Small farms, black farms.......

Farmers are farmers. Farm families are farm families. Small family farms are passing away and we must fight to keep them.

There are some significant differences though.

Black farms are going away faster than White family farms.

Let's march arm in arm together.

I'm trying to link up Farm Aid with Black FarmAide Action Gathering.

Any suggestions?

I'm listening.

Shirley Sherrod, Modern Day Hero

I am not a news reporter. Neither am I an unbiased observer of these processes. Here are my stream of consciousness reflections of the past few days.

The news feeds came in rapid-fire. USDA official fired. Racism in the department still. Black woman resigns under pressure from USDA secretary and the White House. The woman is Shirley Sherrod, USDA's Director of the Georgia Office of Rural Development. She had previously worked with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund.

It has happened so fast that there is now a wikipedia page about Ms. Sherrod and the process.

Like you, I read those early accounts with interest. "There's more to this story," I thought. A former student posted me, "What do you think about this?" There's more to the story.

The short, edited speech reveals inner reflections and thoughts of a Black woman in White America helping a White family hold on to their farm when Blacks are losing their farms at an alarming rate. She sends the White family to a white attorney. This was in 1986.

Then, various pieces of the story began to emerge. A longer speech had been edited. Surely there is a political agenda behind that. A major news network picks it up unedited. She's fired. Compelled to pull off to the side of the road and send her resignation via Blackberry. The White House wants you to resign.

The outcry is huge. An acquaintance sends out a lengthy post to a large group of people, including me for some reason. The tenor of the post is "it's time to get over it," "discrimination is over in the USDA," "an appointed official cannot speak her mind so openly," and on and on it went. A friend sends a measured but intense response back with multiple themes of think more critically before you respond, get the facts, read the times, know the history, work for change, and other things. I'm lining up behind the latter.

The White couple attest to her support. They are at the center of the storm, baffled at the speed and pace and spin of the story that involves them. Ms. Sherrod helped them save their land.

The edited version of the speech is there, edited at a curious moment in the context of a larger speech. The larger speech is indeed longer. The cry is for her to be restored to her position.

The truth comes to light. She was reflecting upon her change of mind and heart and attitude, a shift away from a racist perspective. She told her story of triumph over bigotry. She rose to a higher place and space of professionalism and humanity. She joined in the fight to stave off the loss of small family farms.

She has a long history of fighting for justice, even within her own family and among her own friends. Therein lies a story that deserves even more interest. Her friends are sticking up for her. She has a personal story of injustice.

The agenda of the editor is exposed. Fox News scrambles to explain itself. CNN had it but didn't move on it until more information was revealed.

In systems theory terms, this is schismogenesis at its finest. Or at its worse.

The USDA secretary calls and apologizes. The President calls and apologizes. Hasty decisions are undone. Maybe. Ms. Sherrod gets to decide now.

I want to believe their sincerity, but the Pigford II class action suit is still unsettled. Congress has not found its way to fund the $1.15 billion settlement. Republicans are blocking the vote left and right. Farmers are dying. Farms are going on the auction block.

Shirley Sherrod has gone from villain to heroine.

For me there are several subtexts of this story. In the world in which we live, information and disinformation are sent in a heart beat. Pieces of a story are foisted upon us as the whole. Political agendas are racialized.

Inequities still exist. We are not far removed from "The Civil Rights Action Team" and its 1997 report of racism within the USDA. We are not removed from "The Civil Rights Implementation Team" and its 1999 report that the USDA had not moved fast enough. We are not far removed from Congressman Stenholm's comment that if someone is found guilty of discrimination, they should be fired.

He said, "I am confident that most USDA employees are implementing their programs in a fair and consistent manner and would not violate the civil rights of customers that they are charged with serving. However, we cannot deny that there is a problem at USDA. Currently, they are faced with at least four class action lawsuits, and U.S. taxpayers have been exposed to the payment of millions of dollars in settlements. The USDA employees that have brought about these claims should have been by now removed, if not, they should be removed."

I agreed then. At least I agreed to part of what he said, the part about employees should be removed. I agree now. I've yet to see the evidence.

