Uncovering the New Farmers of America: Dr. Bobby Smith on Black Farm Boys

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Civics and Coffee, a history podcast, the show all about United States history, delivered to you and the time it takes to enjoy your morning cup of coffee. I'm your host, Alicia, a historian trained in United States history with a passion for telling both the known and unknown parts of America's past. So grab your coffee and get ready for some bite-sized history. Hey peeps, welcome back. In the early 20th century, educators established an organization focused on vocational agriculture that taught young men leadership and the power of business ownership. And yet, the new farmers of America remain largely lost to history. Something my guest this week hopes to change. I hope you all enjoy the conversation. Welcome everyone. Joining me today is Dr. Bobby J. Smith. He is an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the author of multiple books, including Black Farm Boys, the Untold Story of the New Farmers of America, which will be the focus of our conversation today. Welcome, Dr. Smith.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

So thank you so much for being here. Let's start with what was the New Farmers of America and how did you come to this research?

SPEAKER_01 1:30

So the New Farmers of America was the first national organization for what they call themselves black farm boys in the American South who were studying vocational agriculture at their segregated public high school. The idea of the New Farmers of America traveled as far north as New Jersey. So again, it was a high school-based organization designed for these boys to participate in activities surrounding vocational agriculture. It existed in 18 states, again as far north as New Jersey. An annual membership of about 55,000 boys held national conferences, state conventions, local fairs, and things of that nature as well. And the New Farms of America existed from 1935 to 1965. So you know, a very, very big organization. And what's interesting about the organization is that each state association had their own headquarters at an HBCU in that particular state. So for example, in Texas, uh Prayer View Anim University was the headquarters of the Texas Association of the New Farmers of America. And Prayerview is also what we call an 1890 land grant institution. So it was a school created under, well, the ag program under the school was created under the Moral Act of 1890. I'll tell you that to say because I'm setting this up because I went to Prayer View as an undergrad. So I went to Prayer View and studied agricultural economics there. And I had never heard of the New Farmers of America until about seven years ago. I was at home around March of 2019, and my sister sent me a text message one evening. She was at my mother's house back in Texas. I'm from Texas. And she was going through old storage bins from college. So my sister also went to prayer review as well. She graduated before me. And so she's going through these old bins. She's having, you know, she's reminiscing on her college days. She studied agronomy, so she's going through agronomy text. She's seeing old farm texts. And then she stumbles across these two books about an organization called The New Farmers of America. So she stops immediately, like dead in her tracks. And she's like, oh, wait, I haven't seen these books since 2006. It's been almost 15 years. So she snaps pictures of them and she sends them to me via text. So I get the text and she's like, hey, I'm going through these beans in mom's house, and I came across these two gems. And I'm like, okay, I don't know what these books are. I've never seen them before. But I was like, cool. I was like, you know, uh, it says New Farms of America on the book. So I said, let me do a quick Google search. So I do a quick Google search because she's excited about it. So I'm like, I have to look and see what these books are about. And then I do a Google search and I find out that this organization is as big as it was. And I had never heard of them before. So I told her, I said, you know, actually, you know, send me those books because I think I can do a paper or a project on it. Um, at the time I was a postdoc in African American Studies. My sister knew my research was on food and ag. So she was like, okay, you know, these books would be good in your hands. Also, one of the authors was her beloved professor, Dr. Cecil Strickland. So she's reminiscing, she's happy, she sends me the books. And then I immediately become almost obsessive, obsessed with the new farmers. I'm like, this massive organization operated HBCUs, they had a headquarters in Texas, the prior rewards and undergrad, in the same college that I graduated from, the college of ag there, and I never heard them before. As I started doing more and more research, I was like, wow, like this is more than just an essay. This is more than just a paper. This is a book project. Um, but I was working on my first book at the time. So I was like, how do I juggle? So the pandemic hit like a couple of months, like a year later. So during the day, I was working on my first book, and at night I was doing research on the new farms of America, trying to do, I mean, we were at home, so you know, nothing else to do, but do research. I mean, I could have done so other stuff, but I found myself doing research, and that's how I came across the New Farms of America was really this moment that my sister's in my mother's garage, and these books are out of print as well, so you know, they don't exist everywhere, so they're rare out of print books. And that kind of put me on this path towards wanting to recover this this story of the New Farmers of America.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

