CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — For 30 years, beginning during the Great Depression, the New Farmers of America taught tens of thousands of rural Black boys about farming and helped them develop leadership skills and pursue careers in agriculture. Yet the organization has been largely overlooked and is barely known today.
The story of the NFA is one of empowerment and agency, said Bobby J. Smith II , a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor of African American studies . Smith explored the history, significance and legacy of the organization in his new book, “ Black Farm Boys: The Untold Story of the New Farmers of America .”
The NFA was a Black counterpoint to the Future Farmers of America when FFA chapters in the South were segregated. Smith said the NFA has been viewed only in its relation to the FFA, in a supporting role, and the history of Black farming has been told mainly as a story of the oppression and exploitation of slavery and sharecropping.
“Decades of scholarship on Black people’s historical relationship to agriculture have predominantly framed agriculture as a domain of exploitation, subjugation, and racial exclusion,” he wrote in the book.
Smith said he was interested in how the NFA changed that story by mobilizing Black youth to consider careers in agriculture and building relationships and social networks through which communities celebrated agriculture.
“I want people to know it existed. It was so powerful to know that these Black boys and adult mentors were trying to change the face of agriculture and were doing it very well,” he said.
Smith had never heard of the NFA until 2019, when his sister sent him two books about the organization — the only two books written about the NFA at the time.
The NFA began as a national organization in 1935, but Smith said its roots are in what he calls the Black Youth Farm Movement that started half a century earlier, encompassing the establishment of the 1890 land-grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the South, the Negro 4-H and the NFA — institutions through which Black farming was embedded in education and community, he said.
Smith said that NFA chapters were woven into the fabric of rural communities and brought them together to celebrate the accomplishments of participating boys through events such as livestock shows and father-son banquets that featured a menu from food the boys raised. The NFA members competed in local, regional, state and national competitions. Black farmers learned the latest farming methods through collaborations with HBCUs and NFA organizations.
In the book, Smith wrote about a national NFA convention in New Jersey, where NFA members participated in the 1939 New York World’s Fair through exhibits, a performance by the NFA band and a radio show, and learning about agriculture on a global scale. He told the history of an NFA summer camp in North Carolina that was later named in honor of Sidney B. Simmons, a U. of I. alumnus and national NFA leader, where recreational opportunities enhanced the campers’ social and leadership skills. Smith examined agricultural education at the high school level through the eyes of agriculture teacher Lorenza Crosby and the NFA chapter at Randolph High School in La Grange, Texas. Black agriculture teachers built a class of world leaders by teaching boys they could use what they learned about farming to shape their communities and the nation — the essence of the land-grant mission, Smith said.
The demise of the NFA came in 1965 when the organization was absorbed by the FFA. Smith said that Black agricultural leaders had long been asking for representation in the agriculture education branch of the U.S. Department of Education. The federal agency’s powerful leadership ultimately used the antidiscrimination language of the Civil Rights Act to force a merger that “was really a hostile takeover,” Smith said.
The number of Black boys participating in FFA was dramatically less that those who had been part of the NFA, he said. But in 1994, Corey Flournoy, a U. of I. alumnus, became the first Black president of the national FFA organization. Smith said he sees Flournoy’s accomplishment as part of the NFA story.
There has been a steady decline in Black farmers, partly due to lack of access to credit, underfunding of agriculture programs at HBCUs, the stigmas of Black participation in agriculture fueling disinterest and a lack of Black representation in academic programs, Smith said. But in recent years, there has been a burgeoning interest by young Black people in resurrecting their historical relationship to agriculture through urban farming programs, food justice initiatives and organizations such as Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences, and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance.
The NFA should be a national historical model for maintaining the interest of Black youth in agriculture and exposing them to career opportunities, Smith said.
“The NFA offered Black farm boys a clear pathway to use agriculture as a site for Black self-determination, community uplift, economic vitality, educational achievement, career training and many other things that are not necessarily articulated in narratives about the organization,” he wrote. “The untold story of the NFA … illuminates a pathway to understand the future of Black people’s connection to agriculture, therefore creating a Black agricultural blueprint for the nation and the world.”
Editor’s note : To contact Bobby J. Smith II, email bobbyjs2@illinois.edu .