In my relatively meager involvement with Black farmers and families since the mid-1990s, I have heard numerous stories of farmers and their battles against discrimination. Some stories were told on the record and are recorded in BFAA's Historical Archives. Other stories were told off the record, not for public scrutiny. Others have been told in informal conversations at land loss summits. Others wound up in litigation. Some have been told on these pages. The one most compelling was that under oath an official both lied and was guilty of forging documents. He was forced to move over to another county. A year later he was promoted to the state level.

There are multiple subtexts to this story. Here is one that is of deepest interest to me.

I find it inescapable that a Black woman is forced to resign. I find it inescapable that I have not heard of Whites resigning. Maybe I just missed those stories, but probably not.

The whole story is out there. It is out there somewhere. Maybe we will all get it some day.

God forbid that the story remain a secret.

Still waiting longer..............

President Obama's signature bill to fund an extension of unemployment benefits along with other measures took a hit the other day, falling three votes short of passing, 57 to 41. No Republicans voted for the bill. This was a complicated bill and had within it a variety of funding streams. The unemployed and Black farmers got the short end of the congressional stick. Looks like there is definitely a political spin to this as well.

Here is a paragraph from a CBS news article that summarizes the things we discuss on these pages. Read the article in its entirety here.

"The catchall measure also includes farm disaster aid, $1 billion for a youth summer jobs initiative and an extension of a bond program that subsidizes interest costs for state and local infrastructure projects. It would levy a new tax on investment fund managers but extend tax breaks such as lucrative credits that help businesses finance research and develop new products, and a sales tax deduction that mainly helps people in states without income taxes.

The death of the measure would mean that more than 200,000 people a week would lose their jobless benefits because they would be unable to reapply for additional tiers of benefits enacted since 2008. People seeking the popular homebuyer tax credit would be denied a paperwork extension approved by the Senate last week. And state and local governments would lose subsidies on bonds they issue to finance infrastructure projects.

It also includes $4.6 billion to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit brought by black farmers against the Agriculture Department for discrimination and another by American Indians involving the government's management and accounting of more than 300,000 trust accounts. By the end of this week, more than 1.2 million people will have lost their jobless benefits since a temporary extension expired at the beginning of the month, according to Labor Department estimates."

Still waiting.................

From what I've read on various blog and news pages of late, Black farmers are dying. At least two funerals have been held over the last two or three weeks. John Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers Association has spoken about these matters on his web page. Gary Grant, President of Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, has spoken personally about being at these funerals. Spencer Woods, activist and advocate for Black farmers posted recently on a Facebook page that it looks like there is an intent to wait Black farmers out until they die. It's hard to receive a payment for years of injustice if the one mistreated is dead.

In the latest issue of Readers Digest, an article discusses the injustices and inequities of the manner in which federal subsidies are handed out. In South Florida, the deceased receive payments. No longer are the last names of farmers in the majority of recipients. Instead, mega-farm operations are receiving supplements. According to this article 75% of the funding goes to 10% of recipients. What is right about that?

If you are interested in what is happening in your area, the Environmental Working Group has a farm subsidy database. My students and I on the social justice team at ACU worked our way through a similar page a couple of years ago. It was more than interesting.

Recently Senator Reid of Nevada asked for a unanimous consent request in the Senate to settle the $1.15 billion commitment that President Obama made to Black farmers. It looks like partisan politics continues to enter the fray. It's time to settle this score, insofar as a modest sum of money can settle any act(s) of racial discrimination from policies and procedures of the USDA.

Here is a string of sources and quotes that summarize this serious matter.

If these do not move you, read this Tampa Bay area story about Mr. Bonner. It should move you. It did me.

Calls to officials at the White House and your senators would be appreciated.

Time is of the essence.

Bitter disappointment

Yes, you've likely heard it by now. Congress recessed without passing the legislation to settle the "Pigford II" case that was hailed by President Obama. Yes, we know that health care reform is important. However, the President and Congress disappointed thousands of Black farmers, their families, and friends like me.

Here are those reports, written far better than I could write them.

