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Thursday, January 21, 2016

Watch 100 Years of Progress in Rural North Carolina

A video was prepared for the 100th anniversary celebration of ECA Clubs in North Carolina, formerly known as Extension Homemaker and as Home Demonstration Clubs. It is full of wonderful images and information about these women at work in their homes and in their communities. You can watch the video on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT_YclDI06U


The Can-do Women of the Extension and Community Association by Debbi Sykes Braswell

When the Extension Service planted a seedling 100 years ago they had great dreams for it.  They hoped the tree would grow strong and tall. They hoped it would be fruitful.

So they tended it carefully and watched.
What happened to this tree has shocked everyone along the way. You see, it didn’t just MEET those early expectations – it has blown them away. Because when you take determined and caring women, add expertise and advice, and let them follow their hearts, you end up with a towering tree, one with astonishing fruit.

FOOD and HEALTH
Just as roots help nourish a tree, food was at the roots of ECA. It started with girls growing tomato plants in clubs just for them. With Extension’s guidance, the girls were wildly successful at turning their homegrown, home-canned vegetables into cash. Within a year, their mothers were forming their own clubs. They learned to grow better and better gardens so they could feed their families well, can the extras, and sell the surplus.

At first many people didn’t trust home canning to keep food safe to eat. But the trained women of ECA found that they could feed their families healthy meals all year long – even in winter – thanks to safe canning practices. Women canned hundreds of jars of food like tomatoes and green beans. They also learned to preserve meat, which was important in the days before refrigeration. This added food was sometimes a matter of life and death, especially in the early days and on through the Great Depression.

The women sold surplus food, which helped their families stay afloat. But the women didn’t keep their knowledge and skills to themselves. They taught their devastated neighbors how to plant gardens, can, and survive.

They also brought surplus food to schools. It broke the women’s hearts to think of anyone’s child going hungry, so they turned extra canned tomatoes and milk into tomato soup and hot cocoa for their empty little bellies. These women were a force to be reckoned with.

In the 1930s, ECA club members rallied against a sometimes fatal disease of malnutrition called pellagra. Doctors discovered that the cause was simple – a lack of vitamin B. So the women of ECA worked to pass legislation that required the makers of flour and corn meal to enrich it with vitamin B.

Club members branched out to grow different vegetables when they found eager buyers at community curb markets.

Mrs. Carl Stevenson, a member of the Sharon Home Demonstration Club in Iredell County, was so impressed with the curb market in Statesville that she enlarged her garden. She added acorn squash, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cauliflower to the other vegetables she had been growing.

One magazine reporter couldn’t believe her eyes at one of North Carolina’s curb markets. “I could not check on everything that was offered for sale that morning, but the following is what I observed: Anything in the pork or beef line, live or dressed chickens, vegetables of all kinds—some of them with the dew still on. Collard leaves were tied in little bundles with a pod of red pepper, spinach, turnip greens and young turnips with the tops, green beans, limas, cornfield beans, sugar peas, new potatoes, raw sweet potatoes, and baked sweet potatoes! One woman had yeast dough weighed out in pound batches, wrapped in oiled paper. Cakes—all kinds. Cookies and chess pies. I have not mentioned half of what was there.”  

These days we battle having too MUCH food, not a shortage, and we sit too much instead of moving. Fortunately, the clubs help members learn to choose the right calories in the right amounts. Diabetics in particular have gotten knowledge and encouragement about how to eat well. The clubs have also emphasized exercise for everyone and gladly help spread the word throughout their communities.

Some trends have come full circle.  Many families today are pinched for money and concerned about healthy eating, so it only makes sense that canning is popular once again. Home gardening and buying locally are big, too.

Also, newer generations are asking for help with cooking simple, healthy meals instead of relying on fast food and processed food. It can be convenient to grab quick food, but it’s not as healthy and it costs more.

Being healthy and saving money – that’s at the heart of ECA.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Few things are as vital to a family as its pocketbook. ECA has always helped women with this concern, whether it was during the Great Depression or the high inflation days in the early 1980s.

The clubs approached the issue in two ways – they helped families learn how to live on less. And they helped women discover ways to bring in cash.

Many club members launched home businesses that brought in badly needed money. Some started thriving poultry operations. Working through their county agent, women in Anson County even supplied NC State University with poultry.

 Other club members brought goods to curb markets, which began in the 1920s. Their customers didn’t just buy their surplus produce – the townspeople flocked in to buy extra things like flowers, cakes, and baskets, too. Who knew the club members could help their families so much by doing what they were already doing?

