Clarence Hamilton Poe

Clarence Hamilton Poe. Image Source: News and Observer. May 4, 1924. Editorial Section, p. 1.

Clarence Poe, the South’s leading agricultural journalist in the early twentieth century, served on the ECTTS board of trustees from 1912 until 1914. As editor of the Progressive Farmer, The Life and Speeches of Charles B. Aycock, and numerous other publications which he either edited or wrote, Poe, a native of rural Chatham County, achieved an intellectual standing utterly unprecedented on the East Carolina board. His brief tenure as a board member brought him to the campus and prompted a contribution to the school’s Training School Quarterly, giving voice to his vision of the educational needs of the agrarian population. Like his father-in-law, former Governor Charles B. Aycock, Poe’s progressive ideas on agriculture and education were coupled with his strong advocacy of white supremacy, especially as it applied to the rural socio-economic realm. The latter prompted the pointed criticism of W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the leading African American intellectuals opposing Jim Crow racial segregation in all forms.

In 1912, Poe’s advocacy of meaningful, practical education for farmers meshed well with ECTTS’s efforts to train teachers for country schools, the so-called Joyner Schools of rural eastern North Carolina. And the ECTTS student body was well stocked with daughters of rural, agrarian families. As East Carolina transformed into a four-year teachers college with a variety of educational foci and an increasingly well-heeled student body, Poe’s message of education for farmers found less resonance on campus. Nevertheless, he remained a public figure known, via the Progressive Farmer, in virtually every community of the state.

Poe received no formal education beyond grade school but eventually was the recipient of honorary doctorates from Wake Forest College, North Carolina State College, the University of North Carolina, and Clemson. At 16, he began working as an office boy for the Raleigh-based paper, the Progressive Farmer, founded by Leonidas Lafayette Polk (1837-1892). After Polk’s passing, Poe assumed editorial responsibilities and, in 1903, purchased the publication, then with a circulation of 5,000, for $7,500. Under Poe’s leadership, the Progressive Farmer became the preeminent agricultural publication in the South. By 1924, it had a weekly circulation of over 400,000, and at the time of his passing, 1.5 million subscribers. Later, the magazine and its sister publication Southern Living were sold to Time Inc. for $480 million. Since that time, it has been challenged with the rise of digital publications but remains, nevertheless, in circulation.

Poe married Charles B. Aycock’s daughter, Alice Verina Aycock (1886-1940), and named his first son, Charles Aycock Poe (1913-1994), after his father-in-law. Like Aycock, Poe vigorously opposed lynching and advocated improved educational opportunities and increased industrial and religious training for African Americans. While he denounced Thomas Frederick Dixon’s (1864-1946) glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and opposed efforts to divide education taxes by race, Poe was an influential advocate of white supremacy, especially as that applicable to the rural socio-economic realm. While serving on the ECTTS board, Poe advanced his vision of a “great rural civilization,” wherein the races would be separated by race in every respect, including ownership of rural farmland, along the lines similar to the South African model.

Opposing Poe’s views at length, W. E. B. Du Bois authored his “The Last Word in Caste,” where he noted that African American successes in agricultural, land ownership, and financial betterment were being opposed not by “an ignorant agitator of the Blease and Vardman and Tillman type…. [but] Clarence Poe, editor of the ‘Progressive Farmer’ and a man representing in many ways the best traditions of the South.” Du Bois added that “the ‘Progressive Farmer’ [is] a weekly paper with a wide circulation among the most intelligent farmers all over the South,” while bemoaning the fact that Poe’s following was beginning to echo his calls for rural white supremacy.

Du Bois’ words perhaps had some impact, as did the reactions of white farmers who considered Poe’s calls for rural racial segregation simply impractical. After all, the need for African American labor made it imperative that rural white landowners maintain a modicum of goodwill and cooperation, something that Poe’s rural segregation would have undermined. Poe backed away from the extremes of his proposals but still it remained clear that his concern with the agricultural sector was one operative within the parameters of Jim Crow racial thinking rather than the best that the progressive movement had to offer.