Southern Studies

African American Environmentalist Association

Richmond County Daily Journal

Reuters

Washington Post

The Hill

The Indypendent

Federal Times

And many, many others, all reporting the same thing: promises made, people's hope built up, documents signed, inertia settles in, and encouragements offered once more.

Check out these important pieces of information from BFAA.

Become of member of the BFAA Facebook page. Keep up on what is going on.

We remember.................

Blackcommentator: Black Farmers and Justice

The following appeared in a February issue of blackcommentatory.com. It is now laid alongside the fact that Congress is now in recess and did not deal with this issue. Injustice continues to reign.

This article is fairly long, but I hope you'll give it a close read. It provides a good summary of the litigation with Black farmers. It describes some of the outcomes. It was hopeful. That time has passed. I hope it'll come again.

AFTER WAITING AND FIGHTING FOR DECADES, BLACK FARMERS MAY GET A LITTLE JUSTICE

Black farmers of America may finally be compensated for the loss of their farms and their land all across the southern states, with the recent announcement of a $1.25 billion bias settlement between representatives of the farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The discrimination occurred over decades and involved county agriculture committees that were charged with providing USDA-connected loans to farmers in their counties. The members of the committees were white and many of the farmers were black and therein was the opportunity for the long-term bias and discrimination. The Obama Administration has congratulated Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the farmers’ representatives in the agreement to settle the class action lawsuit, known as “Pigford II.” Pigford I was named for Timothy Pigford, a black farmer who was a lead plaintiff in the original case that was settled in the mid-1990s.

That first suit against the USDA was brought against President Bill Clinton’s agriculture secretary, Dan Glickman. Many farmers were left out of the suit and the number of farmers who received a part of the settlement was small enough that the legal case was continued. The result was the announced settlement this month. Congress authorized only $100 million to pay those farmers who were left out of the Pigford I settlement, so President Obama proposed in the 2010 federal budget an additional $1.15 billion to fund a complete settlement of all of the Pigford II lawsuits. About 16,000 black farmers were compensated in the first settlement, even though there were possibly 66,000 who might have been eligible. In that 1999 consent agreement, the total paid was about $1 billion. Most of the farmers in that case opted for the expedited $50,000 payment that required a rather low burden of proof of having suffered discrimination.

Because of the large number of farmers in Pigford I who didn’t know about the class action lawsuit or were not aware of the deadlines for joining the suit, black farmers’ organizations kept pushing to continue the suit. Included were John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, and Gary Grant, president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association. Boyd expressed his satisfaction that the case finally seems to be settled, saying that the farmers and the government have “buried the hatchet.” But Grant, a veteran of the war with the USDA since his father, Matthew, was notified that his farm in Tillery, N.C., was to be foreclosed back in the 1970s, was not so quick to celebrate. He pointed out that farmers may receive the $50,000 and debt relief or debt forgiveness, but that farmers will have to pay taxes on the debt relief as “income.” There is a longer process, as well, he noted, in which black farmers might get as much as $250,000 in compensation, but it’s a longer process and the farmers in the class are not young and most of them might not be willing to go through such a drawn-out procedure.

Also, he did not want to jump the gun and say it was settled, because Congress next month has to approve the budget with the $1.25 billion for the agreement. The loss of black-owned land over the generations has been steady and it’s important to have a historical perspective on the problem: In 1920, one in every seven farmers in America was black, but, by the early 1980s, only one in every 67 farmers was black. Put another way, in 1910, black farmers owned 15.6 million acres and, by the early 1980s, they owned only 3.1 million acres. There were an estimated 926,000 black-run farms in the U.S. in 1920. By the early 1980s, there were said to be only 33,000 and, by the 1990s, even that low number had dwindled by a third. Black farmers lost so many millions of acres of land through a long process of political, social, and economic abuse, including lack of access to capital from both public and private institutions, lack of knowledge of their legal rights, lack of access to land (for expansion of existing farms), and loss of heired property.