“The curb market has been our greatest help in time of our greatest need,” said a Nash County woman who was selling at the Rocky Mount Home Demonstration Club Curb Market in 1933.

When that curb market opened in 1923 one lady gathered up heads of lettuce in a clothes basket and sold out completely. The following week she brought two cakes and sold them. Over the next 20 years she had raised $18,666 and earned a reputation, along with her sisters, for making excellent cakes and dressings.

“We are positive if it had not been for the curb market we would have been in the county home, or worse still, dependent upon relatives,” the lady said. “Our home was mortgaged and now we have our home, a comfortable one. We own our car, a small savings account, and we don’t owe a penny.”

The ECA women’s businesses helped diversify farms, stabilize families, and lessen dependence on crippling credit. Most of us don’t realize that a hundred years ago, some farmers paid 1,000 to 2,000 percent interest on loans.

The cash that women earned helped modernize the state because it helped pay for improvements like indoor plumbing, electricity, and appliances. The extra income even helped some tenant farmers buy their own farms. It also helped children stay in school and go to college.

At a Rocky Mount curb market in 1933, one woman said, “I have sold $956 worth of produce since I have been attending the curb market. I used my flower money for my clothes and a good time, until the Depression came on. Last year I bought fertilizer and groceries, paid my cook and hired man on the farm. I bought a ton of fertilizer and a half barrel of flour and had two dollars left in change from one week’s sale of flowers. I paid the interest for four months on a note at the bank, which was $28 each month. My little girls sold five little foxes they found in the woods and wild flowers enough to buy a good second-hand piano. They have a little flower garden and are selling flowers to get money for school dresses and music lessons this winter; they are nine and eleven years of age.”

Another woman found two kinds of dividends – money and friends. Farm living could leave some women feeling lonely and isolated. But women who joined ECA clubs gained confidence, poise, and friends.

“First of all I think it is financial needs that prompt us to attend, and then once we get started we cannot stop,” the woman said. “It isn’t a novelty that soon wears away. It gets next to us and we always want to come back. We look forward to seeing our customers whom we soon learn to love. For we have learned through the curb market that our town folks are just as sweet and pleasant as they can be.”

In addition to bringing in more money, ECA members also learned how to do more with less. These women learned to sew and sew well. And they were ingenious.

At the Style Show held during Farm and Home Week at “State College” in 1934, the son of Mrs. P.G. Sturges of Franklin County, modeled a white suit that his mother had made from heavy cotton feed sacks. The slacks had been bleached and looked like linen.

In 1935 one Richmond County woman turned some of her brother’s clothes into a suit for herself. Just listen to how proud she is.

“I cleaned the suit, turned the pants upside down and with a four-gore pattern cut a nice skirt for myself, using both pairs of pants. I made a few changes in the coat and behold! I had a lovely suit.”

During a period of high inflation in the 1980s, the ECA clubs helped members figure out ways to conserve energy. In the mid ‘80s, more than 121,000 families reduced their energy and water use, saving about $132,832 by using auxiliary heating devices, water-saving gadgets, and energy-saving window treatments. The clubs also helped women find sources of extra income like furniture refinishing.

In the process, the members of ECA clubs learn how to run a sound household. They come to know the importance of good record-keeping, budgeting, and planning.

As Celestine Rhodarmer of Asheville said in the 1980s, “if it had not been for Extension Homemakers being close during the illness and death of my husband, I would not have known how to become the head of the household. Through the Extension Homemakers, I have learned to manage a home and be more aware of the responsibility of a head of the household.”

ECA women have always been can-do women. When their men were away in wars, they pulled together and helped bring in the crops. These crops were badly needed not only for the families, but also the nation.

LEADERSHIP
ECA has always responded to needs. In the process, the women have been changed and so has the entire organization.

Club members often discover gifts that they could never have imagined. They find passions and expand their horizons. Many club members have become leaders, not only in their organization, but also in their communities. Some become mayors, county commissioners, and school board members. Their experience in the clubs allowed them to move easily into leadership roles.

In 1991, Nancy Hope Willis held up a dirty, green bottle during leadership training. It was nothing to admire. But then she cleaned it, polished it, and dropped in a lovely rose. Now the ordinary bottle was a beautiful emerald vase. Her message? Effective leaders are neither born nor made but can be developed.

The newly formed clubs were so successful that the federal government expanded the program to more counties in North Carolina. It did this to help increase the nation’s food production during World War I.

