Dallas Racial Unity Leadership Summit, May 15-18, 2019

It Would Make a Movie Scene

The story would make for a scene in a movie. The county supervisor shows up. So does the US Marshall and his deputies. All have guns on their hips. There are five 18-wheelers there to carry away the property from the farm, all lined up down the road. In 100 degree weather Mr. Farmer sits under the shade tree waiting for the attorney to arrive. Mr. Farmer's son, also a farmer, shows up at just that moment and demands that the law know his rights, dressed in his marine attire. Family members watch it all from the window. The farmers won this stand-off. It would happen again.

Mr. and Mrs. Farmer have met their maker. They died prematurely in the Cause. The family estimated at one time that they had spent 100,000 hours fighting for their farm. On three separate occasions the federal government had agreements to settle with them, but on three occasions they finagled their way out of them.

Miraculously, this family still owns the farm. Their stories must be told.

The full story of the black farmer documentary is found here. 

Black Farmer Documentary Effort: Raising Funds to Tell the Story of Injustice

Introduction

Between 1995 and 1999 roughly 15 black farmers settled discrimination cases with the United States Department of Agriculture out of court. These cases were settled administratively, out of the public eye and have yet to be told. In our opinions, these are truly stories of “David versus Goliath,” and in these instances the Davids won, and they paid an enormous price for the victory.

One story is that of a farmer and his wife in Texas. He had desired to farm full time, and then the opportunity came, but it turned into a nightmare. Over-valued land that did not produce well, loans denied and stalled, harassed by townspeople and USDA officials alike, and surviving an attempt on his life. The back window of his tractor was shot out on one occasion, his dogs were killed, the lock on his gate was glued shut, and a sign left that said, “Nigger go home!” She suffered two heart attacks. She never knew for sure if he was coming home at the end of the day. They still own their land, but they have paid an enormous price.

These stories need to be told.  If you are concerned about power inequities between people of color and whites, these stories will move you. If you are concerned about how institutions of power and privilege exist at the expense of others, I think they will move you. If you want to know about the perils of farming while black in America, you will be moved.

Telling these stories via the documentary is the dream of Shoun and me. We have been working on the documentary since early 2018. We received a grant from a federal agency that has gotten us started.  It will not be nearly enough we have realized. We received some funding in 2018 and are hopeful of receiving the same amount in 2019.

The financial details 

Frankly, we need much more than that. We are asking you to help us raise an additional $10,000. For 2019, these dollars go for the following:  1) honoraria for the interviewees; 2) travel including airfare and taxis; 3) per diem; 4) lodging; 5) office and other miscellaneous expenses; 6) voice-over expert; 7) sound-track expert; and 8) things we haven’t even calculated yet such as distribution, duplicating, and even entering it into film festivals for wider exposure. Our travels will put us in seven states plus the District of Columbia. We will interview farmers and families as well as persons previously or currently employed by the USDA, the Department of Justice, or the Smithsonian.

Here is the link to the fund raising page: 

https://www.facebook.com/donate/395003334636465/?fundraiser_source=external_url

Shoun Hill and Waymon Hinson

My collaborator is Shoun Hill. He lives in NYC and has been involved with the farmer movement since 2008. You can find his photography here:  http://www.shounhill.com/street-photography. You can also find a documentary on Eddie and Dorothy Wise that Shoun did here:  https://vimeo.com/153671213.

My friends may know of my interests. They span the years 1994 to now, consulting on the first cases settled with the USDA, working with the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association in several areas including fund raising, writing two blogs, speaking at state, regional, national, and international conferences on injustice, and publishing two articles in refereed journals.

Incentives

If a “team” contributes a total of $1,000, the leader will receive a DVD and a photograph from Shoun. If a member of a “team” contributes $1,000, that member of the team earns the DVD and the photograph. The team leader will receive them as well. Those team leaders are now identified. Friends of theirs can be on their "teams." 

For a $500 contribution the contributor and/or the team leader qualifies for a DVD of “We Shall Not Be Moved: The Story of the Tillery Resettlement Community,” Tillery, NC with descendants of both the slave owners and the enslaved. The soundtrack contains spirituals performed by “The Joyful Sound,” directed by Gary Grant. Also, a poster of “A Man Called Matthew” will be provided. Matthew Grant actually started the black farmer movement. This is a great addition to anyone’s library on matters related to justice. This is for the team leader whose team collects $500 and/or the person who donates $500.

Any additional funds raised beyond costs will go directly to the black farmer movement and our funding organization, the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association. Contributions to BFAA earmarked for this effort are tax deductible as it is a 501.c.3. Also, each contributor will be listed in the credits of the documentary when it is published.

Premier

We plan to premier the documentary at a land loss summit in Atlanta in November.

Competitions

In order to tell the story as far and as wide as we can, we will enter the film in film festivals around the country. Entry fees will be taken from our proceeds here. If we win any competition, those funds will return to the black farmer movement.

