branch in Harnett...