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

Bibliographic Essay

257 BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY Summaries of cooperative demonstration work and extension service development appeared early in the twentieth century, including Seaman A. Knapp’s reflections in “The Farmers’ Cooperative Demonstration Work” (in U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA] Yearbook of Agriculture 1909 [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1909], 153–70). Other early studies include W. B. Mercier, Status and Results of Extension Work in the Southern States, 1903–1921, USDA Circular 248 (Washington, DC: USDA, 1922); Alfred Charles True, A History of Agricultural Extension Work in the United States, 1785–1923, Misc. Publication no. 15 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1928; reprint 1969); and Silver Anniversary Cooperative Demonstration Work, 1903–1928, Proceedings of the Anniversary Meeting held at Houston, Texas, February 5–7, 1929 (College Station: Extension Service, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, [1929]). Florence E. Ward produced Home Demonstration Work under the Smith-Lever Act, 1914–1924, USDA circular no. 43 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1929). A second wave of general histories appeared, written by authors not directly involved in the origin of the service, but these authors were usually affiliated with extension service work at the federal level. An example includes Gladys L. Baker, The County Agent (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939). Other histories compiled by social scientists provide more critiques of the social program. An example includes Edmund de S. Brunner and E. Hsin Pao Yang, Rural America and the Extension Service: A History and Critique of the Cooperative Agricultural and Home Economics Extension Service (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1949). The most serious analysis of the early years of government involvement in informal farmer education remains Roy V. Scott, The Reluctant Farmer: The Rise of Agricultural Extension to 1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 258 bibliographic essay 1970). The most comprehensive history remains Wayne D. Rasmussen, Taking the University to the People: Seventy-five Years of Cooperative Extension (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1989). Some early authors had direct experience with the Texas Agricultural Extension Service. O. B. Martin, an early TAEX administrator, synthesized earlier histories into The Demonstration Work: Dr. Seaman A. Knapp’s Contribution to Civilization (San Antonio, Tex.: Naylor, 1941). James A. Evans, one of the first cooperative demonstration agents in Texas, reflects on early extension work in Recollections of Extension History, Extension Circular no. 224 (Raleigh: North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering and North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service, 1938). Even Texas women told their stories. Lilla Graham Bryan wrote The Story of the Demonstration Work in Texas: A Sketch of the Extension Service of the Texas A. and M. College, B-93 revised (College Station: Extension Service, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and USDA, 1938). Kate Adele Hill, longtime TAEX home demonstration agent and administrator, wrote a comprehensive but celebratory history, Home Demonstration Work in Texas (San Antonio, Tex.: Naylor, 1958). Early publications often emphasized the work done with African Americans . These include three overviews of Negro Divisions established across the South. The first, by W. B. Mercier, Extension Work among Negroes, 1920, USDA Circular 190 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), appeared in 1921. James A. Evans wrote Extension Work among Negroes: Conducted by Negro Agents, 1923, USDA Circular 355 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1925). O. B. Martin wrote A Decade of Negro Extension Work, 1914–1924, Miscellaneous Circular no. 72 (Washington, DC: USDA, 1926). During the 1930s, Erwin H. Shinn prepared A Survey of the Manner of Procedure Followed in Developing County Programs of Negro Extension Work in Agriculture and Home Economics, Misc. Extension Publication 11 (Washington, DC, March 1933, mimeographed) to facilitate expansion of the service. Interest in Negro Division efforts continued into the World War II era, when Doxey A. Wilkerson wrote Agricultural Extension Services among Negroes in the South (Washington, DC: Conference of Presidents of Negro Land-Grant Colleges, 1942). Some of the early studies focus on work undertaken at Tuskegee Institute, the institutional home of the first agents. Thomas M. Campbell reflected on his work in The Movable School Goes to the Negro Farmer (Tuskegee, Ala.: Tuskegee Institute Press, 1936; reprint, 1969). Allen W. Jones critiqued Tuskegee’s influence in “Thomas M. Campbell: Black Agricultural Leader bibliographic essay 259 of the New South” (Agricultural History 53, no. 1 [Jan. 1979]: 42–59); idem, “Improving Rural Life for Blacks: The Tuskegee Negro Farmers’ Conference, 1892...