Charles Ford Writes to Person County African-American Farmers, 1943

Letter from Charles J. Ford, Negro County Agent, Person County, to local African-American farmers as published in the Roxboro Courier on April 6, 1943

Your support is enlisted in a $70,000 food production program for Negroes in rural Person County.

There are 1,045 Negro farm operators in Person County. It is not an exaggeration to call this a “Seventy-Thousand Dollar Food Production Program.”

If only one third or 348 of the Negro farm operators increase their food production to the extent of $50 each during the year of 1943, it will represent a $70,000 increase of production wealth in Person County.

There are many ways for Negro farm families to increase their wealth by $50 worth in a year: by growing good gardens, by keeping a cow, by keeping two cows, by canning surplus vegetables, meats and fruits, by keeping more and better poultry and more and better hogs.

This program is intended to reach every Negro in rural Person County, regardless of his status, whether he is a day laborer, a tenant, a small or large farm owner. The two Negro Extension workers cannot accomplish this objective alone. We will need your help, the help of everybody: teachers, ministers, the F.S.A. workers, landlords, Negro and white agricultural workers, and the 156 Negro neighborhood leaders.

Let’s don’t stop at $50 per farm. It wouldn’t be hard for Negro farm families to increase their income by $500 or more if they balance cash crop production with vegetables, poultry, swine and dairy cows, growing enough to eat and a little extra to sell. But above all, let us reach the humblest Negro farmer in the remotest rural community of Person County.

4-H Club Members Helping, Too

To reach the humblest Negro family in the remotest community, 22 4-H Clubs have been organized, an increase of 10 over last year, supplemented by 10 adult Home Demonstration Clubs, nine Bull Associations, an Advisory Adult Agricultural Board and a 4-H County Council.

Food production among club members is distributed as follows:

--346 conducting garden projects.

--199 enrolled in livestock including poultry.

--39 boys planting 1 acre each of certified hybrid corn seed and 85 doing home economics projects, making a total of 669 4-H Club members giving assistance in the “Seventy-Thousand Dollar Food Program.”

If an apple a day will keep the doctor away, “Food in this way will keep Hitler away.”

   --Chas. J. Ford, Negro County Agent