Creation of NC State

Leonidas L. Polk

North Carolina State University opened in 1889 as the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (NCCA&M). Established in 1862 with a land grant, the college taught agriculture, military tactics, and the mechanical arts so members of the working class could obtain a full education.[1] One of the founding needs behing NCCA&M was to revive the North Carolina agricultural economy, which would need individuals trained in the current methods of agriculture. These individuals were white males, and this exhibit page focuses on those students in the agricultural school in terms of who they were and what courses they were offered.

The full courses option, or four year degree, of the agricultural studies were aimed at men who would become leaders not farm laborers. The college created a curriculum to instill an “administrative ability” in its students to direct “the great army of uneducated muscle which constitutes our farm hands.”[2] Farm hands or laborers could include poor white males unable to afford NCCA&M, white women, and African American men and women. Each social and racial group played a role in the North Carolina agricultural economy, but only white males who could afford NCCA&M were offered a four-year formal education and a chance at “leadership” career positions.

The early curriculum of the four-year Agriculture program exposed privileged students to a wide variety of agricultural topics that they might not be able experience on their family farm. Men participated in specialized course work of General Agriculture, Horticulture, Arboriculture and Botany, Entomology, Dairying, Zoology, and Chemistry.[3] The first graduating class consisted of three students who studied or majored in agriculture. Seventy-two percent of the second freshman class was farmers’ sons.[4] The term farmer implies landowner, not laborer, once again illustrating that only a specific class, gender, and race could afford a formal education for their sons.

In 1923, the agricultural program was rebranded as the School of Agriculture, and would become the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences (now the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences).[5] This entity continued the hierarchy of education until the 1940s. Several factors pressured the program to dismantle its hierarchy. Through the history of the program women asserted themselves into any type of agricultural coursework they were allowed, and eventually secured Bachelors and Masters degrees. The program recognized and hailed women’s achievements in the 1970s. After an eleven-year struggle, Affirmative Action stimulated the School to examine and remove its barriers against African Americans’ educational access.