Let Justice Ring
Telling stories in the search for justice for the oppressed and marginalized
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Sunday, June 16, 2024
The Day is Coming, June 19, 2024: How Shall we Celebrate It? Shall We Speak of it in Our Churches?
This is the Sunday before June 19, or Juneteenth. If any church is going to speak about it, it would be today. Next Sunday will see the sacred day in the rearview mirror. I periodically ask around, or occasionally I'll follow Sunday bulletings, announcements, and sermon topics to see who will speak of it on this Sunday, or any Sunday. Probably most are speaking about or rather to father's on Father's Day. That's not a bad idea, to encourage us in our parenting and mentoring and all.
My sense is that "progressive" churches are more likely to address Juneteenth and its meanings, and tha "conservative" churches are more likely to let it pass on by, but they will speak of Memorial Day, Veterans Day, or other bonafide holidays. Some say it's not their church policy to address political things, and so the pastor won't but the presiding elder will pray what is not said from the pulpit.
And so I am left wondering, why would a church NOT speak of one of the most profound holidays in our annual calendar? Is it because they are mainly a white church and do not want to offend anyone? Is it because it is not the gospel as defined in the church's literature? Is it because they are embarrassed to say out loud that they know little to nothing about the day? Is it because racism hides beneath the layer of congeniality and "the gospel is for all?" Is it because "politics is devisive" and "to speak of racism is likewise devisive?" Is it simply a matter of not being informed?
For churches that are predominantly Black, I'd ask the same questions, but what would the answers be? I'd love to see a church that fully engages people, one that validates our lived experience, one that celebrates Juneteenth wholeheartedly.
I could also ask the same thing as to why church offices remain open on Juneteenth, a federal holiday?
Either way we go, we are sending a message to our people.
Last year, Juneteenth was on Sunday, and the holiday the following day. An opportunity seized? An opportunity missed?
I'm also curious about what makes some of our members feel invisible? I suppose this is one of them. Rather than church leaders assuming things about this day or acting arbitrarily about this day, how about if those leaders ask their African American members their opinions about it. I wonder if it would be kind of like the WPA interviews for formerly enslaved people years after freedom. There is some evidence that when the interviewee felt a similarity with the interviewer, the conversation was more real, but when there were perceived differences, such as a white woman interviewing elderly Black men who had been formerly enslaved, interviewees avoided more controversial topics or touched on them gently, like where masters were good or bad.
I’m curious as to who knows about Juneteenth and who doesn’t. A recent Gallup poll shows that the knowledge about it among American citizens has gone up since 2021. That is a good thing.
Personally, I have known about Juneteenth since the days of my adolescence here in Texas. I don’t know exactly when, but I remember knowing about it for a long time. Juneteenth became a Texas holiday in 1979 and now a national holiday as of 2021 when President Biden signed it into law and it immediately became a national holiday.
If I had been asked to say a few words at my church, what would I have said. I’ve thought long and hard about it and it would read like this. Just a note that this is a slightly emended post from what I wrote last year at this time.
“Today I am honored to say a few words on behalf of our country’s latest national holiday. It is a day unlike any other as its symbolism and meaning run deep, first, for our African American citizens and hopefully now for all citizens. I take these few moments solemnly as my words will not come close to providing the deeper meaning and texture of this beautiful day.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed into law the Emancipation Proclamation. We think it was bigger than it was. Perhaps it was more symbolical, but yet it freed some 500,000 of 3.9 million enslaved Africans, most of whom were living in the Confederate states. Unless Union soldiers were there, they remained enslaved. General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. The war was over, the enslaved were free, and some did take their freedom.
On June 19, 1865, two and a half years later, General Granger and some 6,000 troops, many of whom were Black, landed at Galveston and made the declaration that the enslaved were free, but they were encouraged to stay and work for wages. Some did and many left immediately to seek their families. The 13th amendment was signed into law on December 6, 1865 which outlawed slavery except for prescribed circumstances.
Who of us can imagine what it was like to be enslaved to an enslaver on a large plantation or on a small plantation, with brutal means of keeping the enslaved Africans in check or less brutal ways of controlling them? Either way, who can imagine being owned as property? Who of us can imagine knowing that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, but the enslavers kept it quiet? Then, who can grasp enslavement in Texas, the enslaved having been quickly moved from another southern state into Texas, and the enslavers wanting at least one more harvest season and money from their labors. Who can truly grasp these things, the power of the enslaver and the wide array of tactics of keeping people under control, means which always in sight? Perhaps many knew about the end of the war and the enslaved now going free. It would be hard to keep that quiet, even as far away as Texas.
Who can grasp the depth of the joys of freedom? Waking up a free person must have been beyond belief. Living the day as a free person versus living a day as an owned person must have gone beyond comprehension.
