A Legacy in Peanuts

In A Legacy in Peanuts, Columbus, Georgia native Haisten Willis tells the story of Columbus's own Tom's Foods, a firm that aided the South’s industrialization and played a major role in establishing the humble peanut as a cash crop. In the 1920s, founder Tom Huston revolutionized both the manufacturing and marketing of peanuts through his patented shelling machines and the creation of the company’s signature product, Tom’s Toasted Peanuts. With an assist from legendary scientist George Washington Carver, Huston turned Tom’s into a multimillion-dollar business in just a few years—before losing it all on another big business bet. Future Columbus mayor Walter Richards then took over, stabilizing Tom’s and expanding its lineup to include crackers and candy during his three decades at the helm.

The stuff of childhood memories, lazy afternoons, and countless workplace break rooms, the story of Tom's Foods reveals fundamental truths about business, farming, factory labor, race relations, innovation, and class in the twentieth-century South. By following the four largest players in the company's history—Huston, Richards, longtime president J. W. "Bill" Feighner, and midwestern billionaire Michael Heisley, who purchased Tom's as a distressed asset in 1993 and proved to be its final owner before a 2005 bankruptcy—Willis illuminates a complex story of the modernizing South.