County Commissioners Refuse to Pay Ag. Agent Who Works with Negroes, July 11, 1924

The Look Backward Club

For hard-headedness, tight-fistedness and general cussedness, don’t look outside the average Board of County Commissioners. Pasquotank has a representative aggregation on of these worthies. The Commissioners of Pasquotank County have one idea and one idea only of government, and that is to save money. It has never entered their pates that money is a thing to be spent for the comfort, well-being and advancement of folks. A month ago it was pointed out to them that they had never contributed a dollar to the support of a County Demonstration Agent for the colored people. For nearly a year now a colored Farm Demonstration Agent has been doing wonderful work among the negro farmers of the county. He has been inadequately paid, partly by the Federal government, partly by the State and partly by donates from the colored people. And when it was pointed out to the County Commissioners that they ought to do something to help this farm demonstration work among the negroes, just as they support such work for the uplift of the white farmers, the Commissioners provided $25 a month for the negro farm demonstrator by lopping $25 a month off the meager salary of the white farm demonstrator.

When Mr. Falls, the white demonstrator, refused to stand for the cut in his salary and threatened the quit, the Commissioners this week rescinded their action of a month ago and restored the $25 a month to Mr. Falls, but refused to do anything for the negroes. They can’t possibly find $300 a year to finance the work that is quite as important to the negro farmers of the county as to the white farmers. And these same Commissioners are among those who are forever damning the negro farmer because he isn’t as efficient and productive as he ought to be. They couldn’t be made to see in a thousand years that improved methods of farming introduced among the colored people today will mean better negro farm lands, better negro homes, better negro citizens and a substantial financial return to the county in taxes paid by more efficient and more productive negro farm owners in years to come.

Lead editorial in The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., July 11, 1924, W.O. Saunders, editor. Counties were supposed to pay one-third of the salary of each county's Cooperative Extension Agent (agriculture, 4-H, home economics). The state paid one-third and the federal Department of Agriculture the remaining third. The Independent pledged a dollar a month to the agent for colored people, and challenged other county organizations and businesses to also pledge a dollar a month to make up the county's share of the salary.