The series comprised essays and articles by high school students from Rabun County, Georgia focusing on Appalachian culture.
[citation needed] His mother, Lucy Freelove Smith Wigginton, died eleven days later of "pneumonia due to acute pulmonary edema," according to her death certificate.
[citation needed] His father, Brooks Edward Wigginton, was a professor of Landscape Architecture in Athens, Georgia.
[5]: 12 Uncertain whether he wanted to continue teaching high school, Wigginton took a leave of absence to pursue a second master's degree.
[6] In 1967, they started publishing the interviews, along with original articles and other student writing, in a quarterly magazine called Foxfire,[8] named after local phosphorescent lichen.
[6] Topics included folklife practices, recipes, customs associated with farming, and the rural life of southern Appalachia, as well as the folklore and oral histories of local residents.
[3] Bill Parrish, then-executive director of Foxfire Fund, announced that the guilty plea would require Wigginton's "total separation" from the organization.
In 1998, the University of Georgia anthropology department started to work with the Foxfire project to archive 30 years worth of materials.