I loved the origin story of this book, and so uh thank you for sharing that and for including it in in the introduction into your book. And so telling the story of this organization and and kind of bringing it to light, you you assert a couple of things. And and one of the things you assert is that the New Farmers of America, or NFA for short, was part of the Black Youth Farm movement. So can you expand on what this was and how the NFA fit within it?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah, no, thank you for this question. So as I started, again, as I was learning more about the New Farms of America, you know, doing research at night, you know, looking at archives, calling people, discovering my own connections through professors, I realized that the NFA didn't operate in isolation, that I had to find a way to describe these youth activities that were happening before 1965 in rural black communities around agriculture. And as I was reading the literature, you know, as a scholar, I'm reading the literature. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, where these youth are located in movement frameworks. And there's no framework or lens for us to use to capture these activities that were happening as early as the 1870s. So for me, it was like I d I didn't want people to think that the new farmers of America just came out of nowhere. Because oftentimes the story of the New Farmers of America is tied to the history of the Future Farmers of America organization, which is, of course, you know, the largest high school-based ag education program, you know, in the nation. And the histories are aligned, but I didn't, but I strategically did not want the NFA to be a part of that history because by putting them in FFA's history, we erased some of these early mobilizations. So I want to call these mobilizations the Black Youth Farm Movement. And it begins with the establishment of those colleges I said earlier. So it begins with the establishment of these historically black colleges that are devoted to the study of home economics, agricultural sciences, and the industrial arts. And they're located particularly in primarily in the South. So what happens is that when they create these institutions, it's the first time that formally enslaved people are going into educational spaces and studying agriculture. Now, they had worked in agriculture for many, many years, but their relationship to ag wasn't positive due to this, due to the institution of slavery and them being enslaved. So what these land grant, black land grant schools do is they provide a new way of thinking about agriculture for these young people. Now, everyone's not young, of course, but it's it's it's it's producing a generation of black folks who will take up ag education and take it back to their communities. So the first iteration, if you will, of this black youth farm movement is the establishment of these institutions that played a major role in training leaders and producing teachers who would then take the knowledge from the institution into their schools. The second iteration of the Black Youth Farm Movement is the development of 4-H. 4-H is under the Cooperative Extension Service. So what I'd say about the Black Youth Farm Movement is that I work through it legislatively. So the Smith Lever Act of 1914 creates the cooperative extension service. Black people are not included in that legislation. So then what ends up happening is while 4-H is created, they end up segregating the the, they segregate the entire service. So there is, of course, regular 4-H, and then there is Negro 4-H or Black 4-H. So these two things happen at the same time. So then, so what 4-H does is it creates this youth-based, community-based organization for youth, young people ages from five to like 18, who are doing these activities around agriculture, home economics, rural development, rural leadership. So that's what I call the second phase of the Black Youth Farm Movement. And then the third phase, we go from the community into the high school with the Smith Hughes Act of 1917. And that's what brings in the establishment of these science-based ag clubs and high schools, black high schools that are, of course, being developed at the same time. And the new Farms of America emerges out of that third phase of the black youth farm movement because it allows us to see how the NFA actually is attached to a longer history of black folks pursuing agricultural education with youth at the center. And that's how the new Farms of America comes into focus that way. Because if we only put them in the FFA's history, then you don't know, you don't hear all this prehistory from the 1870s to the 1930s.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

And part of this book, too, is you you bring so many folks to the to the forefront. So one of the gentlemen you talk about is George Washington Owens. And so could you talk a little bit about who he was and kind of how he factors into this history?

