Daily Delicacies March 26

Healthy Soul Choice.  When you see "State" or "A&M" as part of a university name, you are seeing the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, who had the foresight to fund "land-grant" universities through the Homestead Act in the midst of the Civil War.  But it took until 1890, 35 years after the end of the war to bring African-Americans into the benefit.  The second Morrill Act authorized grants to historically-black colleges such as Tuskegee Institute, bringing agricultural extension agents into black farm communities and greatly increasing yields.  Today, those 1890 institutions are reviving agricultural studies for black youth. An $18 million grant program for capacity building for the 1890 institutions has an application due date of March 27.  A powerful role model is Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young, acting director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, which emcompasses entire university agricultural research effort federally for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  She is a graduate of N.C. State University.