The Smith-Lever Act funds home demonstration agents – mostly women – to teach up-to-date agricultural, gardening, and food preservation techniques to families of all races living in rural areas. One of the goals of the project is to “develop leadership abilities in rural women and girls.”

Glave, Dianne D. “‘A Garden So Brilliant with Colors, So Original in Its Design’: Rural African American Women, Gardening, Progressive Reform, and the Foundation of an African American Environmental Perspective.” Environmental History 8, no. 3 (2003): 395-411. Accessed July 28, 2021. doi:10.2307/3986201.

“The Smith-Lever Act of 1914.” National Archives Foundation. Accessed July 28, 2021. https://www.archivesfoundation.org/documents/smith-lever-act-1914/

United States Department of Agriculture. “The Home Demonstration Agent.” National Agricultural Library. July 1951.

“Home Demonstration Work.” U.S. Department of Agriculture Miscellaneous Publication Number 178. National Agricultural Library. 1933.