The Work of the Rural Coalition

The Rural Coalition is committed to the "support of small farmers, farm workers, and rural communities and [to] build a just and sustainable food system," per their web page. Their Farm and Food Policy Diversity Initiative Policy Team has worked what looks like long hours in developing a response to the 2007 Farm Bill. I would encourage you to go to their web page, read the seres of documents, reflect upon the content of their materials, and then to sign on to have your voice heard in these important matters.

Specifically, the Rural Coalition has documents that summarize the complicated farm bill. The Farm and Food Policy Diversity Initiative's Farm Bill Progress Report and Recommendations for Conference lays out in a clear way each issue/program, the House Bill's version, the Senate Bill's version, and the Diversity Initiative's recommendation. There are several: foreclosure moratorium, resolution of civil rights claims, 2501 outreach program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, improved program delivery on Indian reservations, inclusion of farmworkers, and many, many others.

Of particular interest is the resolution of civil rights claims relative to the determination of merits of the Pigford Consent Decree, the House's version provides a maximum of $100 million in mandatory funding while the Senate's version provides for the same amount but authorizes additional funds to be appropriated as needed to settle claims. Rural Coalition's Diversity Initiative's recommendation is to "maintain the provision and accept the stronger language and additional appropriation in the Senate version."

In a future post, I'll lay out some numbers that will show the inadequacy of the House version in terms of settling with Black farmers who've experienced discrimination.

I'm personally grateful that Lorette Picciano, Executive Director of Rural Coalition/Coalicion Rural, participated in the 10th Annual Black Land Loss Summit and spoke to these important matters.

Check out their retail website as well.

Who gets to tell the stories?

Stories are our habituations; we live in them, so I've read. Family farmers across the country have their stories to tell. They are their stories. They have the right to tell them.

African American farmers across the land, also family farmers, have their stories to tell. They are their stories. They have the right to tell them.

Some of us are listeners of stories. We are gatherers of stories. We are compilers of stories. We have been afforded an amazing amount of trust as we have heard, gathered, and compiled their stories. Therein lies a sacred trust. A sacred pact exists between the story tellers and the gatherers of the stories. That sacred trust has been offered. It could not be demanded. That would have been one more violation, one more act of racism, one more act of discrimination, one more injustice.

Some of us realize that our stories co-mingle with their stories. Therein lies angst, wonderments, the necessity of meaning making. Those stories must be told as well.

Sometimes we feel inspiration and the story or the poem or the song "writes itself," words not mine, but what I've been told.

Someday soon perhaps you'll hear the story told via words like these:

"There's a storm cloud over Georgia,
There's struggle on the land.
This lynching and this stealing, Lord,
It's just too hard to understand.

In the heart of the Creator,
We are family, we are kin.
If love is still the answer,
Then where do we begin?"*

As the leader of the reconciliation conversation in Whitakers last Saturday afternoon said, "There's healing in the telling." I think she's right. She's right for farmers, spouses, and adult children of farmers. She's right about those who've heard the stories.

*Copyright Waymon R. Hinson, Ph.D.

Memorable moments from a memorable Summit

This list could be as varied as the people who'd write it down, but for me, here are some of those memorable moments:

Gifts of money and miles to get us there

Dealing with “Elizabeth” with the British accent

The welcome of the Social Justice Team from Abilene Christian University at the Franklinton
Center at the Bricks

Entering the community center at Tillery again

Friendly faces, Gary, Spencer, Cary, the Rooks brothers, Delores, Juan, and so many more

The Watermelon Man and his stories

The guard at the school

The presentation and responses to it

The shout out from the pastor in the back of the room

The question from the man at the back of the room who wanted to know if I included the “voices of the deceased”

The shift from “working the crowd” to “getting it”

Scripted speeches to impromptu emotional responses

Late night conversations with Social Justice III and IV and Gary Grant

Sitting across from the Foxworths from Mississippi at lunch and his goodbye after dinner,
telling us that they’d see us in Abilene

The hugs and kisses from Evangeline and Delores

Charla’s insightful questions and comments

Students’ insightful questions and comments

Feeling the energy in the room and hearing the sounds of approval

Stories from behind the scenes of Pigford, USDA, DOJ, Sitkof, Glickman, and Carter

Being told that our presence was important

Meeting an amazing cast of characters: farmers, retired, drummed out, still farming; USDA Office of Civil Rights employees, career versus appointed; employees of the Franklinton Center; BFAA officers; spouses of farmers; students from ECU, ACU, and WCU; academics from KSU, MSU, and ACU; former Director of Civil Rights at the USDA; L. C. Cooper; Marvin and Angie, Gary Grant, Eddie Wise; activist with Rural Coalition; writer for the Militant; writer for the Raleigh-Durham paper; the farmer who works two acres and makes a living in the area of specialty crops already sold before they’re grown; the absence of Dr. Mohammad; the Grant family: Gary Redding and his twin sister, Gloria, Evangeline, and Sky; head of agriculture at NC A & T; and so many more

Tour and background of Franklinton Center and learning more of its history

The long goodbye embraces

The conversations on the way to the airport and the meaning making that will last for a while

Memorable quotes from a memorable Summit

"The Watermelon Man can sure tell a story."

