Agriculture & Farming Collection
Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association
Black farmers from Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi and other southern states, and the national president of Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), Gary R. Grant, participated. The first of five protests took place at the Farm Services Agency (FSA) offices in Brownsville and Bolivar, Tennessee. It was in support of Black farmers who had been denied or delayed operating loans.
Brown Family Farm
Top image: Oakley Grove Plantation main house. c 1700’s. Littleton, NC.
Oakley Grove Plantation was built during the 1700s by former slaves and White descendants of Dr. Lafayette Browne and Mary Ann Falcon Browne. At one point, Oakley Grove had 175 enslaved people who were forced to work the plantation’s 7,000 acres. One of those enslaved was Byron C. Brown, who ran away from the plantation at the end of the civil war at age 14. Patrick, the Great Grandson of Bryon C. Brown, purchased Oakley Grove in May of 2021 and now owns the plantation that his great-grandfather once helped build and manage.’
Brown Family Farm
The Brown Family Farm was established in 1865 by first generation farmer Byron Brown. Byron was the first generation farmer who grew timber and raised live stock until his death in 1931. His son Grover Brown began farming as a second generation farmer establishing a peach orchard on the land, cultivating grain and raising live stock until the late 1970’s.
Charlie Holcombe
(Excerpt from newspaper article connected to Mr. Charlie Holcombes oral history-article is cited at bottom of page)
"When Charlie was a little boy, in the elections of 1894 and 1896, an interracial “Fusion” coalition won every statewide office in North Carolina, swept the legislature, won the governorship and both U.S. Senate seats. They championed local self-government, rather than the white conservatives’ program of having the state government select local officials. The Fusionists pushed free public education, the principle of “one man, one vote,” regardless of race, and modest regulation of the monopoly capitalism preferred by railroads, banks and corporations.
Cornelia Neal
Reidsville, Rockingham County, N.C., 1939 photograph of Mrs. Cornelia Neal and two other women are pictured seated on a bed, stringing tobacco bags. There is a stove visible in the foreground.
Report Text: NEAL, MRS. CORNELIA, (colored), age 66, husband 70; two children and four grandchildren living with her.
Dalton McLeod's Children
Sharecropper Dalton McLeod's children. Fuquay Springs, Wake County, NC, 1935 Sept.
Photographer: Arthur Rothstein, (1915-1985)
Source: LOC - Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.
Arthur Rothstein had just turned 20 when he was given his first photographic assignment for the US Resettlement Administration in August 1935.
Double Log Cabin
Top photograph: Title: Double log cabin...family of eight has been on this place six or seven years. Near Gordonton, Person County, North Carolina
Creator(s): Lange, Dorothea, photographer
Date Created/Published: 1939 July.
Source: LOC-FSA
Bottom photograph: Construction detail of double log cabin. The cowhide was hung there after being dried on a barn to be used as floor covering. Shelf shows churn, also bucket of water in which baby's bottle is kept cool. Person County, North Carolina. July 1939.
Dr. Flemmie Pansy Kittrell (December 25, 1904 – October 3, 1980)
Dr. Flemmie Pansy Kittrell (December 25, 1904 – October 3, 1980) was born and raised in Henderson, North Carolina and she was the first Black woman to earn a Ph.D. in nutrition and the first Black woman PhD from Cornell University in 1936.
Her research focused on such topics as the levels of protein requirements in adults, the proper feeding of Black infants in a selected community in North Carolina, and the importance of preschool enrichment experiences for children.
Eugenia Allen
1939, Reidsville, N.C. - Mrs. Eugenia Allen is pictured seated on a bed in her house. One of her grandchildren is pictured in front of the bed on a tricycle.
Tobacco Bag Stringing Operations in North Carolina and Virginia: ALLEN, MRS. EUGENIA, (colored); married and has three children and four grandchildren living with her; aged 51; husband aged 59. Reside at Reidsville, N.C.
Feggen Jones and family
Arthur Rothstein made a photo-study of the Jones family—an example of a successful farm loan recipient.
He noted that, “Mr. and Mrs. Feggen Jones live with their 14 children on an 86-acre farm purchased with assistance from the Farm Security Administration. The farm’s electricity is supplied by the Rural Electrification Administration.”
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Hattie Maynard
Top photograph: Mrs. Hattie Maynard, Reidsville, Rockingham County, N.C., 1939.
Mrs. Hattie Maynard is pictured standing with her husband and grandson in front of her house.
Bottom photograph: Mrs. Hattie Maynard is pictured seated inside her home with her grandson and two other people. The two women are stringing tobacco bags.
Mr. John William Mitchell
John William Mitchell (1885 – 1955) was a 1909 graduate of the Agricultural and Mechanical College for The Colored Race (now North Carolina A&T) who became a pioneering leader in the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, and later for the United States Department of Agriculture.
Negro 4-H Club Mirror
Image: "Negro 4-H Club Mirror" publication-circa 1939,
In 1926 the first statewide Short Course was held in Greensboro at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. By 1936 African American membership reached 10,000 in the state. That year a loan fund was established for African American club members to borrow money to attend college, and the first full-time African American 4-H leader, R. E. Jones, was hired. In 1939 the program published the first statewide African American club newspaper, The Negro 4-H Mirror.
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Sisters Delphine Sellars and Lucille Patterson Reclaim Durham Plantation Land
Slaver Paul Cameron's former plantation, Snow Hill has been reimagined into a farm and transformed using the land where people can raise their own food and providing an incubator for new and future farmers through the nonprofit UCAN, short for Urban Community AgriNomics.
The Black Church Food Security Network
Fourtee Acres is a 45-acre family owned forestry, farming, natural gardening and rental property operation established in 1994 that is engaged in sustainability for the future. Fourtee Acres is part of the 195 acre century old Williams Family Farm (established 1916).
Tobacco Bags
Left photo: Empty tobacco bag with string. North Carolina Collection Gallery.
Right photo: Country Gentleman Tobacco, Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, Durham, N.C. North Carolina Collection
Gallery.
Source: UNC Chapel Hill, Wilson Library, Tobacco Bag Stringing North Carolina, Virginia Collection.
