In search of the New Farmers of America: Remembering America's forgotten Black youth farm movement

Abstract

Any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary accordingly. -Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past, p. 27 On October 13, 1965, the New Farmers of America (NFA) disappeared without a trace. The organization had operationalized one of the largest Black youth farm movements in American history and boasted a membership of over 50,000 Black farm boys studying vocational agriculture in public high schools in 18 states across the South and parts of the East Coast. They were last seen in the shadows of the Jim Crow era, participating in the national convention of the majority-white Future Farmers of America (FFA)-now named the National FFA Organization-in Kansas City, Missouri. At the convention, a ceremony took place that symbolized the July 1, 1965, decision to merge the NFA and FFA. But for some, as one former member told me, the "merger" was more like a "hostile takeover." The "pageantry of the merger," as Cecil L. Strickland, Sr. (1994, p. 44) described it, required Adolphus Pinson, the NFA's last president, to surrender the organization's charter to Kenneth Kennedy, the national FFA president. "I am duly authorized to transfer to you the National NFA Charter, together with the permanent record of officers of the organization," Pinson told Kennedy. "Also, to inform you that the total membership of 50,807 students of vocational agriculture in 12 states are now active members of the