“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”

Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

Just as the great 19th-century black educator sought the advancement of his race through education, “industry, thrift and intelligence,” Washington had a disciple in Waco who promoted the same to rural blacks of early 20th-century Central Texas.

A highly educated and self-made man, Robert Lloyd Smith (1861-1942) came to Texas in the late 1800s and aspired to do much to improve the lives of newly freed blacks in his adopted state. 

Robert Lloyd Smith’s legacy will be celebrated through March 20 at The Texas Collection at Baylor University, as curators present “A Homegrown Vision: Robert L. Smith and the Farmers Improvement Society,” an exhibit mounted in observance of Black History Month. 

His legacy will be celebrated through March 20 at The Texas Collection at Baylor University as curators present “A Homegrown Vision: Robert L. Smith and the Farmers Improvement Society,” an exhibit mounted in observance of Black History Month.

The exhibit, which opened Wednesday, features photographs of the Smith-Cobb family of Waco and documents of the Farmers Improvement Society, an institution Smith founded in 1890 to try to abolish the sharecropping and credit system that ensnared poor farmers.

Forty years after freedom from slavery, almost two-thirds of the jobs for blacks remained in agriculture. Fewer than one-third of these (primarily Southern) black farmers had acquired small landholdings, but most continued to rent land from white owners and earn limited profits — or face recurring debt as commodity prices dipped.

Farmers’ society

Efforts at organization for the purchase of supplies and the cooperative sale of crops led to the formation of the Farmers’ Improvement Society of Texas (FIST). The organization encouraged self-sufficiency, especially through ownership of one’s own farm and home. FIST also promoted crop diversification and the use of improved farming methods, fostered cooperative buying and selling, provided sickness and health insurance benefits, and encouraged the social and moral elevation of members.

Robert Lloyd Smith (right) married Ruby Cobb, a Waco schoolteacher from an established family. They were the black “power couple” of the early 20th century in Waco.
Texas Collection at Baylor University

By 1900, the society claimed 86 branches and 2,340 members; and by 1909 it had 21,000 members spread across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. That same year, its cooperative business was estimated at $50,000 a year (or about $1.2 million in today’s dollars.) In 1912 the membership owned 75,000 acres of land valued at more than $1 million ($22 million in 2011 dollars).

The society sponsored agricultural fairs to demonstrate the effectiveness of its programs. In addition to the cooperative business and a growers’ union, it established the Farmers’ Bank at Waco in 1911.

FIST sought to enhance the lives and overall well-being of blacks living within the limited horizons of the post-Reconstruction South by teaching them various life and vocational skills.

The organization encouraged black farmers’ climb toward economic independence through cash purchases instead of credit buying, and their constituency raising much of their own food.

The organization branched out in succeeding years to launch the Woman’s Barnyard Auxiliaries, a 20-county effort specializing in better egg, poultry and butter production as well as the raising of improved swine for the market. Smith in 1915 had organized the state’s Negro Extension Division to foster improved agricultural methods among black farmers.

Smith was elected the first president of the Texas branch of the National Negro Business League when it was organized in 1907, and had launched a factory to manufacture overalls.

Robert Lloyd Smith (1861-1942), politician and entrepreneur, was born a South Carolinian, but died a Texan. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery.
FindAGrave.org image

Active in various black fraternal orders, Smith, who called himself a “practical sociologist,” married Ruby Cobb, a Waco schoolteacher from a long-established family. Together, they were the black “power couple” of the early 20th century in Waco, according to John Wilson, director of the Texas Collection.

Their personal and professional investment in the betterment of the black citizenry made them “community activists” before the term was even coined.

The couple parented two adopted children before his death on July 10, 1942. He is interred in Waco’s Greenwood Cemetery.

Additional sources: Handbook of Texas On-line; Encyclopedia of African American History (1896 to the Present); Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service, and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas (2007) by Debra A Reid; TexasEscapes.com

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