Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service, and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas by Debra A. Reid (review)

Abstract

and uses the author’s memory and academic resources to demythologize a mythic man. However, a conspicuous error exists in Henry Cohen II’s description of his grandfather’s writing about Henry Castro, a Texas empresario. Cohen II wrote; “between 1841–1846” Henry Castro brought “5,000 French Jews” to settle in Texas (p. 34). Although Castro was reared a Jew and was a successful empresario, he did not bring Jews to Texas. Nevertheless, this book is a welcome addition to the meager offerings about a man who embraced Texas culture and who tirelessly worked to help “white or black, Jew or Gentile, aristocrat or plebian” (p. 59). Texas A&M University Kay Goldman Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service, and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas. By Debra A. Reid. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Pp. 328. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, bibliographic essay, archival sources, index. ISBN 978-1-58544-571-4. $39.95, cloth.) In Reaping a Greater Harvest, Debra Reid sheds light on the development and growth of the “Negro Division” of the Federal Agricultural Extension Service (FES), focusing on the period between 1915 and 1965, when the division flourished in Texas. During these “Jim Crow” years, black agents, administrators, and farmers worked to improve rural life within the confines of a segregated system that mostly worked against them. In addition, Reid also demonstrates the myriad ways men and women involved in extension work struggled against ignorance, discrimination, and racism while trying to improve the material prosperity of rural black Texans. Number fourteen in the Sam Rayburn Series on Rural Life, Reaping a Greater Harvest is a revised and expanded version of Reid’s Ph.D. dissertation. Reid used extensive archival research, including records of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Farm Security Administration files, and the papers of the Farmer’s Improvement Society of Texas, in addition to numerous Texas county records, to reveal the ways black agents navigated a complex social and political system based on racial and gender inequality. Although not all agents and extension service employees agreed on solutions (or whether economic and social concerns should be intertwined), collectively their work strengthened rural communities and improved the health and economic welfare of individuals and families. The book’s seven chapters are organized chronologically, beginning with an introduction to cooperative demonstration work in Texas. This new educational program that attempted to revitalize and diversify Texas agriculture after a boll weevil infestation in the first years of the twentieth century excluded most black farmers. It was not until passage of the Smith-Lever Agricultural Extension Act of 1914, and the resulting establishment of the Negro Division, that black Texas farmers would be allowed to actively participate in extension services. Reid discusses thoroughly the expansion of the division in Texas during the Great War, through the 1920s, and the Great Depression years of the 1930s. In these three decades, the division hired black men and women to disseminate information to rural communities, including new farming techniques developed at Texas A&M 2009 Book Reviews 341 *jan 09 11/26/08 12:00 PM Page 341 and Prairie View. Employees also helped establish 4-H clubs and helped fund and build community canning facilities so that farm families could not only better feed themselves, but could also learn the value of diversifying their means of income. Although the division was under the ultimate authority of a white power structure , Reid’s analysis reveals how black employees maneuvered within this racist system to improve life for rural blacks and, importantly, for themselves and their profession. Some employees decided to use their expertise to reform rural life in Africa and Latin America when the Cold War offered such opportunities, while others began using the media (“Southern Fireside Chats”) and other public forums to expand their programs to a larger, nonfarm and more racially diverse audience. According to Reid, however, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the “integration” of the Texas Agricultural Extension ironically seemed to do more damage to black agents than the racist system it supposedly outlawed. Marginalized within an integrated institution, agents who did not lose their jobs lost much of their ability to...