Then, who can grasp living under the Black Codes, share cropping, Jim Crow South, and even the separate but unequal school system and other things?
So, yes, Juneteenth set the captives free. The enslaved ones were now free from the shackles of bondage and the brutal hand of men and women enslavers. However, human nature is what it is, and some malevolent enslavers maintained their power and control.
That was a day of celebration. Juneteenth has now been celebrated from June 19, 1865 to this very day with all of its rich symbolism and meaning.
Some of us as white Americans, perhaps even some of us falling into that category of “I don’t really know much about it,” can now celebrate it. We celebrate it because people we care about are celebrating it. Some of us as Black Americans, now feel our history validated, and we'll rejoice mightily.
Now, we may be invited to attend community or family gatherings with food and music and games and conversation. Or, maybe we won’t be. We can celebrate and honor our friends by learning about all things from Africa, to the Middle Passage, to the slave block, to enslavement on some farm, to the second Middle Passage, to having our families split and torn asunder in a dozen different directions. We can read and listen to the stories of people finding their roots or buying a farm where their ancestors were once enslaved or learning more about the plight of the Black farmer here in America. We can learn more about the Black Tax, red lining and its effects, health disparities, and much more. We can explore Black contributions to our country, the contributions that Black music has made, Black artists, Black theology and James Cone and others, and more.
As white Americans, we now in a space and place where we can learn and by learning, we can celebrate. We can celebrate and deeply respect the celebrations of liberty and freedom for those whose ancestors knew not freedom or came to know freedom on June 19, 1865. We do not possess the day, we do not intrude into the day, but rather we honor and applaud our friends for whom this day is sacred.
As Black Americans, we have a day that is uniquely ours and it celebrates freedom from the horrors of enslavement. It validates what our people have experienced, and even lays open what still needs to change in order for real freedom to occur. We want to live in that place and space where we are indeed judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin.
America has come a long way, and in this grand experiment called democracy, we have a long way to go in order to make things truly equal for all of God’s children. May we continue what others have started and build a beautiful USA for all of us.”
Those are my words, friends. What would you say?
Monday, May 27, 2024
They Did What? Unbelievable, Believable: An Advocate Shares the Story
Sometimes remarkable events just simply unfold in front of me. One of those happened last week when one of my former students, Dr. Lisa Merchant, now chair of the Marriage and Family Department at Abilene Christian Univerity, asked me to share the documentary and some thoughts about advocacy from a spiritual perspective. We did what Shoun and I separately or together often do, introduce the film, its background, its making, watch the film, and then discuss what the viewers saw and exprienced. Dr. Merchant and her co-teacher Dr. Tera Harmon did so beautifully.
As most of you know, the film, "I'm Just a Layman in Pursuit of Justice: Black Farmers Fight Against USDA," chronicles the stories of 9 of 15 Black farmers who between 1997 and 1999 brought their cases of injustice to the US Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice. While there are non-farmers in the film such as former Secretary of Ag, Mike Espy and the first lawyer for the farmers, James Myart, the film focuses on the stories of the farmers, their years of discrimination, and what they won and what they lost farming while Black in America.
The students in their final class in the MFT program apparently listened intently as their questions were spot on and allowed me to rift off of them. One of the best was the notation that several times the farmers used phrases like "my DNA is in farming." A second comment was made by a student and the the emotions he felt when I read the names of the Black farmers who have died in the struggle for justice. There were others and it was a beautiful conversation. One huge blessing was that of having Dr. David Todd Harmon, COO of MANA and member of Social Justice Team II at ACU back in the day, reflect upon the film. He shared his skeptism of whether I was right or wrong, and how over the last twenty years he's learned the truth of it all.
Additionally, I did have the opportunity to discuss the break in Shalom in the garden and how any harm to any person, any sin against another is a break in Shalom, and all of our efforts in the counseling room and in the arena of advocacy are attempts to recreate Shalom as best we can. What is Shalom you ask? It is more than peace, it is an active flourishing of the human experience, and much more than that. Racism is not the way it is supposed to be.Racism is not the way it is supposed to be. Discriminatory actions against those who simply want to farm is not the way it should have been. I also shared from Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 the narrative of Jesus entering the synagogue of his hometown of Nazareth, reading sections from Isaiah with the flourish of "you have heard this passage fulfilled in your hearing." Those words of Jesus capture His mission, to restore, to heal, to mend, to repair, to spread the good news of the Kingdom to "the least of these."
It occurred to me in recent days that the documentary, sixty minutes in length, cannot possibly tell the entirety of the discriminatory actions done to them by employees of the USDA, so I created a list of both the farmers (anonymously) and deeds done against them.
If you have not seen the film, I encourage you to at least watch the trailer and you'll get a good sampling of what the entire documentary is about. You'll feel with them in their pain and suffering, and you'll appreciate their willingness to share their stories and the gifts Shoun has in capturing them.