During the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed half a million Americans, the club women stepped forward in valuable and visible ways. They cooked meals, taught about health precautions, and helped with home nursing when the woman of the house was desperately ill. Other times they served in the emergency “hospitals” set up for the sick. The state had an amazing resource during this time of terror – here was an already-in-place organization of capable women who could quickly mobilize and respond.

Unfortunately that funding didn’t last. County commissioners cut many agent positions after World War I, but the club members would not give up. In 27 counties, black women volunteers taught home canning for free to keep the club work going.

Over time, the women have taken on the fire of many pet projects. In the 1980s, the Dardens Extension Homemakers Club of Martin County thought it was ridiculous to have to call long distance to reach their fire department! Even their children had to reverse the charges when they called from school!

So the women mounted a campaign. They petitioned the phone company, they asked the county commissioners for help, and they talked to clubs and businesses to drum up support. Eventually the N.C. Utilities Commission agreed to replace the long distance telephone charges between Williamston and Plymouth with extended area service.

“It was then that we felt we finally finished our project,” a club member said. The phone calling change was such a big accomplishment that Gov. Jim Martin gave the group an Outstanding Volunteer Award in 1990.

No doubt about it -- these are effective women. They speak up at all levels. They have held voter registration drives, met with congressmen and legislators, and gotten involved in the courts.

In the 1970s, Helen Bess of Gaston County organized a group called Concerned Citizens for Justice. The movement served notice to all those in the judicial system that ordinary people were interested in fair and equal justice for all. The program won the National Volunteer Award, the National Extension Homemakers’ Award for Outstanding County Project, and the National Citizenship Award for the N.C. Extension Homemakers. But best of all, this program led 35 other states to begin Court Watcher programs, too.

Counties have long held events like the Women’s Leadership Conference in Union County, sponsored by Extension FCS and ECA. They allowed women to gain skills in areas like networking, diplomacy, relationship building, professional development, and mentoring.

In recent years, some women are taking advanced training to become mentors. They are a formidable force of help through master programs like food preservation and money management.

Pat Seal, a member of the Beulah EHA in Surry County, was named Outstanding Leader of the Year in the 1980s. As she accepted her engraved silver tray, Mrs. Seal said, “When I think how easily I could have missed being an Extension Homemaker, it’s really frightening. Just think what I would have missed!”

SERVICE
It’s true that ECA women have always been close to their families and to one another. But their nurturing and caring has never stopped there.

During the world wars, the club women were on the frontlines of community support. They collected scrap metal and fat, grew Victory Gardens, and knitted sweaters and socks for soldiers.  During the Great Depression, when times were desperate, the federal and state governments paid for emergency workers and seed so that ECA clubs could help those on the dole feed themselves.

After World War II, the women did not forget the hardships they had all suffered through. They embraced the United Nations movement because they wanted so badly for war to end forever. In this role, the women turned outward. They began traveling to Washington, D.C., New York City, and eventually other countries like Norway and England.

Juanita Lagg of Rowan County developed a passion for destitute people in other countries – and helped the ECA do something about it.

One of the most dramatic projects was called Save the Sight in India. Many children there were going blind before they even turned 5 years old. Unbelievably, this suffering could easily be prevented if the children could eat a diet with Vitamin A.

But the workers found that the fix was only as good as the child’s home life. They learned that they needed to teach the entire family about eating the right foods. Once they showed the parents how to gather and cook a native plant rich in Vitamin A the lesson clicked.

The project succeeded so well that India agreed to build clinics like theirs around the country. Eventually it even spread to other countries. This all came about because homemakers from North Carolina and around the world had raised money for this project.

“This is one of the best success stories I’ve ever heard about,” Lagg said. “And the reason for it…it came about because someone cared what was happening to children in developing countries. They researched the problem, they found a workable solution, they were willing to work with existing agencies … and most important, they were willing to fund the project for a full year to see if a change could make a difference.”

The ECA difference spread to other countries, too. In Guatemala, they funded projects like a well. In 1976, an earthquake had cut more than 700 people off from their water supply. So the women and children had to walk two miles at great altitude to reach the nearest water.

“I simply could not shake this concern from my thoughts,” Lagg said, “so when I returned to North Carolina, I showed a few pictures that told the story of the need for clean drinking water. The North Carolina Extension Homemakers responded the same way as I and together we decided that we should fund some wells.”

But raising the money was just part of the project; the women found that they also needed patience, cultural understanding, and determination. It took a few years for everything to come about.

