Once Upon a Time in a Land Called the United States of America

Once upon a time there was a newly developing country. Land as far as one could see and beyond which had earlier been inhabited by others was now seized and claimed by white men with long guns. Dreaming big dreams and counting their dollars before they came into being, they dreamed of cotton as far as they could see, rice growing in those fields, and free labor to get it all harvested in time.

So, they sent their minions to the shores of Africa and brought back people from that continent on slave ships, with human cargo stacked like sardines in a can, and some died and were tossed into the sea, and some wanted to die, but instead lived. Standing upon the auction block of port cities from the northeast down to New Orleans, and perhaps as far south as Galveston, men with money examined them as if they were a horse or a cow or a pig or a goat, and paid prices for them, all depending upon gender, age, and purpose.

The humans, enslaved Africans, were then led across country to their new places of abode. Living under harsh conditions of enslavement, they were the labor that would make America great. They provided with their own flesh the economic structure of America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. And it worked.

It worked until it no longer worked.

Then War came. Then Freedom came. Then Reconstruction came. Then violence came. Then formerly enslaved people were now enslaved once more, but just under different laws and codes.

A miracle of sorts occurred, and these formerly enslave people, those who brought agrarian skills from their homelands, were able to purchase land and came to be farmers owning and working their own land, some 950,000 working some 19,000,000 acres around 1910, give or take a few years. They made up 14% of all farmers of the country. Life was good despite Jim Crow South, the KKK, the lynching tree, and other heinous things.

Then, they began to lose their lands at the same time that the federal government strengthened farming with subsidies. Funds that were to have gone to the share croppers landed in the pockets of the white men who owned the land. It was a similar form from the plantation days.

As the years progressed, white men ran the county offices that provided loans for crops or purchases of land or seed or fertilizer. Black men needed similar funds, but the white men voted their prejudices and mostly the white men got the money and Black farmers were slowly and convincingly starved out and forced off their land.

And academic papers were written, speeches were made at professional meetings, and documentaries were filmed. 

Black farmers had enough and began to file complaints against all manner of acts of discrimination, but their complaints found their way into a file room where those carefully written documents were treated with disrespect. After all, if the president shuts down the civil rights office, then civil rights complaints must not be very important.

Then, a firebrand of an attorney caught wind of these shenanigans and one by one, the Black farmers lined up, arm in arm with him, to take on Goliath. In some instances, they prevailed. Some 15 of them prevailed before the big class action suit, Pigford, was declared a class.

Depending upon where you abide in America, Pigford was a success, a failure, or a huge scam, a give-away of America’s hard-earned money.

Thousands applied for admission to the class, a lower number in the thousands were admitted into the class, many received a financial award of $50K, but only 371 received debt cancellation, that for which they had worked hard. Lead counsel surrendered discovery, a process by which each farmer could have proved via a “find of discrimination” that they had indeed been wounded financially.

Years passed, complaint after complaint was filed in the Office of Civil Rights, but most were unresolved, as the office was a disaster, and many cases simply were allowed to play out the clock. As the statute of limitations was initiated, those inside the office simply watched the calendar, and then when two years ended, the cases were cast aside.

A courageous group of Senators, Warren, Booker, Sanders, and Warnock, amongst others, saw what was happening and developed the Justice for Black Farmers Act of 2020, but they knew that under the Republican administration, the bill had little chance, so with the election of a Democratic administration, it was resubmitted as the Act of 2021.

At the 11^th hour, the senate moved two sections from the JBFA to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. These two sections allowed for debt cancellation for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. White farmers were noticing and strategizing. They filed 12 frivolous and racist lawsuits which stopped debt cancellation in its tracks. The banking associations even had enough time to file their own complaints. The secretary of agriculture had done what he did there as we watched. He slow-walked the process.

Finally, as a new Bill was being debated before our eyes, with the slimmest of margins, 51 to 50, another Bill was passed. This time, racially charged language was removed so as to mollify the complaints of racist America. Even the white farmers had opportunity for debt cancellation under the provisions of the $3.1B section for “distressed farmers.” Another section of the Bill committed $2.2B to address grievances for those who have bonified acts of discrimination against them.

On the sidelines in Zoom meetings and phone calls, we negotiated with staffers. We challenged leaders to do the right thing. One staffer called us his “kitchen cabinet,” and we appreciated the acknowledgement but only wanted for this Bill to finally come to pass.

That which we have worked for for decades, debt cancellation for those who have experienced first-hand the degradation of racist attitudes by the USDA and its employees at the county level are sitting and waiting and hoping.

Once upon a time in America these things happened.

Farming While Black in America: Against All Odds

By now most of us may know about the failed effort by white farmers to get a piece of the pie from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and its most vulnerable category, section 1005. Those funds were built into the bill to redress the history of discrimination by white America in the county offices of the USDA, but somehow or other, white farmers across the country believed that they were owed some of it. The Commissioner of Ag in the State of Texas, Sid Miller, was one of the litigants. 

In another blog post somewhere in here is an accounting of funds received by the first six litigants from streams of subsidies, coronavirus relief funds, and Trump's failed war with China. It is telling as to how pitiful their farmers and lives are. 

The Senate has passed a bill entitled Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and it contains funds to address those farmers who have been discriminated against, though it does not call out "Black farmers," and another section that addresses "at-risk agricultural operations." More on that later. For now, you can just scroll down to page 565 and begin your reading there. It ends at page 570.

Some of you may have seen the film or the trailer for "I'm Just a Layman in Pursuit of Justice: Black Farmers Fight USDA." If not, here is the link to that page.  Some think that compensatory damages for discrimination is a handout. That's blatantly rediculous. 

In the film, nine Black farmers' stories are told in their own words, their own stories, their own faces, and their own tears. Listed below, and de-identified, are the acts of discrimination that your government, the USDA, the FSA, the County Committee, and various and sundry employees perpetrated upon Black farmers, folks who just wanted to live and to farm. 

Any Black farmer who settles with the USDA and DOJ, if they are actually settled, requires a "findings of discrimination" document. Generally, the USDA then offers compensatory damages, debt relief, and priority of services. Sometimes the USDA honors its agreements and sometimes it doesn't. I hope you caught that last sentence fragment, "sometimes it doesn't." Yes, here in America, "sometimes it doesn't."

Imagine if you were on the receiving end of what they experienced. 

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. 

I hope the picture is clearer for you and me here in white America.