Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service, and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas

3. Segregated Modernization: Taking the Message into African American Fields and Farm Homes

48 3 Segregated Modernization Taking the Message into African American Fields and Farm Homes  Negro agents disseminated scientific information about farm and home management to families throughout East Texas. During the 1920s, they worked with African Americans individually, in groups, and through communities to build networks of support and influence. The communal aspect of instruction was evident in all phases of program delivery. Although individuals volunteered to demonstrate new methods, they functioned as members of extended kinship and community groups. All participants gained leadership experience through club activities. They learned organizational skills by cooperating with preachers and teachers and businessmen interested in reform. They engaged economic entrepreneurship through formation of community canning centers and market-oriented but diversified agriculture. Freed from white oversight, black farm families tailored information to suit their needs. They negotiated poverty and racism to conduct demonstrations on their own terms, with their own resources, and with their own agendas. They stabilized their position, as a result, and helped strengthen rural communities. At the same time, they solidified the influence of the Negro Division. Nonetheless , the color-sensitive bureaucracy undervalued their contributions and systematically discriminated against them. Despite their relative autonomy, black agents and their constituents could accomplish only so much in white Texas. Growth in the black Texas population prompted white administrators to sustain staffing levels after the Great War. Between 1920 and 1930, the number of black farm operators increased by 9.3 percent. This growth made Texas somewhat distinctive from the Old South, which experienced a drop of 4.9 percent in black farm operators. The number of black farm operators increased only in the trans-Mississippi states, including Mississippi, Louisiana , Arkansas, and Oklahoma, in addition to Texas. Even though Texas segregated modernization 49 experienced the smallest percentage of growth among the five states, TAEX officials supported the Negro Division to a greater degree than segregated divisions were supported in other southern states (see Map 3). Agents knew that if club members communicated and cooperated they could accomplish major things and enjoy a more modern life. That ideal, however, seemed a long way off for many during the 1920s. Rural blacks remained caught in the Jim Crow South, where racism defined public and private encounters . Furthermore, sagging commodity prices, drought, floods, and the boll weevil added to the burden that black farmers bore. Families that heeded an agent’s advice often found that they accomplished nothing—“the excessive rains and the large presence of the boll weevil swept away practically the whole cotton crop.” County agents regularly prayed to God for relief, but they doggedly tried to change the system through organized club work. Map 3. Counties featured in the narrative. These counties represent the demographic and geographic diversity of East Texas. Drawn by Chris Blakely and Ron Finger; revised by Richard Riccio. 50 chapter 3 Diversification proved a difficult lesson to teach black farmers in Texas, who depended so much on one cash crop, cotton. Yet, agents indicated how crops and stocks, in addition to cotton, could increase income and help free families from dependency on crop liens. Agents urged farmers to relegate cotton to supplemental cash crop rather than primary crop. If farmers raised more corn than cotton they could keep hogs and could sell excess corn and pork; they could convert cotton fields to pasture, keep dairy cattle, and market cream; they could plant orchards and sell fruit. Income from numerous sources, not a concentration on cotton, could help farmers become solvent. Farm women could do this as well as men. Mrs. Smoot in Washington County became a landowner because she reduced expenses by canning, increased income by raising poultry, and put the money she made from her cotton into land and a home. Farm agents, however, faced their greatest challenge in attempts to convert their farmers to diversification. From the time the black agronomist Jacob Ford learned about cotton reduction at Texas A&M in 1916, agents committed to reducing cotton dependency. Extension agents advocated diversi fication to stabilize the market, but “white gold” exerted a greater influence on farmers’ decisions than did agents’ advice. In 1919, Robert Hines, agent in McLennan County, discouraged farmers from growing cotton but, to satisfy their demands for information about the cash crop, he introduced a better class of cotton that increased yields. Several agents wrestled with the paradox of trying to reduce...