02/27/2022
Willie "W. L. " Strain was the grandfather of Tuskegee Chapter Treasurer and Foundation Chair Mom Wendy Boykin and great-grandfather of Jack John Boykin, Jr. and Legacy Jill Kailyn Boykin. He was noted for his perseverance and tenacity in working to achieve equal employment rights and equality for African Americans, women, and those who faced discriminatory practices in the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, now known as the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.
Strain helped to create unprecedented opportunities for African Americans and other minorities in the Cooperative Extension System. This was accomplished through the landmark court case Strain vs. Philpot. The Strain case and Strain have been credited with creating greater opportunities in Extension for Blacks and minorities nationwide.
Strain began his work with the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service in Butler County (Greenville) Alabama as Assistant Negro County Agent. His talents, exceptional preparation, and leadership skills soon were recognized by the Negro Director in the dual Alabama Extension Service and soon he was advanced to higher positions within the dual system.
Strain and other employees had to put up with a decade of inequalities as employees of the Negro Division of the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service headquarter on the Tuskegee University (Institute) campus. When the Negro Division of the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service was closed in the mid-1960s and incorporated into the system’s mainstream operations Strain and other Black employees felt the sting of segregation only in more insidious ways. Segregation still held sway in the South, more than 10 years after the U. S. Supreme Courts' landmark Brown vs Board of Education decision.
Fed up with what he and other Blacks were going through, after being passed over for a promotion to a unit head post, Strain filed a suit in federal court, claiming unfair treatment. Strain could have filed his complaint individually but insisted instead that it be done as a class-action lawsuit. He is remembered as saying “because all of us had to go through the same thing, I felt that we should all be compensated in some way.” Thus, this was the beginning of a suit Strain was best known for, Strain vs Philpot. The civil suit he brought against the Alabama Extension Service in 1968 lasted more than 26 years.
The Strain case and Strain have been credited with creating greater extension opportunities for minorities not only in Alabama but nationwide. The Strain vs Philpot order had as much impact for his counterparts across that nation as it did on the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service.
The Strain ruling didn’t just help Blacks. It helped Blacks, women of all races, and white males who were not looked upon favorably by the administration. These results lent credence to a U. S. Department of Agriculture officials comment that the Strain vs. Philpot lawsuit was “as important to equal opportunity in extension works as Brown vs. Board of Education was to the principle of equal opportunity in general and education”; (it) set the tone for actions to bring equal opportunity in extension employment and extension programs in other states.”
Some 16 years after filing the suit, Strain became Assistant Director and head of Cooperative Extension Services Information Services unit and also an Associate Professor in the Journalism Department at Auburn University. Strain retired in 1995, from the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, with the rank of Professor Emeritus in two Colleges of Auburn University.
