Figures collected in the 1935 Agricultural Census revealed that 72.3 percent of the farms in Texas were operated by tenants or sharecroppers. That percentage was reduced gradually over the next three decades as more and more rural people migrated to the cities for employment and as mechanization enabled ever-smaller numbers of landowners to produce the necessary amounts of agricultural products. It is commonly assumed that virtually every rural Texas Black was either a tenant farmer or a sharecropper. This exhibit demonstrates that there were a number of Black landowners who worked their own land productively and profitably.

These industrious, ambitious, and hard-working Texas Blacks built new houses, improved the quality of their livestock through better breeding practices, improved their crop production through the adoption of a variety of recommended practices, made their livelihoods better by new gardening and preserving techniques, improved their personal appearances by sewing new clothes, and increased their personal comfort by making improvements to their homes and furniture. Much of this was accomplished with the help of County Agricultural and Home Demonstration Agents working out of Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University. The individuals served as demonstrators or cooperators on a wide variety of projects to improve their overall living standard. Texas Agricultural Extension Service personnel photographed these activities and preserved those photographs as evidence of accomplishment. Some of the photographs were used in reports or in various agricultural publications, but many of them have never been seen before by the public.

Symbolic of the Blacks who strove for a better living was the Walter Collins family of Pilot Knob in Travis County. Their new stone home was completed in 1948 on their 346-acre farm eight miles southeast of Austin on the Lockhart road. The Collins family was one of 2,287 rural Texas families--of all races in 183 counties--who constructed new houses in 1948. The old weatherbeaten home stands a hundred yards to the left. Travis County Agricultural Agent T.A. Mayes and Home Demonstration Agent Mrs. Jessie L. Shelton both worked with the Collins family for several years on improving their living by urging them to own better-quality livestock, to engage in soil conservation practices including terracing, to upgrade their living quarters, to alter their crops, to use proper amounts of fertilizer, and to take better care of equipment by storing it in a shed rather than in the open. In 1949 Mr. Collins had 30 acres planted in Austrian winterpeas and 40 acres in Hubam. The previous year he improved his soil with an application of superphosphate. He had a total of 186 acres under cultivation and also had 65 head of cattle. The entire Collins family appears to have had similar drive and ambition. In 1948 one child taught school in New Jersey, one was married to a teacher at Sam Houston College, one son owned an adjoining 90-acre farm, and the three youngest ones lived at home. Three other children lived in California. Date: December 1948 Photographer: Jack Sloan