The Farmer's Improvement Society College, 1906-1947
“Let the school be a fine demonstration farm of what the Negro farmer can do for himself by himself” – R.L. Smith, president of the F.I.S College
While most historical scholarship on black higher education in Texas focuses primarily on institutions that would later operate as colleges/universities in the modern sense such as Prairie View and Texas Southern, others have been obscured from our view, occupying the shadows of African American history in Texas. However, many of these institutions provide examples of black educational philosophy during the early 20th century, black collective agency, and perhaps most importantly, how black people tied higher learning to their freedom dreams. One such example is the Farmer’s Improvement Society College.
Established in 1906 in Wolfe City, Texas, the Farmer’s Improvement Society College was an extension of the Farmer’s Improvement Society, a collective farmer’s alliance founded by Robert Lloyd Smith. The school functioned as an affiliate high school exemplifying the philosophies of its parent organization and embodying the Tuskegee program made famous by Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Employing the doctrine of self-help, scholars note that “Both Smith and Washington intended to create hard working, independent black men and women who would be models to help others develop positive feelings for blacks in a white dominated society.” (Sturdevant, pg.53). After receiving financial and moral support largely from African Americans across Texas and the blessing from A.B Lennox, pastor of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, the F.I.S College opened its fifty-acre campus. Its curriculum, modeled after the Tuskegee Institute, emphasized racial uplift through vocational training. Offering a description of the school’s approach, founder and president R.L Smith noted “thus we relate the out of class activities to the in-school procedures making a cooperative effort, the one supplement the other” (FIS School Literary Notes). Serving grades 6 through 12, the FIS College promoted ideas of thrift, industry, economy, and high morals. Paying a tuition of $87.50 in 1921 that included boarding costs, students undertook courses in vocabulary, arithmetic, religion, and agriculture, the latter being the basket in which most of Smith and the FIS’s eggs were cast. So much so, that the school’s sessions coincided with the growing season to allow students to work their families’ farms and apply their newfound skills and methods.
Agricultural and other vocational training reflected the gendered-labor roles of the time, relegating male students to classes in animal care, agricultural methods, and husbandry, while female students were required to take courses in sewing, cooking, canning, and gardening. In addition to their studies, students were instrumental in the sustainability of the institution. These young pupils also served as the school’s employees, working as mechanics, cooks, laundresses, painters, and farmers. Implementing work as a part of the curriculum and requirements for students allowed for the growth of the school, playing a major role in its ability to exceed its original fifty acres to occupying ninety-two acres. This form of ‘work-study’ was a product of the doctrine of self-help. While the school certainly had its white supporters, self-help also meant self-support. There are remaining records that are indicative of this black agency. Although, the dual duties of students and faculty were vital, the school relied on donations from its supporters, which came from largely black farmers, merchants, organizations, and churches. Surviving subscription slips show financial support for the college. Documents from the 23rd Annual Convocation in 1918 illustrate the types of collective fund-raising endeavors employed by the school’s administration and affiliate organization to sustain the institution. While the records are scant, those that survived offer a glimpse of how black people in places like Mexia, Cold Springs, Waco, Hempstead, Marshall, Chapel Hill sought to carry out the ultimate mission of the school.
During the first half of the twentieth century, from 1906 until 1947, the institution functioned as “Texas’ answer to Washington’s Tuskegee Institute” (Sturdevant, pg. 52). Within this paradigm, the FIS College has been subject to similar criticism as an agent of accommodationist philosophy. Its declining enrollment into the century commonly attributed to changing educational philosophies amongst black communities that urged liberal studies which reflected aims for political and social equality. Criticisms of the adherence to respectability politics and white paternalistic sentiments are not without warrant. The esteemed scholar activist W.E.B Du Bois, becoming one leading critics of the Tuskegee program as it was promoted by men like Booker T. Washington and R.L Smith, posed the question “How far have these schools established successfully Negro farmers on their own farms?” (Sixth Annual Conference on Negro Education, March 29, 1935). More recent scholars have argued that “the real success of Tuskegee Institute’s agricultural program came primarily from its graduates and former students who took the lead in teaching agriculture to black farmers” (Allen, 1975, pg. 253). Not only did the lack of increase in black landownership generate criticism, but advocating that African Americans work primarily with their hands was seen as an acquiescence to the racial order in the South.
Rather than viewing these institutions within a similar framework, schools like the FIS College ought to be held in reverence as examples of black efforts to pursue better educational opportunities. These young black women and men, seeking opportunity, reflecting the dreams of countless families, provided the foundation for African American farmers, artisans, educators, business owners, and organizers moving forward. Their ‘real success’ coming in promoting a racial consciousness and uplift approach that would serve as the foundation for achieving economic, political, and social equality. This ‘inspiring sight of Negro achievement’ functions as more than an extension of the accommodationist thread. The Farmer’s Improvement Society College serves as an attempt of black people in Texas to liberate themselves from oppressive political and economic structures amid national economic crisis, racial terror, and lack of support.
Despite its shortcomings and criticisms of its approach to the education of African Americans, the FIS College offered young aspiring black men and women a chance to ‘cast down their buckets’ where they were with hopes that the returns would sustain whole communities. Although its doors closed in 1947, their efforts and “ultimate faith in the power of love to overcome and transform whatever in human nature disfigures, mars, frustrates, destroys” (FIS School Literary Notes) provided for a new generation that would carry African Americans into the modern civil rights era.
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