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah, so George Washington Owens was the first black graduate of Kansas State University. And again, before, so I'm gonna say before, before this book, I knew nothing about any of this. So I'm I'm all this is new research, new information for me as well. So I'm happy to talk about, you know, Owens and things like that. And Owens, you know, he he um he at Gerters at Kansas State, you know, uh studying agriculture, and then he ends up going to work at Tuskegee. Then he ends up going from Tuskegee to Virginia State. And what's interesting about him is that he's the first person to start the Department of Agriculture at Virginia State. Virginia State University is also an HBCU, also an 1890 land grant school as well, black land grant. So he becomes this tiring figure there where he's developing this department of ag. And he wants youth to be at the center of it. So he has this idea around how do we get more youth involved in agriculture to produce this next generation of black youth who will go into agriculture. I say black youth, but it was about black boys, black males. The gender politics are important here because back in those days, there was an assumption that men would become farmers and women would become homemakers. So the sister organization to the new farmers of America was the new homemakers of America. Now, while societal norms were that men would go this way and women would go this way, in rural black communities, those gender roles were very blurred. Men would cook, women would farm more. In fact, women farmed better than men in most cases. But again, but basically societal norms, that's the way in which he operated the club, well, the New Farms of America. So Owen starts the Department of Agriculture at Virginia State, and an offshoot of that becomes this youth-based programming. Um, and then the new Farms of America idea is born. And for them, they call themselves New Farmers of America because it was a new way of doing things. Now, and when I say new ways, new doing things is that you're still working in agriculture, but you're doing it in a different way. You're no longer attaching it only to enslavement or sharecropping. There's power, there's leadership, there are careers in this same, um, um, this same site of exploitation or oppression can also be a site of freedom and liberation. And he's thinking about all these things that he starts these, the new farmers of Virginia, um, at Virginia State, around the same time that the future farmers of America starts, because they also begin in Virginia, future farmers of Virginia. So all this is happening at the same time. It's not one reacting to the other. This idea is happening at the same time because everybody's building on a longer legacy of like youth-based activities in agricultural sciences. So he creates the new Farms of the Mary, Virginia idea, and it just goes so far so quickly. It goes from Virginia to North Carolina to Maryland to Tennessee to South Carolina, and it's spread, so it spreads from Virginia, it spreads north, far north as New Jersey, and as far south as like Oklahoma and Texas, that part of the South. So Owens becomes, if you will, the father or grandfather of the New Farmers of America because the idea of New Farmers of Virginia set the stage for the NFA to come into focus.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, so you talk about how this organization expands and how it had state conventions. And so you touch on in the book, you know, on about several of the conventions. So can you talk a little bit about what made the fifth NFA National Convention different from the others and how it maybe helps us better understand the ev evolution of the NFA as an organization?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Yeah, I love this question. I was just in Atlanta two days ago doing a book talk, and I got the same question about why New Jersey, why the Fifth Convention? So for me, one reason why I wanted to write about the Fifth Convention, because it was the only one that was in the North. And it was the only one that ever happened under the New Jersey Association. So while the NFA was in New Jersey, it only operated in one school, which was a boarding high school called the Annual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth in New Jersey. So MCIS was known as the Tuskegee of the North. Uh it was a boarding school. So the NFA, the only NFA chapter was at the school, and it also was the headquarters. So because it was the headquarters, they would host, you know, these conventions. Uh, so they chose New Jersey that year. And I wanted to talk about the New Jersey convention because of what was featured around it. Um, this is one of the first time rural black boys from the South, one, left their community, left the South, left their states, and traveled north to a whole different world. Many of them had never been to the North. Many of them, and many of them had probably thought about what the North would be like, but to go through the NFA meant something different. It meant how are black farm boys doing this work as far as in New Jersey? Because many NFA members felt like the NFA was only in their local community until they went to these conventions. So the convention opened it up to an entire new world. And the NFA ends up at, um, of course, the mayor training school because of, again, the idea just travels from Virginia. Um, and some of the faculty who were at the school at the time were also graduates of places like Tuskegee in Virginia State. So they knew this idea was traveling through pamphlets and things of that nature. I bring this up because the fifth convention becomes important because it includes a trip to the New York World's Fair of 1939, 1940. Now, everyone, if anyone was familiar with the history of the World Fair, it's huge. People from all over the world are coming to New York City in 1939 to do exhibits, and they're placing themselves on a global