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2. Forming Separate Bureaucracies: Th e Negro Division of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, 1915–20
- Texas A&M University Press
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22 2 Forming Separate Bureaucracies The Negro Division of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, 1915–20 Texas became the twelfth state to segregate extension services when TAEX administrators created the Negro Division during 1915. The division quickly became the largest in the nation, securing more federal funding, more staff, and more participants than any other. It developed as a model of progressive reform, with college-educated African Americans instructing black youth and adults about farm and home management and efficiency and serving as agents of modernization. They had to devise strategies that appealed to poor farmers inclined toward self-improvement but cash poor and racially disadvantaged . They also had to face the backlash of white, middle-class progressivism and its racist tendencies and accomplish their goals despite this. TAEX officials picked the first agents carefully, believing that they would convey only information that did not threaten white authority. The TAEX director, Clarence Ousley, asked Prairie View A&M principal, Edward L. Blackshear, to recommend a woman and two men to undertake the work. Ousley interviewed Mrs. Mary Evelyn V. Hunter, an Alabama native and recent graduate of Prairie View A&M, in late July 1915 and appointed her first. He then selected Robert L. Smith, a college-educated South Carolinian and the FIS president, and Jacob H. “Jake” Ford, a Texan, teacher, farmer, and veteran of Farmers’ Cooperative Demonstration Work. Texas A&M president , William B. Bizzell, approved the appointments. The three traveled to TAEX headquarters on the Texas A&M campus for a conference with Ousley shortly after their appointment, and he impressed on them the importance of their work. Smith recounted that “we were told by our chief, Colonel Ousley, to get results from our work or the Negro Division would be abolished.” Hunter remembered Ousley saying that “if we succeeded others would be added to the force and if we failed that there would be no other Negro agents employed in the near future.” According to Hunter, the three “accepted this forming separate bureaucracies 23 challenge with the determination to win and establish for ever in the minds of those in authority that some Negroes will plan and develop large organizations if permitted to do so.” Hunter, Smith, and Ford represented a group of progressive-minded rural blacks, credentialed and committed to improving rural life, but their treatment indicates that their white colleagues did not consider them equals. White male administrators resisted appointing white women for demonstration work, yet, they appointed Hunter before appointing any black men, an indication of systemic devaluing of black masculinity by the same paternalists . White administrators apparently did not resent the black staff members; rather, descriptions indicate that they were considered useful. TAEX home demonstration agent Bernice Carter described Hunter as “a very efficient woman and [one who] will doubtless do a good work among the negroes of this state.” Other officials described Smith as “an exceptionally strong negro [who had] already done a great work among the colored farmers of this state.” The white county agent who had worked with Ford praised him for “his earnest desire to be helpful to the negro race.” TAEX administrators appointed Smith as the first director of the Negro Division (see Table 1), Ford served as agronomist, and Hunter as home demonstration agent. With their appointments , white staff could take comfort that black farmers were being served, and black staff could celebrate, according to Hunter, the “large and worthwhile contributions to American citizenry” they made. TAEX administrators publicly announced the formation of the Negro Division in September 1915. White promoters believed that newly hired agents could “awaken” among the black farmers “a full realization of their opportunities in agriculture.” Reporters covering the announcement indicated that “work with the negroes of Texas will begin for the first time.” Both perspectives fail to convey the efforts made over the previous thirteen years through demonstration work with black farmers or the FIS-led reform that had served black farmers in several counties for nearly twenty-five years. Yet, administrators based their hiring decisions on previous experience, and Hunter remembered Ousley directing them to work with “those communities where the interest was great enough to justify . . . entering.” This restriction basically directed staff to serve acquisitive black farm families already familiar with the FIS or earlier demonstration work. While this apparently reduced the burden staff members bore for creating an effective service in a short time, Hunter, Smith, and Ford targeted landowning families throughout the eastern half of the large state. This proved...