Immediate Hypocrisy

The North Carolina agricultural economy was built on the labor of men and women, white and black. White women and African American men and women in small and large farms were significant populations of the labor force. The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service educated these groups through home demonstrations of current methods in efficient food production and mechanized farming equipment use.* While this applied form of education benefited these people’s means of production, they were not getting the same education as the undergraduates in NCCA&M.

Poor whites and white women were not completely restricted from an education – short courses in agriculture and dairying were available during the winter. These courses were designed for young men lacking the finances or time to enroll in a four-year degree.[1] The winter programs allowed these farmers an opportunity to secure some training without conflicting with the harvest and planting seasons.

In 1890, Congress mandated the Second Morrill Act of 1890, creating separate universities for African Americans.[2] Southerners would not accept integrated schools; however the state of North Carolina had to accept a college for African Americans in order to keep NCCA&M. The Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race (now known as North Carolina A&T State University) opened its doors in 1891 in Greensboro, North Carolina. African Americans experienced segregated education in Extension and at college level, which placed them at the lowest level of the educational hierarchy until the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  The first African American male undergraduate in SALS appeared in a 1972 Agromeck yearbook. The SALS program would not actively recruit African American students until the 1980s.

*For more information about the North Carolina Cooperative Extension’s work with the farm labor of North Carolina see the sister-exhibits “The North Carolina Extension Service and the Farmer’s Family,” and “The Industry of Agriculture.”