The South's Negro Farm Agent

Abstract

The Cooperative Extension Service lays claim to being the agency engaged in adult education that reaches more in the United States than any other such agency. Such an educational agency is of primary importance and is especially needed by Negro farmers who face the necessity of using new methods of production and marketing if they are not to be eliminated from agriculture in the South where changes, in agricultural production have already seriously reduced their numbers. The Negro farm agent and the Negro home demonstration agent who have the responsibility for the teaching phase of the extension program work under handicaps that, for the most part, make their effectiveness minimal. While the work of the county agent is subsidized with Federal funds no measure comparable to those which have resulted in the improvement of public education in the Southf has been taken to eliminate the disadvantages of the Negro agent and thus make possible a more effective adult education service on his part. Agricultural workers gathered from over the South in January 1952 to dedicate a marker on the spot where cooperative extension work among Negro farmers was initiated forty-five years ago. Many things had happened to agriculture in the South and the role of the Negro farmer had undergone rather drastic changes since the first Negro farm agent was employed. That first agent, selected by Booker T. Washington to receive this appointment, is still with the Extension Service and could remember many changes that have taken place across the years. There was really no such thing as the Cooperative Extension Service when Thomas M. Campbell was named Collaborator in the Bureau of Plant Industry in the United States Department of Agriculture, at a salary at the rate of one ($1.00) dollar per annum on the miscellaneous roll, to be paid from the funds appropriated for the Bureau of Plant Industry to meet the emergency caused by the continued spread of the Mexican Boll Weevil in the Southern States. Several agents of the Bureau of Plant Industry were already busily trying to combat the ravages of the boll weevil which had crossed Texas on his hell-bent mission out of Mexico. Dr. Seaman A. Knapp had directed the use of a demonstration method in this pest control work. Like so many other things the county agent's work began obliquely rather than directly. Booker T. Washington was intensely concerned about improving the practices and living standards of Negro farmers. He and Dr. George Washington Carver had gone into farming communities and talked with farmers in an effort to encourage them to make improvements in their farming. These two men made it a practice to visit country churches and talk with farmers and demonstrate to them the use of a tool or piece of farm equipment they had brought in the buggy