The latter was used by unscrupulous land speculators and frequently by other farmers in the county or neighborhood. When a farmer died without a will, the family inherited the farm and, if one member of the family wanted his or her piece of the farm, the entire farm had to be sold, so that the selling member could get his or her share. Often, this happened after family members left the home farm for industrial work in the north---say in Chicago, New York, Detroit, Cleveland, or Philadelphia---and the old place had little or no meaning any more. They could be easily convinced to sell a portion for $10,000 or less and, thereby, the farm was lost.

In Gary Grant’s view, that was the beginning of the end of any possibility of African-Americans taking their rightful place in American society. “A landless people is a powerless people,” he said. Since many of the farmers in the Pigford I class had been young under Jim Crow in the South, they knew how little power they had in their local communities, but what they did have, their farms, gave them a measure of freedom and independence, even under those conditions. Loss of that land base for black Americans was a trial for Grant and others across the South, who knew what was being lost.

Discrimination works in many ways and part of the suit included charges that the foot-dragging and delays of the county committees in providing timely loans in the spring made the difference between having a crop to pay the bills and having no crop and losing everything. Routinely, if a white farmer and a black farmer came to the county committee on the same day to have their loans approved for seed and fertilizer, the white farmer would have the loan approved and have money in hand in short order. The black farmer, on the other hand, would wait---it could be a paper wasn’t filled out right---and wait and wait. By the time the loan was approved, the white farmer’s crop would be six inches out of the ground before the black farmer bought seed. That’s just one of the ways farms and millions of acres were lost.

And that’s why the USDA settled first one lawsuit, then another when it was clear that those who had been left out were not going to go away. For those farmers who were in accumulated debt to the tune of $200,000 or $300,000, a settlement of $50,000 is not going to make much difference, either in Pigford I or Pigford II. For most who will accept the agreement, though, it’s the principle of the thing and an acknowledgement that there is a little justice. It would appear that this was one of the most vital civil rights cases to occupy an entire people for the last half of the 20th Century, since it stems from post-Reconstruction and continued in one way or another for more than a century.

Yet, the issue did not raise a stir among any of the mainline U.S. civil rights organizations. African-American organizations might have made note of it at a convention or regional get-together, but it was not an issue of great concern, nor did the trade unions approach black land loss as a great civil rights issue, as they did in the larger civil rights movement of the 1960s. Nearing settlement, the USDA discrimination suit is likely to bring a sigh of relief from black farmers, but the land that is gone will not return to black families and they will not be raising families on their own land, with the dignity and self-respect that comes with being a tiller of your own soil. Had this been a bigger issue for more than just a few tens of thousands of black farmers and landowners, there might have been a different outcome.

Matthew Grant, Gary’s father, who built up his 40 acres in the Tillery resettlement community in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt, to a farm of some 300 acres on the Roanoke River, said it all in a one-page letter to Secretary Glickman in May, 1996. He explained that, since 1976, he had been in a “continued struggle” with Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), the year the USDA agency initiated foreclosure proceedings. He told Glickman in the letter, “…the blatant racial inequities practiced by the FmHA officers, which got Black farmers into trouble initially, have continued to be practiced. I was able to work with my other lenders and am now current with them. The only answer I have ever gotten from the FmHA agency is, ‘we are going to (sell) you out. It doesn’t matter who you bring.’ or ‘only the full amount due will stop the foreclosure.’”

Matthew also described a civil rights complaint he filed in December, 1995, over what he termed an act of “brazen discrimination”, when a USDA county soils director in Halifax, N.C., appeared wearing a necktie “depicting clearly a confederate troop of soldiers and a confederate flag waving in victory.” “It is difficult enough to make a living as a farmer,” he wrote. “I have farmed all my life and I love it. My wife and I have raised and educated 6 children of our own and 4 foster children without benefit of aid from any government agency. Now, in our golden years, we find that at a time we should be at peace, we are still struggling to get this matter settled. I have no other choice but to appeal to you.”

As did many farmers during the long wait for justice, Matthew Grant died before his farm’s future was settled. His family carries on that struggle. The settlement announced this month is welcome to most for many reasons, but money won’t make up for the families who suffered the generations-old injustices, for those who lost their land and farms, and for those who were sent looking for work in unfamiliar places.