Here is a fuller description of the acts of discrimination perpetrated upon them. This list is a reprint of a previous blogpost.This list is a reprint of a previous blogpost.
Farmer A and wife were set up by a retiring FSA County employee. Given their trust of him, they bought a farm at an overly high appraisal value. Their land’s productivity was likewise over estimated. Pest infestation was worse than they’d been told. They were denied operating loans by a hostile FSA office, favorable rulings by FSA were overturned. The “put a scar in me that will never heal,” said Farmer A’s wife.
Farmer B was denied operating loans and debt settlement options. The FSA illegally seized his disaster and crop payments. Early on, the FSA office lost his application for debt settlement, resulting in a drawn-out process in which he had to apply a second time. This person demanded that Mr. Farmer B sign blank settlement papers and perjured himself in depositions. The FSA unfairly liquidated his assets.
Farmer C and his wife were denied technical assistance and operating loans in a timely fashion. They were also provided inadequate farm operation loans. The local county office delayed information to him that was crucial to his farm operation, yet gave it to white farmers. They failed to provide him with loan applications and denied him loans despite the loans being collateralized. He was compelled to buy a larger combine than he needed, and then he lost both money and the combine. When farm operation loans came in, they were oftentimes late and less than half of what he needed to farm. The FSA officer demanded for four years that loans be filled out in pencil. His loan applications were altered. He received small loans well into planting season. The local FSA office put his farm loans against old debts rather than toward the current farm operation. He was caught in the middle of collusion between banks and real estate agents. Loans were accelerated and foreclosure was started. The local office reneged on loans such that he could not pay for seeds or fertilizer.
For Farmer D, the needlessly prolonged process of loan applications meant that he missed out on prime opportunities for a chicken operation because the chicken company had moved on to a white farmer on a select rooster house by the time he got his money. When he did receive operating loans, he was micromanaged via a supervised account, something never done with white farmers. There was an absence of accountability for wrong doing at the county level. Land that he was leasing was sold out from under him and bought by a USDA county official who knew of its availability despite him having a lease/purchase agreement. His cows were shot and killed. He was nearly run off the road on one occasion as he was leaving the county office.
Farmer E was denied farm ownership loans during a time when white farmers were receiving them. The justification by the FSA was that he did not have farm experience despite having grown up on a farm. He was denied low interest operation loans and forced to pay higher interest rates. Similar young white farmers were not penalized. Lease agreements were sometimes terminated unjustly. The county FSA office failed to provide him with assistance. The FSA county agent was told to minimize support in order to insure failure. The FSA office reneged on lease agreements he had made in conjunction with them. His credit was ruined by FSA’s failure to support his efforts.
Farmer F was denied debt relief despite this being a legitimate option for him and his farm operation in years of natural disasters. The FSA withheld payments to him. They stopped payments on federal disaster relief following a severe drought that affected all area farmers. The FSA’s discrimination against him destroyed his credit and cost him $500,000. To this day, promised debt relief has never been provided.
Farmer G was denied loans based upon his status as a Black farmer. He was excluded from loan programs because he was Black. When he did receive loans from the FSA, he was charged exorbitant interest rates. The FSA delayed his receipt of loans which cost him financially. He was forced to work under a supervisory loan agreement unlike white farmers. On one occasion the local FSA office attempted to block his purchase of additional land. The seller worked cooperatively with him.
Farmer H was farming successfully. Despite owing the USDA a modest sum of money, it was only after he voiced support of his parents, Farmer I and his wife, that the USDA initiated foreclosure proceedings against him.
Farmer I and his wife were denied access to disaster relief funds despite disasters in the area for several years in a row. The FSA failed to offer to restructure loans in the face of natural disasters. They refused to allow his adult children to assume the loan, which was very modest at the time. The USDA compelled Farmer I to work under a supervised loan arrangement unlike area white farmers. The USDA settled and reneged on their agreements four times with them. They were told overt threats, “We’re going to sell you out.” They were denied loans while at the same time the USDA failed to work with them to restructure their loans. The County Supervisor mishandled the USDA’s leaseback/buyback program and failed to follow their usual and customary loan servicing policies. The Department of Justice refused to settle despite the Office of Civil Rights decision that discrimination had occurred. Pigford I was on the horizon and DOJ wanted to wait. The USDA refused to offer debt write-down/write off in keeping with USDA policies. The USDA refused to provide homestead protection options.
The history of USDA and DOJ is not a pretty read. And I'm glad now that MFT/ACU students and faculty can wrestle in some way with what I've wrestled with for years now. A driving question for me is "why, if democracy is important to all of us, and all people are created been equal, have we devolved in such a way that some people are worth far less than others?
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Status of Black Farmers Across the US and Texas
Recently a Black farmer was interviewed about the challenges of farming while Black in America. He replied with a touch of humor and sadness in his voice that we are losing so many Black farmers that we ought to put them on the endangered species list.
