"The Extensions 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 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.

The Politics of Knowledge in Inclusive Development and Innovation

“…The Land Grant colleges had to support the services and work together to reach out to the 'black' population. This faced much resistance (Harris, 2008), such as brusque racial statements against equal budgeting from Southern senators. The final arrangement was that the USDA could withhold funds if any injustice was claimed.…”

“…This coincided with the new practice in Federal policy to mark African Americans farm and home demonstration agents by race. Carmen Harris (2008) has found appointment forms that named their functions as 'Negro Home Demonstration Agent' or 'Negro Agent' and forbade the use of any other title. Following Harris among other scholars, Domosh (2015) connected this racial approach to the underlying belief that African Americans were inherently and bodily 'problematic' and in need of 'improvement' within the dominating culture of segregation and white supremacy.…”

Race, biopolitics and liberal development from the Jim Crow South to postwar Africa

“…The USDA's agricultural extension service was comprised of three divisions with distinct goals: Farm Demonstration Work was meant to help men modernise their farming techniques, Home Demonstration Work (HDW) was meant to improve the homemaking skills for women, and 4‐H was designed to develop children into “modern” future farmers and farmwives. As scholars have shown, the exact nature of the type of work USDA agents actually conducted varied according to region and timeframe, and as county, state, regional and national directors shifted their priorities (Frysinger, ; Harris, ; Scott, ; Seals, ). It also varied according to racial categories.…”

Practising Development at Home: Race, Gender, and the “Development” of the American South

“…Like all other parts of the extension service operating in the Southern States, HDW was segregated: each state employed white women as county home demonstration agents to attend to the “needs” of white farm women, and African‐American women to serve as demonstration agents for African‐American farm women (Harris ; Seals ). In its early years before federal funding was allocated, HDW consisted primarily of volunteer interventions by prominent women community leaders who often formed clubs to share their knowledge of new food preservation technologies, focusing on the canning of fruits and vegetables from their gardens.…”