The Bonnie B. Davis Environment and Agricultural Center is the first county building named after a Black woman, and the only agricultural center in the state of North Carolina named after a Black Family and Consumer Sciences or Home Demonstration Agent.
The Hillsborough building has a state-of-the-art climate control system that will help conserving energy. It houses the county’s N.C. Cooperative Extension, the Department of Environment, Agriculture, Parks & Recreation (DEAPR), Farm Services Agency (FSA), Soil and Water Conservation District, and the Forestry Service.
About Cooperative Extension
North Carolina Cooperative Extension is a 100 plus-year-old agency that provides information to the community based on research from the two state land-grant universities; N.C. A&T State University and NC State University.
In 1950, when Bonnie Briley Davis began in Extension she became the first Black Home Demonstration Agent in Orange County, a position now known as Family and Consumer Sciences Agent. By that time Extension was still segregated but that didn’t detour Mrs. Davis from serving everybody in the county. There were no indoor bathrooms, proper offices, or a demonstration kitchen for black agents and their club members to use. Despite these hardships and as the parallel Extension organizations merged, Mrs. Davis worked to further racial integration in the N.C. Cooperative Extension of Orange County office in Hillsborough and improve working conditions for other local black agents. She received many county, state, and national awards including the Orange County’s Pauli Murray Human Relations Award in 2000.
After Mrs. Davis death in 2018, Ivelisse Colón, FCS Agent for N.C. Cooperative Extension in Orange County began gathering information about her through friends, former colleagues, and fellow ECA club members. She submitted a proposal to name the new Environment and Agricultural Center after Mrs. Davis, and in February 2021 the Orange County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the naming.
