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

1. African Americans and Rural Reform in Texas, 1891–1914

Reaping a Greater Harvestº 1 1 African Americans and Rural Reform in Texas, 1891–1914  African Americans strove to improve conditions in rural Texas after emancipation , but the most organized and sustained effort developed during the Populist era of the late 1880s and the early 1890s. Politics affected white decisions to support black-led reform efforts, specifically, the Farmers’ Improvement Society of Texas, because whites believed such alliances weakened Populist challenges to the two-party system. After the demise of Populism , Texas Democrats and Republicans abandoned rural blacks and began competing with each other over the best way to address the needs of whites. Blacks remained influential but marginalized from growing opportunities in government-funded reform aimed nearly completely at white audiences. The Texas Department of Agriculture, the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and experiment stations authorized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and supported by Texas A&M provided information to select groups. White Texans kept a firm grasp on knowledge by prohibiting black involvement in research and refusing to employ blacks as purveyors of information . African Americans had to ask for services and depend on white Texans to deliver. Ultimately, sustained requests for information combined with an evident commitment to agriculture and rural life on the part of black farm families forced Texas officials to hire African Americans. They believed that separating them into the Negro Division of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service would reduce their influence. Robert Lloyd Smith first organized blacks in Oakland, Texas, in 1889 to circumvent exploitation by whites, “a class,” according to Smith, “that calculated , almost to the pound, his productive capacity, and then gave him credit up to this estimate and occasionally beyond it.” By 1891, he had shifted his goals from home and yard improvement because he realized that farmers could not afford even modest repairs. Instead, he advocated more politicized 2 chapter 1 agendas, specifically, abolishment of the credit system. He believed black farmers could circumvent the Texas lien law, which trapped them in poverty, by raising foodstuffs at home and using cash to purchase cooperatively. Raising crops and stock for home consumption required changing the crop culture , so he encouraged members of his newly constituted Farmers’ Improvement Society of Texas to discuss topics of interest to farmers and thereby “create, encourage, and foster an intelligent and lively interest in improved methods of farming.” The FIS used prize money to reward farmers for improving their fields, garden crops, and livestock. Smith expected the farmers to take their hard-earned funds and contribute some to the FIS mutual-benefit fund to insure member families against loss, but he also expected them to invest in real and personal property, specifically, land and a home. Smith’s reform agenda appealed to a growing group of middle-class African Americans which included his in-laws, William H. and Catherine Isaacs. Isaacs, the community blacksmith, had purchased a town lot in the unincorporated community of Oakland in April 1866, soon after emancipation, adding an acre at the edge of town to his holdings the next year. Only three other African Americans owned land in the county before him. The Isaacses’ status as landowners added leverage to their pursuit of education for their several children. By the mid-1880s, Smith had arrived in Freedmantown, the name white Oakland residents conferred on the black settlement at the edge of town, to teach. He helped build better schools and professionalize black teachers. He allied with Isaacs fully by marrying one of his daughters, Francis Isabella “Belle” Isaacs, in 1890. Smith’s alliance with the Isaacses proved fortuitous, and the FIS became a family affair. Smith administered the organization and, with the help of his brother-in-law, William Isaacs Jr., developed the FIS cooperative purchasing system. His wife, Belle Isaacs Smith, coordinated the Women’s Barnyard Auxiliary, the FIS branch that helped women turn eggs, poultry, and butter into valuable additions to farm income. As a team they engaged in a form of economic warfare, encouraging black farm families to practice improved methods of farming, invest their income in their own homes and land, and thus distance themselves from white control. Farmers could improve their status from sharecropper to tenant to farm owner and gain personal security as a result. New landowners also gained influence in local decision-making. Members of secure...