Groover’s legacy runs deep in Jefferson County
By J. Scott Angle
jangle@ufl.edu
@IFAS_VP
When Miles Edward Groover retired as an Extension agent in Jefferson County in 1957, it was significant enough to warrant mention in the Chicago Defender.
Groover was among the first Black Extension agents in Florida. Groover grew up in an era in which Blacks had little access to high quality education and upward mobility. As a child, he helped his grandparents operate a tenant farm by day and studied to qualify himself to be a teacher by night. He put aside a little each year from the crops he tended with his grandparents toward a farm of his own, and by the time he was 15 he had become a high school teacher and a landowner.
In an era in which Whites would not sell land to Blacks, he somehow amassed more than 100 acres, and he sold and sometimes even gave parcels to disenfranchised Blacks.
His generous and entrepreneurial spirit made him a leader in the Black community in Jefferson County during a 55-year career as a schoolteacher and Extension agent.
The University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) partners with Florida A&M University to deliver Florida Cooperative Extension. We are striving to strengthen our commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity and access (IDEA). In part we do that through acknowledging our history, and Groover’s is too seldom shared.
It’s been largely told by his descendants. Granddaughters Ann Herring and Sonja Vaughan have been keepers of a family history that is an important part of the UF/IFAS and FAMU’s century-old story of Extension. Sharing it is an important step toward revealing what one UF/IFAS unit’s new IDEA plan called “hidden figures.”
As an Extension agent serving Black communities, Groover worked in partnership with FAMU to provide guidance and technical assistance to Black farmers. Not only did he help teach farmers how to grow crops, he helped teach them how to operate farming equipment and promote sustainability. People also went to “Fess,” (short for professor) as he was known to those closest to him, for advice on the law or any other matter they were reluctant to bring to White county officials in Monticello.
John Lilly, director of UF/IFAS Extension Jefferson County, recognizes the shared nature of this story. He compares Groover’s impact on the agricultural development in this corner of rural Florida to that of George Washington Carver. Lilly has kept Groover’s memory alive by sharing newspaper articles and keeping in touch with one of Groover’s granddaughters, Ann Herring.
Herring still lives on the Groover homestead in the Dills community in rural Jefferson County. She has partnered with FAMU Extension faculty member, Sandra Thompson, who has secured grant funding to restore the Elizabeth Elementary School for Black children, for which her grandfather donated the land. The school, which closed in 1964, was named a Florida heritage site in 2009.
Vaughan recalls going to the State Fair in Tampa with him every year to set up a display of pecans, cotton, and other crops in a segregated exhibit hall. Groover won many awards for his farm products, but still they had to drive to Plant City each night to stay with a relative because nearby hotels did not allow Black patrons.
In 1998, Vaughan and Herring returned to the State Fairgrounds to celebrate their grandfather’s legacy as he was posthumously inducted into the Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame, based on a nomination from his daughter and FAMU graduate, Doris Groover Herring, as well as his granddaughters.
It was another first in Groover’s career of so many of them. He was the first Black inductee. He was also the last.
Sharing history like Groover’s will make UF/IFAS Extension a better organization. It will expand our history, not rewrite it. It will also expand our view of whom we are.
- Scott Angle is the University of Florida’s Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources and leader of the UF Insti-tute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS).