Sources:

• “Board of Trustees.” East Carolina Teachers Training School: Summer Term. 1913. P. 2. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/36994
• “Board of Trustees” Fourth Annual Catalogue of the East Carolina Teachers Training School, 1912-1913. Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton Publishing. 1913. P. 6.
• “Clarence H. Poe (1881-1964) Papers, 1860-1964: Finding Aids.” North Carolina Digital Collections. State Archives of North Carolina. Raleigh, North Carolina.  https://digital.ncdcr.gov/digital/collection/p16062coll15/id/899
• “Clarence Hamilton Poe.” North Carolina Agricultural Hall of Fame Inductees. North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.  https://www.ncagr.gov/paffairs/aghall/poe.htm
• “Clarence Poe, 1881-1964.” North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program. North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. http://www.ncmarkers.com/Markers.aspx?MarkerId=H-101
• “Clarence Poe Is Named President – North Carolina Farmers’ Convention Finishes Biggest and Best Convention.” News and Observer.  August 30, 1919. P. 12.
• Cote, Joseph Anthony. Clarence Hamilton Poe: Crusading Editor, 1881-1964. University of Georgia Press, 1976.
• “Dr. Clarence Poe – Champion of Southern Farmer Passes at 83.” Durham Sun. October 9, 1964. P. 12A.
• Du Bois, W. E. B. Excerpts from Letters and Editorials in the Progressive Farmer. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers 1803-1999 (bulk 1877-1963), Series 2: Speeches. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b240-i010
• Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Last Word in Caste, ca. 1911.” W. E. B. Du Bois Papers 1803-1999 (bulk 1877-1963), Series 2: Speeches. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b196-i060
• “Four Hundred in Social Service First Congress: Clarence Poe Made Its First President – What Its Purposes Will Be.” News and Observer. February 13, 1913. P. 5.
• Hall, Jane. “Dr. Clarence Poe – Three for History At 79.” News and Observer. September 11, 1960. Section III, p. 2.
• “Happenings at the East Carolina Teachers Training School.” Carolina Home and Farm and The Eastern Reflector. Vol. XXXIV, no. 8. December 20, 1912. P. 5. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/18227
• Herbin-Triant, Elizabeth A. “Southern Segregation South Africa-Style: Maurice Evans, Clarence Poe, and the Ideology of Rural Segregation.” Agricultural History. Vol. 87, issue 2. Spring 2013. Pp. 170-193. https://doi.org/10.3098/ah.2013.87.2.170
• Jenkins, Jay. “Birthday for Dr. Poe – A Rural Battler Looks Back.” Charlotte Observer. January 19, 1956. P. 2.
• O’Keef, Herbert. “Clarence Poe Stirs the Old Memories.” News and Observer. December 3, 1961. Section III, p. 5.
• “Online Books by Clarence Hamilton Poe.” The Online Books Page. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Poe%2C%20Clarence%20Hamilton%2C%201881%2D1964.
• “Plea For Schools Brought Clarence Poe to Raleigh.” News and Observer. May 4, 1924. Editorial Section, P. 1.
• Poe, Charles Aycock. “Clarence Hamilton Poe, 1881- .” Documenting the American South. From Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. Edited by William S. Powell. University of North Carolina Press. https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/connor/bio.html
• Poe, Clarence. “Educating for Farm Life.” Training School Quarterly. April, May, June 1916. Pp. 8-12. https://archive.org/details/trainingschoolqu31east/page/8/mode/2up?q=Poe
• Poe, Clarence Hamilton and R. D. W. Connor, eds. The Life and Speeches of Charles Brantley Aycock. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1912. https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/connor/menu.html
• Poe, Clarence Hamilton, ed. True Tales of the South at War: How Soldiers Fought and Families Lived, 1861-1865. University of Chapel Hill Press, 1961. http://www.worldcat.org/title/1384812
• Robinson, Charles K. “Clarence Poe – His Good Eighty Years.” Asheville Citizen-Times. December 22, 1963. P. D2.
• “Satisfying Country Life Is Now The Goal – Dr. Clarence Poe Discusses Rural Problems and Outlines Its Solutions.” Charlotte Observer. August 12, 1915. P. 6.

Related Materials

Clarence Hamilton Poe. Image Source: North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program

Clarence Hamilton Poe. Image Source: NC State University University Archives Photograph Collection. People (UA023.024)

Clarence Hamilton Poe. Image Source: News and Observer. Dec. 3, 1961. Section III, p. 5. 

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