“One thing I learned,” Lagg said, “is that if you decide to assist with a project, you simply must do it at their pace and use their methods, not yours, if you want to be successful.”

To pay for their projects, the women have somehow raised enormous sums of money, even in the hardest of times. This money has allowed the clubs to be amazingly generous.

In the 1940s, the ladies of Red Oak Club House in Nash County held an honest-to-goodness hen party to raise money. Each woman brought a hen to be sold later. “Many interesting games were played, having been directed by Misses Ellen McIntyre and Iberia Roach, assistant home agent,” one member wrote. “A chicken contest was conducted and the prize went to Miss Mary Hackney for her chicken intelligence.”

ECA continues to evolve to meet the needs around them. The clubs have reached out to widowed people, to pregnant teens, to grandparents raising their grandchildren, to foster children. There are programs like Aging with Gusto, Hispanic health fairs, and Black Churches United for Better Health.

Club members have cleaned school yards and church grounds and they have helped in nursing homes and health centers. They have reached out to women suffering from abuse. They have made “fidget aprons” that people with Alzheimer’s disease can wear to occupy their restless hands. They have sewed mastectomy pillows for cancer patients. They have held alcohol-free prom parties for teenagers.

The service projects are kind of like snowflakes – no two are alike and they just keep coming. Club members in Alleghany County knitted helmet liners for soldiers. Staff Sgt. Brandon Brown of Wellsville said the warm helmet liners helped him greatly in Iraq. “I work the midnight shift, securing the base perimeter, and I am outside in the elements all night,” he wrote them. “I have already found them to be very useful. Thank you so much for all your support and your prayers.”

The support has extended to military families, too. Many clubs collected coupons and sent them to military families here and abroad.

The Jacksonville EHA members offered their support to Carobell, a home for severely handicapped children. “As a club, we feel like this project has helped not only the children but the club as well,” Lib Sheegog said. “We have gotten to know each other better by sharing our ideas and talents and working together.”

The needs are ever-changing but the hearts stay the same.

EDUCATION
It’s a fact that the women of ECA know how to grow fabulous tomatoes, potatoes, and corn. But they know how to grow something else, too --- minds.

It started with a love of reading. In the 1920s, the county agents arrived at club meetings with an inviting collection of library books.  And the club members decided that their rural locations shouldn’t stand in the way of reading. In typical style, they found an answer – bookmobiles. These traveling libraries delighted families with fresh words to read. Thanks to these books, rural folks got to travel to faraway places, learn new skills, and even laugh. Clubs also raised money to help establish libraries in their communities.

In the 1960s, women in one Currituck County club held reading contests with team names like the Jets and the Rockets. “It’s still a secret which side has the greatest number of points,” Daphne W. Yon wrote, but soon we will know! Then the losers can begin planning the party. We winners want plenty of delicious food!”

The East Bend Extension Homemakers and the East Bend Ruritans teamed up in 1984 to push for the library they had always longed for. They were incredibly gratified when it finally became reality. On opening day, a group of young boys in uniform, just in from playing Little League baseball, came running through the door and headed for the children’s section, as enthusiastic about books as baseball!

Over the years, the ECA clubs continued to make reading a priority for all ages. They often supported local schools, and women spent countless hours tutoring children and reading to them. They filled shelves across the state with books they bought. Some of the women also helped adults discover the joy of reading.

ECA clubs also donated books to many parents of newborns. The club women knew that early reading could give the babies’ minds a tremendous boost and help the children as they grew up and went to school. It is clear that education is sacred to the women of ECA.

From the early days, ECA clubs found a way to send promising women to college through loans and scholarships. Their drive to help the students got reinforced over and over as the recipients wrote back.

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you more times than I can count!” Robin Matson wrote. “I’ve finally made it through mid-term with a B average. I’m working very hard to be worthy of your support and trust.”

Another woman, Carol Millsaps, wrote, “Dear Ladies, Just a note to let you know ‘we’ made it through nursing school at Western Carolina University. Yes, with your help, I have graduated and will be working at C.J. Harris Hospital in Sylva. Thank you for your support of the scholarship.”

Many words of praise have been said about ECA -- words that have come from governors, neighbors, and even children.

Little Mary Jo Forehand attended Shawboro Club meetings with her mother, Hilda Forehand, in 1965. “She is a happy 3-year-old when this time comes,” Mrs. Forehand said. “Recently after going home from the meeting and saying her prayers, Mary Jo added, ‘Thank you, Lord, for Home Demonstration club.’”

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