The vision
Portrait of Washington
Entrance to Tuskegee University
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| JULY 2011 | www.alabamaliving.coop
The aftermath of the Civil War was devastating to the southern states, particularly to black farmers. By the early 1870s, the federal government had walked away from Reconstruction efforts. “Tenant farmers would finish up their year, not paying for the previous year, roll the debts to the next year of hard, backbreaking, bloody-fingered, sweaty work... from sunup to sundown,” says Ed Bridges, director of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. “That was what they faced.” This environment spurred Washington to devise new ways to grow food and teach the poor. His vision of social uplift foresaw black farmers gaining social and economic equality through education, and he believed this would one day make these farmers full partners in the agricultural progress. Washington developed the rural extension program at Tuskegee Institute with these goals in mind, sending
out his staff to teach agricultural, technical and home economics skills across Alabama. Washington convinced some of the richest and most powerful businessmen, such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, and politicians like William Howard Taft, to help fund his vision. With that support, hundreds of small schools were established.
The legacy
Washington’s demonstration work is characteristic of the agricultural extension service of today, says Dr. Dwayne Cox, head of Special Collections and Archives at Auburn University. “Generally, universities in that era began to be more serious about carrying the benefit of what was learned through research in the universities directly to the citizens,” Cox noted. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 established a nationwide system of cooperative extension services. It provided money for land grant