Original Sin Wonderings

Monday it is

Monday it’ll be

Till Tuesday is here

And then we’ll see.

Tuesday will roll around

For those hours and minutes

We’ll live and breathe

Knowing that life has its limits.

I like ritual

I like rhyme

Does that make me strange

Most all of the time?

I like predictability

I yearn for sameness

But when I get bored

I feel my inner lameness.

How does God make us

All of us interesting people

We live and we yearn

Both citizens and illegals.

Black folk

Light skinned and dark

White people

Carrying the mark.

The mark of what

Is something to ask

The ownership of all

In our own truth we bask.

Nobody died

To make us king of it all

Just trying to get it right

This side of the fall.

Amen

Let’s begin

Lay aside that sin

Just wondering when.

Redemption is the story

And there we find the glory

Repent of our collective sins

Yes, those that are pretty gory.

American’s original sin

A phrase too riveting to grasp

Stolen lives and stolen land

Wrong enough to make our souls gasp.

Stolen dreams

Stolen schemes

Ripped away family and kin

Yes, our original sin.

I Must Admit

I must admit that February has been a challenging month. Yes, it has been designated Black History Month and as such it has a long and notable history. While it generally is a challenging month, 2019 has been exceptionally difficult.

We live in perilous times. There are so many extremes. We have those who "see no color." We see those who see color in everything, and why not? We have people who want to run from the issue of race. We have amongst us people who are overt racists or covert racists. And we have those who may not be racist but who carry discriminatory attitudes and behaviors. We have those amongst us who will say that we don't have issues like that in our town or in our church or our community.

From the current occupant of the White House with his inflammatory rhetoric and failure to condemn white nationalists to the offensive behavior of the congressman in the Cohen hearing this week who pulled the card of calling in an African American woman as a prop. Yes, he did say inflammatory things about President Obama years ago. We can run but we cannot hide these days.

How shall we do any better if our leaders do not do any better than our people.

The birther issue, Charleston church massacre, and Charlottesville are now deeply embedded parts of our narrative.

On the other hand, I have been stirred and informed and coached up by numerous people, some I know personally and some I know only because of cyberspace, those I've never met. Without giving up any names, you may know who you are. You have posted informative blogs or information on Facebook. Some of your material I have re-posted. Some of you have been able to nail "on this date this happened here," and that drives home the issues.  Some of you have provided information about people, places, events, firsts, and those have been meaningful.

All together, I think I am like many of us in the US.  I am uninformed. I have been uninformed. I will go to my grave uninformed. Certainly, we studied in school the history of the US and we did the same in our college and university classes. However, we missed the Trail of Tears and we missed the Middle Passage, the brutality of enslavement, the utter despicable treatment of people during Reconstruction and Jim Crow, and even today. We are clueless, America, about the devastating effects of poverty and its links to slavery in our cities and rural areas. As we stand now, Black America will not catch up because White America got such a huge head start.

We know the history of white America. White Americans write and tell stories of white America. White America is taught by white American teachers. I am pretty familiar with white American history.

I have been uninformed about the amazing contributions of black citizens in all areas including agriculture, science, chemistry, leadership, literature, economics, art, education, community development, banking, and the number of inventions that we gloss over including something as simple as the golf tee. It takes movies to bring things to the awareness of white America.

My knowledge of Black History has a narrow path. That path is via farming while black under the scrutiny of the United States Department of Agriculture. I have been schooled in this area since 1994 and will likely be schooled in perpetuity. I have heard stories of mistreatment of black farmers and I have heard stories of advantages of white farmers. I have heard stories of families of black farmers and I have heard family stories of white farmers. They are two distinctly different sets of stories.

I feel cheated. I was clueless about the literal presence of Westside High School in Trinity, Texas, just a few blocks from Trinity High School. I was ignorant of the way in which black citizens of my rural town were treated, other than an exception or two.

I was clueless of the role and treatment of black soldiers until my wife interviewed them during her masters work at Abilene Christian University.

I was clueless about so many different things that influence the history and lives of folks I know and those I do not.

That is why on my desk this morning are a wide range of books:  Black Cowboys of Texas, W. E. B. Du Bois, The Collection of Poems by Langston Hughes, Blues from the Delta, God of the Oppressed, Reaping a Greater Harvest, Remembering Tillery's Historical Archives, The Essential Writings of the American Black Church, Show Us How to Do It, White Terror, Free at Last, We Shall Not Be Moved, African American History for Dummies, John Hope Franklin: Mirror to America, The Promised Land, In the Matter of Color, Bullwhip Days, Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule, Divided by Faith, Black Theology and Liberation, Conversations with God, Up From Slavery, Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning, and many, many more.

I am uninformed but I shall not remain so. I have been lax in appreciating black America. I will remain so no longer.

Will you join me?