Bridges Digital Archive: Audio and Video Recordings

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Document Type

Oral History

Publication Date

10-6-2015

Abstract

Carolyn Tillman interviews Constance Lexion, a woman who made remarkable nutritional changes in Southern California. Lexion starts with some background of her life, in which she says she went to Pasadena City College and later to California State College Long Beach. She talks about how her skills working in the Ten-State Nutrition Survey landed her job working in the 4-H program and work in San Bernardino. The interviewee goes on to detail 4-H’s origin, and how the program originated from a Land Grant in 1914 from the USDA that was expanded by the University of California and counties. When asked about community leaders who helped the agricultural program in the 1970s, Lexion names several elected officials. She explains how their help towards the program was a force that led to people becoming active in nutrition and agriculture. There is also a mention of faith as she worked at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church to provide nutritional information, which many did not follow. There is a brief mention of the Valley Truck farms and how part of San Bernardino’s Black community created a once-thriving farming area after World War II. The topic changed to social climate and how Lexion’s father was a NAACP president and faced a San Bernardino that was separated into Black and White populations. Lexion mentions that bridging people together was how the social climate could better. During her time trying to reach out to youth, the interviewee went through all sorts of unique attempts to get their attention like dressing up in food costumes. To then help adults get into nutrition, Lexion and others worked in the Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program for this cause. The program would be able to help adults use food stamps and other resources. After Tillman asks Lexion how her work helped the Inland Empire’s African-American community, Lexion responds by giving people skills in nutrition, homemaking, and food preservation. Lexion then reflects on her work, which she sees giving people information as an accomplishment, and recommends to viewers to be faithful. The interview ends with Lexion being asked about concerns in food at the time of the recording, like organic food and GMOs, to which she responds to use with moderation and variety.

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