Measuring Empowerment
Empowerment is a broad term, making it difficult to measure the extent in which the Extension Service empowered women and children between its emergence and the 1960s. However, in an attempt to measure the success of the Extension Service in empowering women and children, the term has been broken down into gender, racial, civic, and personal empowerment.
This image of club members gathered together demonstrates how demonstration clubs formed communities through service.
Civic Empowerment
The Extension Service’s greatest success was in its creation of local communities. Reforms started with the family then extended efforts beyond the farm. By initially teaching children practical lessons in agriculture and finance, they permeated reform through the entire family. Extension programs also created well-organized local clubs of women and children. The war years serve as an example of easily mobilized relief workers and patriots. They also allowed club members to put their new skills to work and provided rural North Carolinian families opportunities to reach out beyond the home. Families who had benefited from extension activities early in the twentieth century assumed leadership roles in extension efforts during the war.
Miss Ruth Current, Assistant Director for the N.C. Agricultural Extension Service, is shown explaining the Rural Women's Symposium theme "The Widening Circle of Enriched Ideas and Experience" in 1959.
Gender Empowerment
Between its emergence and the 1960s, the Extension Service created divides along gender and racial lines. The combining of boys and girls’ programs in 1926 did not solve the gender divide. Women’s home demonstration clubs continued to take in girls after their 4-H years and reinforce the role of home consumption manager. While women achieved self-reliance and leadership roles within the state, the Extension Service never challenged prevailing notions of gender inequality that existed throughout the United States.
This timeline was created for the golden anniversary celebration of 4-H club work in 1959. The timeline shows just how late the Extension Service came to many families.
Racial Empowerment
Through lack of funding and a failure to serve communities all together, the Extension Service neglected a large portion of the rural population. With the integration of many county clubs in the 1960s, African American women and children finally achieved equal funding for their Extension Service activities. However, integration often resulted in a restructuring of leadership in counties where African American extension agents had established themselves, undoing much of the progress those agents had made in the last twenty-five years.
![Rockingham County - April 27, 1940. Annie Soweor of the Ruffin 4-H Club in Rockingham County - [?] as the most outstanding club girl in the county in 1939](https://soh.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/files/fullsize/94198eac719b176a19436f7633d02f1d.jpg "Rockingham County - April 27, 1940. Annie Soweor of the Ruffin 4-H Club in Rockingham County - [?] as the most outstanding club girl in the county in 1939")
In 1940, Annie Soweor earned the tiitle of "Most Outstanding Club Girl" in Rockingham County. The Extension Service employed competitions that created strong and hard working rural leaders in North Carolina.
Personal Empowerment
Through club work, the Extension Service empowered women and children to find meaning in their work. Annie Laura Peterson was just one of many children in North Carolina who found value and self-worth through club activities. Reflecting on her involvement in a tomato club she wrote, “I also wanted to feel like I was some good in the world.”[1] Club work provided women and children opportunities to earn both an income and independence. Along with new opportunities, many farm families witnessed an increased standard of living with new conveniences and more fashionable clothing, furnishings, meals, and gardens. However, funding for these experiences was not distributed evenly between white and black clubs, and new opportunities for some were at the expense of others.
[1] Annie Laura Peterson, "1915 Girls Club, Tomato Club Booklet by Peterson, Annie Laura," NCSU Libraries' Digital Collections: Rare and Unique Materials, accessed October 14, 2014, http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/1915tom0014.