Online discussion with Dr. Shari L. Williams

“Come Now, and Let Us Reason Together”: Cooperative Extension Clubs Empowerment of African American Farm Women and Girls, 1928-1955 
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African American women played a crucial role in the Black Freedom Struggle in the United States, and one significant but overlooked contribution of their leadership development was participation in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Negro Cooperative Extension home demonstration and 4-H clubs. In addition to learning skills related to cooking, cleaning, canning, sewing and other domestic chores, many assumed leadership roles in Alabama neighborhood clubs and county-level councils, and, over time, club activities became an intergenerational emancipatory realm of personal fulfillment and citizenship rights consciousness.
Focusing on Alabama from 1928-1955, Dr. Williams uses historical and genealogical research to explain how the work of these groups was grounded in and enhanced by existing Afrocentric kinship, community, and religious beliefs and cultural practices. 

Draughon Seminars in State and Local History are a series of lectures sponsored by the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University. The series is funded by the Kelly Mosley Endowment in honor of Dr. Ralph B. Draughon, president of Auburn University from 1947 to 1965.

This program is free for attendees.