platform to be in global conversations. So the NFA includes a visit to a visit and exhibit and installation to the Bronx, New York, or I was saying to Queens. I was thinking these things are flushing, to Queens to do this work at the World's Fair. So these black boys are not only coming to New Jersey, they're also going to New York City. You know, so it's just like their eyes are being opened to a whole new world, but it's also still through farming and ag. Their installations are showing them how black farm boys are engaging with new technologies like new tractors, new types of machinery. And of course, to us looking back, it doesn't seem like a lot. But back then, going from rural Texas, rural Mississippi, all the way to New York City, and you're being celebrated at the World's Fair is fascinating. And that's what made this convention different because it offered them access to the World's Fair. But before the convention, they also were in Ohio at the World's Poultry Congress, which is the largest poultry conference in the world. And they're also doing exhibits there and installations there as well. So this convention places the New Farmers of America on a global platform four years into its history as a national organization. It's founded in 1935 as a national organization. The idea begins in 1926. They become national in 1935, and then they become global in 39. And I wanted to write about this convention because I felt like this was one thing that readers would be like, huh, New Farms of America, New Jersey, and how and how they operate in New Jersey. I thought that the convention would show that, and I'll share one last thing about how I ended up discovering, well, discovering or uncovering this convention is that the convention minutes, um, so they had like over 40 pages of minutes from the convention, and I found them in Kansas City, Missouri. Wow, I know. I have, I don't know what's going on, but I literally located it through the WorldCat system, and I called the library, the Kansas City Public Library, and I was like, hey, you know, I'm trying to locate this, these minutes from this convention on New Farmers of America. And I was like, you know, I'm willing to pay, you know, whatever you think I should pay for it, you know, to get it digitized and uh scan and sent to me. And the librarian was so gracious because it was an educational project, she scanned them immediately and sent me the entire minutes. So I was able to really walk through the entire convention as I do in the chapter, because I had those minutes, and I also had the newspapers from the manual training school, and they were writing about the convention in their school newspaper too. So again, it was all these things came together, but I had to talk about New Jersey because I was amazed that it was, it was, that they had a chapter and that they had this massive convention there. Thousands, you know, thousands of, you know, you know, nearly a thousand black boys traveling from the South in 1939. It's just fascinating to me and what they were able to accomplish at the convention.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah. Well, and you touched on it in your last answer, but I, you know, I do want to just give you a chance to expand if you want to. For me, I was kind of bowled over not only by the fact that you have these Southern, you know, black men going to the North from the South, but also that they attended the World's Fair. Like that to me was mind-blowing. So, did you want to talk a little bit more about the impact of attending the World's Fair and what that had on NFA members in and the organization itself?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Yeah, for me, you know, and if I can just use like my imagination mixed with what I know and what I read in the research, is that as, you know, um, as, you know, and as a black boy, you know, when I was younger too, I remember traveling to different places. Uh, I remember going to New York City, I remember going to Atlanta, Georgia. I remember going to, you know, these big, big cities, Chicago, big cities, and just being there showed me that the world of black people is bigger, one, but then the world's fair provides a different way because you have people speaking different languages, different cultures, all coming together and respecting each other in a sense around this idea of how do you present yourself to the world. So these black boys are coming to this global platform and the band is performing. They have a radio program, they have another program there on the grounds. And what it shows them is that you matter even to the world. Even if you don't matter back in your rural community in the middle of Alabama or Georgia or Florida, you matter here at the World's Fair. And because you matter at the world's level, you can make a global impact. So I can imagine them going back and telling their friends all these stories about we were in New York City, we saw this, and we crossed bridges, we saw this water, and it's like, and we were celebrated. And we finally got the new Farmers of America idea to a global platform. We're no longer invisible. At a time where black boys are seen as invisible, inferior, disposable, this platform is showing them you actually matter. And it's through the NFA's convention. So there's a trust factor here. You trust the NFA to take care of you. And that's why I think the, you know, the male advisors are also important because they're planning all of these logistics in conversation with the boys themselves. And being able to go to that fair and exhibiting and install installations really placed them into a different type of platform. But also I think then many of the black boys begin to see themselves, um, their impact being beyond just their community. And I think that's an important part of just representation is important and seeing yourself in these spaces you never would imagine yourself in, in and of itself, is powerful and something to consider.