“Make our friends bigger and our enemies smaller.”

“You kicked some serious butt this morning.....I thought I was just telling the truth.”

“Trust will never come without addressing the imbalance of power.”

“I could feel the energy in the room.”

“We’re still in the kitchen.”

“I’m a farmer.”

“If you get to where you’ve been, you’ll get back to where you were.”

“Can we move from proving discrimination to exploring privilege of whites?"

“Net metering”

“It's barely 7:30......Your 7:30 lasts eight minutes.”

“How much courage did it take to call me by my first name?”

“The feels like a family vacation.”

“Johnny Rivers, South Carolina, $46K, $3 million”

“We want to earn your trust and your respect.”

“Competency, communications, customer focus, integrity”

“Spend some time to get to know us.”

“Almost over”

“65,000 denied”

“Potential cause of action”

“Right to file a new lawsuit, not to get you into Pigford”

“No reason to believe it will be like Pigford”

“Approved comments”

“We don’t do what we do very well.”

“Olive branch”

“Senior guidance”

“Hand hold you over to the right program”

“Limited, socially disadvantaged, minority, Black”

“I want to believe what I’m hearing.”

“Partition sale, nefarious, complicated, speculator, location of heirs, I’ll buy, co-equal tenant, auction, land lost”

“Stops the bleeding”

“A necessary class action”

“Glickman admitted”

“Floor….if income is below $15, then you don’t qualify for these programs.”

“Didn’t impact the rich but did the poor”

“Truth”

“There's healing in the telling”

“Faithful witness to the telling of your stories in places you can’t or won’t go”

“Acknowledgment of wrong-doing”

“Remediation, reparations, compensation for harm”

“Policy makers versus implementers”

“We can reconcile only if you the victims remain the victims.”

“I want my cow back, and the calf she bore.”

“What’s comparable to the cow?”

“The perpetrators do not get to set the rules for reconciliation and forgiveness.”

“James Cone says that the cross and the lynching tree must be placed side by side.”

If you find yourself curious about the context of these quotes, feel free to write and ask. My students and I will be happy to discuss these things with our readers.

Banished, land gone, people gone

There's more than one way for people of color to lose land in our country. There are stories of long ago and far away that don't seem so "long ago" nor so "far away."

This documentary will open our eyes in ways that they've not been opened before. I know where I'll be on Tuesday night, February 19, 2008. Check your local schedule.

See this link for more information about "Banished." At the link, type "banished" into the search window. Let me know what you think about it.

A drop in the bucket

The 10th Annual Black Land Loss Summit convenes on Friday. We're looking forward to it with eager anticipation, my wife, my students, and I. We'll take some time off from important matters here in the MFT Department and in the Clinic and travel eastward to Whitakers and Tillery, North Carolina. People who care about land loss will travel to those rural communities for important conversations about those things that matter.

In preparation for my modest role in those meetings, I've been working with SPSS, running statistics on various aspects of information in the data base of Black farmers and family members. With their consent, information is anonymously stored there for examination.

It's all a drop in the bucket, so to speak. The data base that I have been working with contains only 45 subjects, or Black farmers and family members. There are thousands excluded from the Pigford Consent Decree. Some of them I've met, many, many more are known only by their family and friends. Some have gotten a modest settlement as part of the decree. Others are still unheard from.

Along with the numbers in the data base, I've also been re-reading transcriptions of interviews. That leads me to say to those farmers and family members, "You are not forgotten. Your story is still being told in various ways and in various places, just as we agreed." For some of you, your stories are in the archives, a place that you wished for your stories to be stored for future students and researchers to read and study. Some of you said, "Thanks, but no thanks, Dr. Hinson. You can hear my story, but I'd just as soon not have it spread out there." Those requests have been honored as well.

More than just words on a page, those are real, live images of real, live people, with legitimate claims to places and spaces. Reading the story of the farmer in his modest single-wide beneath the spreading oak tree took me back there to that morning conversation. Re-reading that interview just outside of that small southern Georgia town took me back to the conversation with the farmer now turned truck driver and his wife, and his best friend, also now turned truck driver. I can still hear the shuffle of the papers as they revealed document after document retrieved in pursuit of justice.

And, I can still hear the harmony of "Amazing Grace" between the two brothers and me in the community center there in Tillery as we began the interview.

Stories are our habituations. We live in them, so I've read. The farmers have their stories. They live in them. I've heard a few of them. Now, I live in them, insofar as a White guy from West Texas is able.

Precious Lord, Take My Hand

"Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Thru the storm, thru the night,
Lead me on to the light,
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

When my way grows drear, precious Lord, linger near,
When my life is almost gone,
Hear my cry, hear my call,
Hold my hand lest I fall;
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

When the darkness appears and the night draws near,
And the day is past and gone,
At the river I stand,
Guide my feet, hold my hand;
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home."

James Melvin Washington, in Conversations with God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans, says that Thomas Andrew Dorsey wrote these words in 1932 not long after his wife, Nettie, and son, Thomas, Jr., died during childbirth.