Egerton was a participant and writer for many projects and conferences dealing with education, desegregation, civil rights, and the American South; particularly its food.
[1] Egerton's Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
In 1971, Egerton began his career as a freelance writer of nonfiction, specializing in education, race relations and social-cultural issues in his native region.
In 1988–89, he wrote a syndicated food column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other southern newspapers, and in 1996 he was a senior correspondent for The Tennessean, Nashville's morning daily.
In 2007, the SFA established the John Egerton Prize[2] to recognize annually selected "artists, writers, scholars, and others—including artisans and farmers—whose work in the American South addresses issues of race, class, gender, and social and environmental justice, through the lens of food."