unknown 20:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:59

Well, so from the big city, we your book also talks about the activities in the more rural communities. And so there's some camp activities that the NFA engages in. So, how did those camp activities provide kind of the ideal setting for testing new ways to improve the lives of young black farm boys?

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yeah, so I mean, just being in the wilderness, first off, provides them with this canvas to imagine differently. While we often think of the wilderness as being void, empty, or not uh established. For them, this wilderness experience provided them with a way just to clear their minds beyond their farm work, beyond their responsibilities in their communities. And they would go to these camps. And in not all states had camps, but most of them had camps. And in the book, I'll talk about the North Carolina camp because it was probably one of the most organized and the biggest camp across the history of the organization. Oklahoma had a nice big one too, as well, but the North Carolina Association kept better. Records because at one point in time the NFA was headquartered in North Carolina. So I said that to say is that this camping experience allowed these boys one a place just to relax, also a place to play. These are these are boys. So I and I didn't want to remove their boyhood from them. Um they're boys, they're playing, they're fishing, they're they're they're they're digging up, they're building tents. So all these kind of things on the surface just seem like regular activities, but these are team building activities. So, you know, each tent is a ten of a number of boys in a tent together, and that's your family for the week. So you what do you do? You take care of your family. You all go to class together, you wake up, you exercise together, and then they're also partnering with different corporations and companies around the state. So you're learning how to um work with electricity, you're learning how to engage in forestry, you're learning how to um engage in carpentry, you're in learning how to engage in aquaculture as well. So the water is there. So you're learning about water as well. And again, for one week out of the year, these boys were allowed to play and also learn. So the architects of the camp, those black male teachers and advisors really were the ones who understood that while you think that you're just getting away from your family for a week, away from farm duties, were actually preparing you, strengthening you to go back with a different kind of mindset with a set of skills that can be used in your community. Because at the time, these boys, most of them live in rural communities. So rural communities don't have access to a lot of electricity. They don't have access to a lot of the amenities that other communities have. So how can we build that infrastructure in our communities? And the NFA's answer to that was, okay, we can do a camp for the boys just to play and enjoy themselves, but then also team build and learn together. And what I like about the North Carolina camp is that uh I'm from uh my mother's from North Carolina, uh, Pitt County, North Carolina. And the first NFA camp in North Carolina was in Pitt County. Um actually about 10 miles from my grandmother's house. And again, I know all this now. I didn't know all this back then. So when I was in Pitt County visiting family, I wasn't like trying to get to Grimesland to see, oh, where was the NFA at? But I looking back, it's like, wow, like this camp was born in the same county that I'm like eight generations out of through black farmers. So something to say is that like they strategically picked these areas because the history around these areas allowed them to do these kinds of camps. And North Carolina camp provided a different kind of way of doing because of his location. Yeah, its ending location ended up being on the Atlantic Ocean. I mean, that's interesting compared to other camps and other states were like inside, because they're more inland. But these boys were going, for many of them, it's the first time they were on the ocean. And I mean, this is the Atlantic Ocean. So this is the this ocean is important for a number of reasons. And these boys are literally playing on the same ocean in which enslaved Africans were brought over to. I think that's like there's something about the irony of that and the power of that. And even if the NFA wasn't thinking like that, that's what this can mean for many of those boys. So, how do you turn play and leisure into team building, you know, team exercise? That's exactly what they did in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Well, and you you spoke of architects, and so who was S. B. Simmons and and how did he shape the camping program?

SPEAKER_01 25:16

SB Simmons is arguably one of the most important figures in the development of the New Farmers of America's national organization. He was there from the beginning. He really attached himself to the idea of the New Farmers of Virginia early on. So going from Virginia into North Carolina was, you know, across the state lines right there. He was all as supportive of it. S. B. Simmons is from North Carolina. He went to college in North Carolina, but he also got his master's at the University of Illinois or Urbana Champaign, while I'm a professor at. An article just came out today about SB Simmons and U of I that I did an interview for a couple of weeks ago. So I'm glad you asked about S.B. Simmons because he's this tiring figure that no one knows about in black ag education. So he becomes the state supervisor over ag education in black schools in the state of North Carolina. And from the beginning of him starting this role in the 1920s, he always wanted a place for black boys to come and camp and have that experience. He knew that FFA was having camping experiences. He knew of other Boy Scouts doing camps and other white orchids doing camps, and he wanted black boys to also have that experience. He's also a part of a longer history of black children camping in places like Boston, like around Camp Atwater in the Urban League. But he wanted something different. He wanted to be based in farming and rurality and ag communities. Some of the earlier black camps were mostly for more urban families to allow their children to get away from the city for a couple of weeks and enjoy themselves out, you know, in the rural or out in the wilderness. But for SB Simmons, his dream was to always build a permanent camp. So, as I said before, the camp started in Pitt County, then it moved to other places around the state, then it ended in uh in Hammock's Beach, which is on the Atlantic Ocean. And that was his dream. And SB Simmons devoted his entire life to the NFA after, you know, the 1920s, so he died in like 1957. So he wasn't able to see the final camp be dedicated to him because he passed away before it came about. But that was his dream, and his legacy was I want something for these boys to have. At least, even if it's just for a week, this experience can change. I mean, the convention is only three days. So you're in New York. I mean, going to New York for a day can be a lot for somebody in general. So I still have to say is that S. B. Simmons is, of course, a founder of the NFA. He's there at the first convention, but he's also a figure, and he provided this role model, this role model. He's a figure not only for the boys, but also their teachers. And everybody wants to be like SB Simmons because his commitment to the care and the understanding and the patience of these rural black boys in North Carolina and also around the South really, really provided a model for other states. But he was really committed to that. And the camp was his wildest dream. And he worked tirelessly, as you saw in the book, to ensure they had the funding, the materials. They built that camp from the ground up, basically. And he really played a major role working with other black ag teachers and other teachers and educators around the state.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah. Well, and and speaking of educators, it's that's another thread I want to pull on because something else that you kind of dive into throughout the book is, you know, you talk about how critical educators were to kind of bridging the gaps between black farm boys, agricultural education, and their communities. Um I know we've touched on it a couple of times through specific individuals in this conversation, but can you expand on this a little bit and and you know, maybe where we see this most clearly?