In the early decades following freedom, Black Americans became prolific land owners, the peak of which was reached in the early 1900s. Approximately 950,000 Black farm operators owned 22,000 farms, worked 47,000,000 acres, and owned 19,000,000 acres. While these numbers paled by comparison to white farmers, they were staggering evidence that Black farmers violated a tenant stated by the wife of a Black farmer, “We were intended to work the land, but not to own the land.
Dispossession soon began to occur. The number of Black agrarians dropped precipitously over decades. While white ownership remained relatively stable, Black ownership dropped ultimately by 90%.
Currently, there are 35,470 Black-operated farms with 4.7 million acres, or 0.5% of the nation-wide farm land total. The precipitous drop from 47 million acres to 4.7 million is staggering as is the drop from 950,000 to 35,470 Black producers. It is estimated that the value of the losses of land and the value of production from the land between 1920 and 1997 were approximately $326 billion. What a loss in generational wealth.
But what about Texas? We have more Black producers than any other state. There are currently 11,268 Black producers who farm 972,552 acres. This amounts to 3% of the state’s total farm producers. Smith and Freestone Counties each have over 300 Black-operated farms. While statistics are lacking, essentially Black farmers do not trust USDA, so they avoid funding opportunities and services by USDA as they farm smaller parcels or focus on smaller cow/calf operations. In recent years, however, at least one Black farmer successfully prevailed against the USDA and its discriminatory practices, and another family had its debts canceled by USDA’s agency, the Family Service Agency, under current USDA/FSA policies. What has impacted Black farming across the country has certainly impacted Black farmers in Texas.
USDA
has readily admitted that their programs and personnel discriminate against
Black farmers, especially at the county committee level, but the Department refuses
to address it. The
list is long and painful. The USDA
refuses to supervise the county committee and thus, Black farmers do not
get the support they need for loan applications, technical support, disaster
relief, and loan restructuring and much, much more. The result is foreclosure
and loss of land and livelihood. On one occasion the check written by the USDA
was held in a file folder until the land was foreclosed upon and the farming
operation was gone. The land was bought by an adjacent white farmer. This only
scratches the surface of the acts of discrimination that occur. In 2022 the USDA
approved white farmers loans at a rate of 72%, but Black farmers at a 36% rate.
Black farmers received only .01% of covid relief funds despite making up 5% of
all farmers.
Certainly,
farming is a hard business, but it should not be more difficult because of the
color of one’s skin. The pain and suffering experienced by Black farmers are indescribable.
Fighting
against the system which refuses to change, and facing one microaggression
after another has resulted in emotional, relational, and physical damages to
persons and family members. Farmers often weep when recounting the damages in
their bodies causes by persistent racism within USDA.
The
USDA and Congress have made attempts to change but all to no avail. Fifteen
Black farmers prevailed against the USDA between 1997 and 1999. Pigford I and
Pigford II which stretched from the late ‘90s well into the early 2000s were
failed efforts. Reports such as the Jackson Lewis Report, the D. J. Miller
Report, the Civil Rights Action Team Report, and the Civil Rights
Implementation Team Report, and of late the Equity Commission Report, and
others, but racism continues unabated. There must be a will to make changes
that harm people and destroy livelihoods.
Congressional
actions including the American
Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the
Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, both promised much, but delivered little
to Black farmers.
Yes,
distrust has been well earned and well documented. There must be hope, and the bill
recently proposed, “Just
USDA Standards and Transparency Act of 2023” along with the Justice
for Black Farmers Act of 2023, offer much to Black farmers in efforts to
root out racism and to promote transparency and accountability.
What
are advocates doing? They are appealing to the White House for changes within
the leadership of the USDA, appealing directly to the Secretary of the USDA for
more transparency and accountability, challenging the county committee system,
and challenging the manner in which funds for discrimination are allocated
under the IRA of 2022. They lobby various congressionals including Elizabeth
Warren, Corey Booker, and Raphael Warnock. They
held a one-day march in front of the White House back on March 1. This is a
righteous cause for this group of people.
Trust
must be restored nation-wide and here in Texas. Farmers are vital to our
economy and our way of living. Black farmers are equally important to our way
of life and must be treated fairly and equitably.
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Reverend Senator Raphael Warnock: Step, Stand, and Stay with Us, An Open Letter
February 25, 2024
407 Auburn Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30312
Washington, DC 20510
www.letjusticering.blogspot.com
www.blackfarmersinsearchofjusticefilm.com
Psychologist/Marriage and Family Therapist
Advocate/Researcher
Representative for BFAA, Justice for Black Farmers Group, and
USDA Coalition of Minority Employees
903-271-4654
Waymon.hinson@gmail.com
Corey Lea
Michael Stovall