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?