SPEAKER_01 28:46

So I'm glad you, you know, this is just first of all, thank you for the questions because I I love everything about the New Forms of America. And I just love talking about them. So thank you because there's so much about the organization we still don't know. I mean, I wrote the book, but there's still so much more we can uncover, obviously. But I wanted to talk about black ag teachers and educators because as I was talking to former members of the organization. So, for example, my mentor at prayer review, Dr. Alpha Parks, I found out like four years ago, he was a member of an Arkansas. He never discussed NFA. I've been knowing him since 2005. I never knew anything about NFA until 2022 and him. So we're talking in his office, and he brings up his ag teacher, Dorie Smith. He's like, if it wasn't for Josie Smith, you know, I wouldn't be here. I met some more NFA members around Texas, and every single one of them kept saying, my ag teacher, my ag teacher, my ag teacher, I was like, wait, it has to be something about this ag teacher because everyone is saying if it wasn't for this black male ag teacher in my county, in my state, you know, in my community, I wouldn't be a professor, I wouldn't be a soil scientist, I wouldn't be working for the Department of Ag in this state. So I was like, wait, has to be something about them. So I wanted to start, you know, looking around and seeing, you know, where are, you know, where are the any ag teachers weren't still around, or is there anybody I can talk to? So around the same time I was doing research and I came across LaGrange, Texas, um, the Randolph High School in LaGrange, Texas, which is the high school I'll talk about in chapter four of the book. And what I end up doing is I found this newspaper on a website, it's digitized. So I called the library, it's the Fed Public Library in LaGrange, Texas. And I'm like, hello, I'm Bobby Smith. I'm a researcher at the U of I. I saw this newspaper about the NFA news, and you know, the students are writing in there, the teachers are in there, the history of the of the high school is there, and I really want to learn more about the community there. Is there anybody still around that might know about the NFA? And Roxanne was the one that answered the phone, Roxanne Johnson, and she was like, you know what? There is one person still around. He was the last black ag teacher at Randolph High School in the 1950s and 60s. And I think I can get his number for you, even call him. I was like, sure, I'll call him. You know, he's Mr. Crosby, his name was Lorenzo Crosby. Mr. Crosby had to have been probably about 80s, 88 by then. So I called Mr. Crosby, co-called him. Hey, Mr. Crosby, I am Bobby Smith. You research, you know, I do my whole script. He's like, New farm of America. I was like, yeah, he said, what do you know about that? I haven't talked about this in 50 years. Like, who is calling me about the NFL? I'm like, well, I'm a researcher and I'm writing a book on it. I would love to come and meet you and interview you. He was like, well, actually, you can get down to my farm in LaGrange, we can talk. You can interview me, and my wife will be here too. So I said, cool. So I, it was a pandemic. So I got my pack of mask, packed up my bag, and I traveled down to LaGrange, Texas. Um, and I remember driving up on his uh over a hundred-acre farm, and I remember him and his wife being right there on the porch waving me in. They never had any children. So they would they've been together just them two their whole lives. I walk into their home and they've transformed their dining room table into an NFA museum, essentially. So it's NFA memorabilia, it's documents, yearbooks, pictures, banners, all kinds of things on the table. And I'm like, wow, like, whoa, like I didn't expect to see all of this. So we're sitting at the table, they ordered us lunch, and uh come to find out, Mr. Crosby also went to Prayer View as well, where I went to school at. And we had one of the same professors, surprisingly enough. I know, 50 years apart, Mr. Crosby, uh, Mr. Witherspoon was his name. He was our meat science professor. And Witherspoon was young when Mr. Crosby was a student, and he died like a couple years after I was a student. So we so we bonded over Mr. Witherspoon, Prayer View, and then after meeting him, I realized that actually the Randolph High School, New Farmers of America, has a longer story and it's actually been documented. So there's something about a community scene that needs to be put into focus in the book, but I have to tell it through the black ag teachers because so often teachers do not get their flowers. They're often expected just to teach children, you're the teacher, it's your job to do this, and they're often rendered invisible. But in the NFA, these black ag teachers were, I mean, the role models for all the boys want to be like them when they grew up. And they made sure to take care of these boys in that way. So after meeting Mr. Crosby, I learned about the history of the Randolph NFA chapter. And actually, all the ag teachers who ever taught at Randolph before it closed in 65 were all prairie graduates. So I was able to then go to my undergraduate institution and do research there because all of them graduated from there. So their thesis were there and things of that nature. So what I'd say is that like meeting Mr. Crosby really, really changed the trajectory of that chapter. Because I was able to really spend a lot more time with him and his wife, because his wife was over the music part of NFA, which is another big side of NFA. And it was just amazing just to meet him. And I was in LaGrange. I actually launched the book in Lagrange about three, four weeks ago. And Mr. Crosby was there. His wife has passed away, but he was there. And I was so happy because I got to deliver him the book on the same form I met him all. He read through the book, came to my top, and he was like, you got it right. He was like, you actually got the story right. He was like, because if you wouldn't have told it, no one would would have, no one would have known that we existed. And that's really what that was about. Like, I could talk about the boys and what they did, but I the the the logistics, these boys were being guided by a class of black male leaders who are often invisible, not only to scholars, but also to these communities, because they're expected to do this work. And I wanted to honor the human dimension of their lives. So that's why that chapter moves how it moves, because I really wanted to show them and showcase them in their glory.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Yeah. I I thought it was a very powerful chapter. And it as as someone who believes that educators does not do not get their flowers often enough, I thought you did a very wonderful job in in highlighting their work. And, you know, the the organization ends and we we talked about earlier in the conversation about how the NFA is kind of tied in history to the future farmers of America. And you talk about in the book how referring to the acquisition of the NFA by the future farmers of America as kind of a merger is a mischaracterization. So can you expand on that?

