Photograph: African American home demonstration agent demonstrating child care skills to African American women and girls.
circa 1930
Source: NCSU Library / University Archives Photograph Collection. Home Demonstration Work (UA023.009), Special Collections Research Center at NC State University Libraries
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First African-American Women in NC Cooperative Extension
By: Todd Kosmerick - Feb. 1, 2018 - NCSU Library Special Collections

One hundred years ago on February 2, 1918, the first African American women were hired by North Carolina Cooperative Extension (then called the Agricultural Extension Service).
The weekly publication Extension Farm-News reported the following:

"The Agricultural Extension Service, in cooperation with the Department of Education, is arranging to place colored women as assistants to county Home Demonstration Agents in twenty or more counties of the State. Mrs. Jane S. McKimmon, Chief of the Division of Home Demonstration, states that these women are to instruct the colored people of the county in gardening, canning, and the preparation of foods, and will start work in the spring under the direct supervision of the County Home Demonstration Agent, under a cooperative arrangement with Mr. N. C. Newbold of the Department of Education.

"The colored people of the State have shown great interest in all methods of producing and saving food, and it is hoped that eventually each county will have its colored assistant to the County Home Demonstration Agent. Last summer gardens sprung up in many humble little backyards, and during this hard winter there have been many tables supplied with wholesome canned vegetables that otherwise would have been bare.

"The record coming out from the Department of Education of 643,624 cans put up by colored people in thirty-three counties last summer makes it seem very advisable to use special efforts in developing this field."

The article went on to list the women who were initially assigned to work in selected North Carolina counties. A summary of that first year of African American home demonstration work can be found in the NC Agricultural Extension Service annual report for 1917-1918. Also, information on the early Extension work of African American women exists in annual reports of some of the counties.
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On November 13, 1867, Jane McKimmon, leader of North Carolina’s home demonstration movement, was born. State-sponsored home demonstration work began in North Carolina in 1911. Its aim was to educate girls on canning, gardening and other domestic tasks, and the home demonstration movement was a forerunner to what’s now the 4-H system.

McKimmon, who was known for keeping a neat garden on Raleigh’s Blount Street, was hired to “take charge of the ‘girl’s canning work.’”

McKimmon expanded the size and scope of the program, growing its enrollment from 416 women in 14 counties to 75,000 women in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties by 1941. Her work, by one estimation, “led rural women and girls to a fuller, more comfortable, and efficient life.”

McKimmon was the first woman in the nation to receive the “Distinguished Ruby Award” of Epsilon Sigma Phi, the honorary extension fraternity. In 1966, she was elected to the North Carolina Agricultural Hall of Fame which is located in the Agriculture Building in downtown Raleigh.
The continuing education center at North Carolina State University, built in 1975, is named in her honor.
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