Home demonstration clubs
Their goal was to teach farm women in rural America better methods for getting their work done, in areas such as gardening, canning, nutrition, and sewing, and to encourage them to improve their families' living conditions.
Home demonstration agents worked with local clubs to provide teaching services.
[4] People who were considered experts in various topics were brought into the clubs to teach and were called Home demonstration agents.
[4][5] Topics covered included domestic skills, issues relating to family life, home economics and information about new technologies and goods of interest to rural women.
[5][6] Part of the purpose of the clubs was to make the same kind of information found at colleges and universities available to rural women.
[16] Home demonstration agents were considered to be the local representatives of individual states' county extension services and of the USDA.
[23] During the Great Depression, home demonstration agents were often able to provide help to families in need.
[26] Two women, Marie Cromer and Ella Agnew, started early canning clubs in North Carolina and Virginia respectively.
[27] In South Carolina, more than 17,500 black women and girls were involved in producing and conserving food during WWII.
[35] In some cases, the difference between the salaries of white and black home demonstration agents was even more pronounced.
[34] The first Negro home demonstration agent worked in Okfuskee and Seminole counties in Oklahoma and was hired in 1912.
[39] In Texas, Mary Evelyn V. Hunter worked as the statewide home demonstration agent for black women from 1915 to 1931.
[27] The clubs sometimes met in rural schoolhouses, such as the Galen Elementary School in Macon County, Tennessee.
[40] Home demonstration agents serving rural women overlapped with 4-H clubs, including in Montana.