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Yeah, well, I mean, and um the reason why I'm signed like that is because that chapter was hard to write for a number of reasons. One of the reasons why it was hard to write is because when I talk to people about the new Farmers of America, people who were part of it, people who were members of it, or, you know, even Mr. Crosby, it's a very sad moment in its history. And it's the last moment, you know, in its existing history. And for me, I had to grapple with that because every person I talked to made it very clear this was not a friendly merger. This was not a friendly acquisition. The NFA was, oh, well, civil rights is here now. Let's all come together and let's just move on to the world and we'll all be future farmers and we'll all be accepted. Now, the FFA outside the South was not segregated. So black people, black boys have already been a part of it outside the South. But in the South, um in the 18 states in the far north of New Jersey, black boys were not a part of FFA. Couldn't have been because they weren't at their schools. So when the merger comes into an idea, it's often talked about through FFA's history that in 1965, the FFA and NFA merged together and everyone becomes future farmers with America. As I show in the book, at least two decades before this merger, there were already ideas about how are we going to essentially undermine the success of the NFA? And the leaders knew that up until that point. But what makes this story so interesting is because it's mysterious to me because at what moment does the NFA actually disappear? Is it at the first meeting about them disappearing? Is it when they restructure the ag education branch of the U.S. Office of Education to ensure that the FFA leaders are also double agents and also working in the U.S. Office of Education? Or is it when the black high schools close? Or is it when black ag teachers are being told that next year you'll have no jobs when the merger happens? So it's mysterious to me. But none of this is mentioned, none of these questions are being raised when we celebrate this moment in FFA history where segregation is eliminated and the FFA is now this organization that welcomes all people of all races in all regions. I mean, women weren't allowed to join the FFA until 1969. So this gender doesn't come up until four years after this merger. So for me in that chapter, I wanted to really grapple with this disappearance question. How did it happen? And while we can't characterize it as a friendly merger acquisition, in my own eyes, I believe that the NFA was confiscated. I believe that the NFA was taken hostage and they were forced. And I got a question the other day at the book talk, and the question was about, you know, about the merger and did the NFA, did the NFA want to merge and give it up. I said, no, they didn't. This was not something they want. They were told if you don't do it, either way it goes, the NFA was not going to exist after 1965. Either way it goes, it wasn't going to exist based on uh of a number of conversations. And I really wanted to show how that went down because never, um the only time it's been told this way was in those two red out-of-print books. But they refused to name people. They named their positions, but didn't name the people in the positions. So in my book, I did the work of locating every single U.S. Office of Education Directory from 1940 to 1965 to get the names of the people who were doing it. Because I think it's important for us to know who was doing it. And I think it's important for us to think seriously about this final scene.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

