The Forgotten County

Judge Paul Friedman approved what is now known as the Pigford Consent Decree, or the Pigford et al. v. Glickman Class Action Suit, in April, 1999. Glickman's Civil Rights Action Team report of 1997 and the USDA-commissioned work of the D. J. Miller & Associates in 1994 nailed the results of minority farmers mistreatment versus White farmers in a variety of areas related to the financing of the farm business including crop payments, disaster programs, loans, etc. between 1983 and 1997.

In order to gain access to the Consent Decree, farmers had to be informed. The Consent Decree designated the Poorman-Douglas Corporation as the entity responsible for notifying farmers, receiving claims, deciding the legitimacy of claims, and passing them on to the adjudicator for possible action. Per this link, a variety of strategies was designed to inform farmers: 44 commercials on BET and 18 commercials on CNN; advertisements in 27 "general circulation newspapers" and 115 newspapers in an 18-state region targeting a largely Black audience; and full page advertisements in TV Guide. There may have been more efforts of an orchestrated sort, along with word of mouth advertising, but I'm not certain at this point.

What's the point, you may be asking? Good question.

Here's the point. Chilton County is just south of Birmingham. County seat is Clanton, one of the major cities is Jemison, and it has 41,000 plus people, 694 square miles, and 6.8 square miles of water. In that county you'll find the Chilton County Black Farmers Association, Bernice Atchison, President. She'll give you lots of documentation that says it was a forgotten county in 1999 and 2000.

Forgotten by whom? Forgotten by whomever should have informed the Black farmers as to the Consent Decree. In Ms. Atchison's hands, and in my hands, are signed affidavits by local officials that assert that the county did not receive information in a timely fashion or at all. Documents come from a probate court judge and three cities. From the looks of things, the closest city that had information published was Birmingham, 54 miles to the north.

So, if a farmer does not read TV Guide or certain newspapers, and if the farmers do not watch BET and CNN at certain critical points in the schedule of things, then they did not get the information. No information was given to key personnel in the county.

Not only were a number of these farmers considered to be late filers, many of them were among the "not-notified," which makes them either "late filers or non-filers."

This is why the Consent Decree is being re-opened, hopefully, as part of the 2007 Farm Bill.

Ok, I'm scratching my head on this one. How can this happen? How did this happen?

Looks to me like the notification guidelines were inadequate. Also looks to me like the drop dead due date for applying was too inflexible. There are other inadequacies, but more on them later.