Reverend Senator Raphael Warnock: Step, Stand, and Stay with Us, An Open Letter

February 25, 2024

The Honorable Raphael Warnock, Ph.D.
407 Auburn Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30312
 
416 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
 
Dear Senator Warnock:
 
It is a pleasure to worship with Ebenezer each Sunday morning and especially today with the preaching of Olu Brown. Besides growing up in the same region of East Texas, he and I share in common a concern for the gospel and for people.
 
My “transition” to Ebenezer took place several months back when two things happened: 1) my physicians told me to stay out of crowds lest I contract a disease and die and 2) my growing discontent with a white church with a smattering of Black sisters and brothers and a growing shift to the right and a lack of interest in engaging important matters in our larger community.
 
Besides our mutual degrees in theology, you and I share a deep concern for all to be included at the table and all to be included in farming across this great land of ours. I understand that you have been instructed by the writings of James Cone and Howard Thurman. I have only come to embrace their writings and ways of thinking and living in my senior years. As you share inside information as a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I share a deep concern for the mistreatment of Black farmers at the hands of USDA. Since 1995 I have listened to injustices perpetrated upon Black farmers, I have heard and heard again of the pain and suffering that farmers and their families experience at the malfeasance of USDA/FSA that lands squarely in their laps. As a board member of BFAA, Tillery, NC, and as a representative of the Justice for Black Farmers Group and as a co-laborer with Lawrence Lucas, President Emeritus, USDA Coalition of Minority Employees, I have had the pleasure and the pain of advocating on behalf of Black farmers and families at a whole different level, one upon which you live, move, and breathe. My speeches, publications, blogposts, and even a documentary are easy enough to find.
 
In Reverend Brown’s sermon this morning, as he touched on the three actions of faith as exemplified by the Israelites there at the Jordan: Step, Stand, and Stay, I was convicted that such actions can easily apply to the Black Farmer Movement by the farmers themselves, by advocates like me, and by congressionals with power like you.
 
Those three actions exemplify the Black farmers and advocates. We stepped out in faith that their cause was a worthy cause, convinced that Black farmers had been kicked to the curb since the earliest days of USDA, and likewise convinced that the investigative reporting verified the horror stories that we had heard for decades. We have moved into standing. We would not be moved by a different administration. We were unmoved by the rhetoric of promises following by a display of inaction. We are unmoved by the cherry-picking of USDA and its debt relief while Black farmers lose their land. And we have stayed. We stay as our people die. One of my studies has been the impact of the micro and macro-aggressions of the county office on the health and well being of farmers and families. You have heard of the death of some: Eddie and Dorothy Wise and Eddie Slaughter, just to name three. While we have life and breath, we will stay in the struggle. While we have life and breath, we will stay until racism has been removed from USDA and until all of God’s children are treated with the same dignity, respect, and funding for farming.
 
We wrote you a letter on March 4, 2021. That letter is attached to this letter for your convenience. The tragedy is that much has stayed the same. Things have not changed for the better the last three years for Black farmers. In fact, we think things are actually worse and land loss and its tragedies happen right before our very eyes.
 
We are asking that you step, stand, and stay with us. We respectfully ask that you meet with us and discuss the current status of Black farmers and that you work with us to find avenues of remediation. Avenues and actions are there: the Justice for Black Farmers Act should be enacted, greater transparency and accountability should be mandated for the USDA, Black farmers should receive the same benefits as any farmer in terms of funding for farming and farm operating loans and other matters, loss of land and livelihood must cease, and the White House and USDA must declare and show with actions that Black farmers from New York, down through the South, across to Texas and then the Midwest, and across the Southwest, and even to California and the western states all matter, Black the same as white in all matters related to farming.
 
Thank you for reading this letter. We eagerly await your response and an opportunity to meet with you.
 
Respectfully,
 
----S----
 
Waymon R. Hinson, Ph.D.
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
 
CC: Lawrence Lucas
       Corey Lea
       Michael Stovall