You share in the book that this is an incomplete story. So where do you hope future researchers take this history and what other questions still linger for you?

SPEAKER_01 39:05

Yeah, so that last, that concluding chapter, concluding section of chapter five for me is out titled Questions and Answers on Purpose. Um, because I have a lot of questions and I don't have a lot of answers. And I think for me, what I'm still grappling with is what kind of impact then the NFA make beyond the scenes that I write about. And I wonder how then does how do you tell a story of a massive organization that nobody knows about? And for me is that now that before I rush to a new project, I want to sit more with the NFA. I was getting ready to start another project literally a couple weeks ago. I said, you know what, I can't start a new project yet because I want to know more about these boys. I want to know more about their lives and how they talked about their lives. Um I'm thinking more about how to include some of their voices in more. Each chapter begins with the voice of the boys for sure. But I think for me, my next step for me is one, my book, as I write the introduction, is should be used as a foundation for more research. There's no way we can talk enough about the New Forms of America and how big it was. Each state deserves its own book. That's we can start there.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

And what do you hope people take away from your book?

SPEAKER_01 40:15

I think for me, I want people to take away that the NFA one existed, that it is worthy of study. And I also want people to take away that this can be used as a model to develop, as a blueprint to develop youth-based organizing and organizations around agriculture. Oftentimes when we do this kind of work around youth, we talk about history in the past and we point to adults doing certain things. But I think what the NFA shows is that young people can see themselves in the past. And I want people to notice that I'm saying that young people, while it's important to talk about towering figures signating black communities, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but what does it mean for black children in particular to see themselves, young people also in the past, engaging in this work as well? And I hope that people can take away the fact that this is a blueprint for how to work with youth by understanding how people in the past also work with youth as well. And if anything, just that the NFA existed and that they're worthy of study and everyone should know about the NFA. And I hope people that really take hold of that idea. And that's my argument in the book, is that I just want people to know that they existed. The next time, the next book can do deeper work around other things, but the fact that they're probably one of the most largely unknown organizations in American history for me means that we need to learn more from them. And I'm hoping that my book provides an opening into some larger conversations around the new firms of America and its impact on America and the world.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Wonderful. Now, before I let you go, where can people find you and the work that you do?

SPEAKER_01 41:55

So I'm active on Instagram, Smith S M I T H underscore Classic C-L-A-S-S-I-C. They have an Instagram name a long time, so I'm not changing it. That's why it's that. And then you can also find me on the African American Studies website at the University of Illinois or Banana Champagne. And my email and contact information is all there. I welcome, you know, emails, you know, phone calls, um, anything around there, but I can be fine. I post most of my work on Instagram though, so there's a lot of stuff on Instagram. Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

All right. So to the listeners out there, Black Farm Boys is available in fine bookstores now. So be sure to grab yourself a copy and learn about this critical and amazing history. Thank you again.

SPEAKER_01 42:39

Thank you. I appreciate it. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

My thanks again to Dr. Smith for spending his time with me. If you want to learn more about this unknown history, be sure to grab yourself a copy of Black Farm Boys Today. Thanks, peeps. I'll see you next time. Thanks for sitting down with me as I explore the chapter of American history. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends. I look forward to our next cup of coffee together.