"The Extension Service Is Not an Integration Agency": The Idea of Race in the Cooperative Extension Service

Abstract

This article is an institutional history of the development of race policy within the federal Cooperative Extension Service. It demonstrates that the popular belief in African-American inferiority and pragmatic political compromises aimed at creating a bureaucracy serving the nation’s agricultural constituency and ensuring its longevity, led to a conscious marginalization of African-American interests within the program. Federal extension officials not only tolerated, but actively supported, discrimination within the southern branches of the service. African-American leadership protested against the adverse effects of racial policies in the Extension Service from the very beginning. While there were some limited positive gains in the number of staff and availability of services for rural African Americans, these changes did not challenge the suzerainty of whites over the program. In the post-World War II era--especially after 1950--African Americans confronted white extension leadership. Extension officials hid behind a bureaucratic façade and a flawed interpretation of the federal-state cooperative agreement to delay institutional restructuring. Political appointees pushed the service toward policies of racial justice; however, extension leadership continued to move slowly on fundamental transformation. As a result, the adjustments did not lead to a fundamental re-thinking of race policy in the service and ultimately contributed to the disappearance of the African-American extension force to a significant degree.

Addressing Health Inequities

“…43 The US laws establishing LGUs and Extension, the Morill Act of 1862 and the Smith-Lever Act of 1912, respectively, were both used to purposefully disenfranchise Black and African American people. 41 This legacy has perpetuated into present day, exhibited in institutional and structurally maintained practices and policies that lack trustworthiness, transparency, or a universal commitment to equity. Given the lack of trustworthiness, it is unsurprising when potential program participants or partners from historically excluded groups are wary of interactions with predominantly white LGUs, and it is no doubt a contributing factor to the lack of perception among EHE for programming demands in communities that have experienced harm or violence as a result of racism and oppression.…”

“…The violent, racist histories and origins of LGUs described previously are well documented through projects such as Land-Grab Universities 43. The US laws establishing LGUs and Extension, the Morill Act of 1862 and the Smith-Lever Act of 1912, respectively, were both used to purposefully disenfranchise Black and African American people 41. This legacy has perpetuated into present day, exhibited in institutional and structurally maintained practices and policies that lack trustworthiness, transparency, or a universal commitment to equity.…”

“…The participants in this study represented similar demographics to other previous studies sampling EHE, that is, overwhelmingly white/European American and female. 41 The average age was 44 (+13.8) years with an average of 12 (+10.6) years of experience working within Extension. The majority of EHE reported having a master's degree (75%).…”

Intercultural Competence in Extension Education: Applications of an Expert-Developed Model

“…Among the barriers to Extension's continued impact in the 21 st century, three consistently identified challenges include responding to rapidly diversifying stakeholder and clientele populations, effectively meeting the needs of historically underserved and marginalized communities of color, and adapting programming to meet the unique service needs of youths with non-conforming gender or sexual identities, or youth with disabilities (Cochran et al, 2012;French & Morse, 2015;Harris, 2008;Soule, 2017). According to the Pew Research Center, a record 44.4 million immigrants (accounting for approximately 13.6% of the nation's population) resided in the United States in 2017 (Radford & Noe-Bustamante, 2019).…”

“…In addition to the need to address new immigrant audiences, there also remain opportunities to reconcile Extension's institutional history of discrimination against, or neglect of, communities of color (Harris, 2008). Growing awareness of Extension's relationship with historically underserved communities has informed emergent inclusive programming models, as well as broader frameworks for reimagining ways to measure and articulate Extension's community outreach commitments (Franz, 2014;Gonzalez et al, 2020).…”