Lynchings During and After Reconstruction: Brutalities to be Remembered

In an attempt to situate a little further the materials that I posted about monuments, lynching, and land loss, here is a quote from an article I wrote in 2018 about what lynchings were all about. 

"In the decades following the Civil War, an era of violence erupted, not unlike that of the infamous “patrollers” in slavery days in which black mobility and freedom attempts were met with violence. In particular, lynching was used to instill terror in the black population. Two sites contain the most thorough information on the history of lynching in America. The initial work of Monroe Work (n.d.) for the decades following Reconstruction lists the names of 4,800 plus and the work of the Environment Justice Initiative (n.d.) between the years 1877 and 1950 provides chilling information about the 4,400 plus African Americans who were lynched. According to Hahn (2003: 425–427), these mob executions or lynchings were symptomatic of the tensions between whites and blacks, as the former used this form of violence in an attempt to maintain power, as blacks exerted their rights. Hale (1998: 203, 204) emphasized lynchings as public spectacle as “structure, a sequence and pace of events” that went from allegations to mob violence following scene preparation, mutilation and/or hanging, and souvenir collecting, among other variables. Tolnay, Deane, and Beck (1996: 811) explored lynching from a spatial perspective—how lynching in one community impacted the same in another community. Their “deterrence model” of lynching is supported by evidence that whites ceased lynching activities when they were satisfied that the results would cause blacks to be “even more circumspect in their interactions so as not to provoke violent responses.” Young (2005: 641) focused research not upon numbers, nor spectacle, but upon the black body as souvenir." --- page 908. 

The complete article can be found at Hinson, W. R. (2018). Land Gains, Land Losses: The Odyssey of African Americans Since Reconstruction. The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 77, 893-939. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12233

"Slow Walking?" Or, Why Has It Taken So Long, Mr. Secretary?

The wheels of justice grind slowly. The wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly. While the grind is slow and painful, people are dying, losing their land, percentages of their retirement funds and social security taken, and still we are told to wait. Wait, patience, your time will come, all equate to the disaster of never. 

Judge Friedman certified Black farmers as a class in 1999 and called it "The Pigford Class Action Suit." Check out my writings from 2008 and 2018 for more details. 

Some 22,551 applied for entry into Track A. Those who prevailed under this track numbered 16,281. Most of them found some sort of "justice," mostly a $50,000 payment, some with a check for taxes, and a few actually received debt relief. Those prevailing under Track B numbered 137. From both of these tracks, the paltry number of 371......let that sink in...........371 received debt relief. That's what Black farmers needed and wanted, not the pitiful amount of $50,000. 

There were two tracks. Track A promised $50K. Track B did not have a specified sum of money, but required more evidence. Debt relief was promised in both tracks. But then the attorneys for the class allowed "similarly situated white farmer," the death-knell for Black farmers, to be admitted into the system. The farmers assumed that discovery would bring forth white farmers with whom to compare their findings of discrimination. The largely white attorneys waived discovery, an unforgiveable sin in the court system. 

From 22,721 total eligible claimants, only 16,281 prevailed, and only 371 got debt relief. 

There are some significant dates: 

1) March 3, 2021, Senator Warnock succeeds in getting his "Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act" passed. 

2) March 11, 2021, President Biden signs into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Within this package is section 1005 which allowed $4 Billion to be granted to farmers of color for debt relief of their direct loans. It also included section 1006 to the tune of $1.01 Billion for outreach, training, education, technical assistance, grants and loans, and other things related to minority farmers, or Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers, a 2501 designation. The debt relief pack was shaped by Senator Warnock's legislation. 

3) The Miller v. Vilsack was filed in Texas on April 26, 2021. White farmers as a class are certified and the preliminary injunction signed by the judge. The white farmers claim reverse discrimination despite the fact that white farmers have received nearly all of the subsidies, coronavirus relief funds, and the funds from trump's failed war with China.

4) Faust etal v. Vilsack was filed on April 29, 2021 and the temporary restraining order granted on June 10, 2021. 

5) Winn v. Vilsack was filed on May 25, 2021. Defendants responded on June 4, a hearing was held June 16, and the judge issued the preliminary injunction on June 23, 2021. 

All of these cases look and sound alike. At the latest information, there are now 13 such cases across the country. 

In an email from an employee high up in the USDA, the secretary was defended against our accusation of "slow-walking" the process. There are also several quotes from Vilsack listed, all affirming that the white farmers' cases are frivolous. Our word, not his, but that the white farmers have been advantaged all along. 

So, when I look at March 3, 2021 when Senator Warnock's legislation passed (which ultimately made its way into the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 signed into law on March 11, 2021).

Then, the earliest judge's decision was signed on June 10, 2021, I cannot help but count the number of days. It looks to me like the gap is close to 100 days. Surely the Secretary of Agriculture knew what was going on in the halls of Congress, especially as things were related to the goings on at USDA. Surely. 

Secretary Vilsack is giving away taxpayers money left and right out of USDA and DC. The dollars are going to reputable issues: climate change, heirs property, and many others. 

Why, then, did Secretary Vilsack move so slowly on getting debt relief into the hands of minority farmers. Does it indeed take an extraordinary length of time? Does it require the courts' decisions? Does it require inclusion in the reconciliation bill? 

I assert that if Secretary Vilsack had wanted to move more quickly, he could have. If he wanted to provide debt relief for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, he could have. If he had wanted to provide debt relief, he could have done so and avoided the 13 white farmer cases. He could have avoided the intensity of the work to have debts relieved under the reconciliation bill. 

We don't know if the reconciliation bill is going to pass. If it does, there will be major dollars that farmers will receive, even the white ones who somehow or other are found meritorious under the current machinations. 

Do you know what is most offensive about this miserable waiting game? White farmers who have all of the advantages that the system gives to them will benefit off of Black suffering. Let that sink in. White farmers benefit from Black suffering. 

Sounds like the same principle upon which our country was built, including the economics of southern agriculture. 

Still..............the question.................WHY DID SECRETARY VILSACK MOVE SO SLOWLY WHEN HE COULD HAVE MOVED EXPEDITIOUSLY, SENT OUT DEBT RELIEF LETTERS, AND SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED FARMERS WOULD BE BREATHING EASIER RIGHT NOW......RIGHT NOW. 

RIGHT. NOW. 

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

For those of you who have followed me on these pages, you know of my interest in African American farmers and their families.  No, I am not a farmer, and, no, I am not African American. Why, you might ask, do you work in this area?  The short verse is that I work in this area because their stories of struggle and resilience when fighting against the USDA and the DOJ are painful to watch, difficult to grasp, and inspiring to see.  Once I began to hear their stories in 1994, their words, expressions, challenges, and pain served to transform the way I see things in the world and the way I try to live my life.

You may have seen an article or two that I've written such as the one co-authored by Edward Robinson, “We Didn’t Get Nothing:” The Plight of Black Farmers, or the most recent one, Land Gains, Land Losses: The Odyssey of African Americans Since Reconstruction. In those articles you would find information about how freed people came to own land, and some even before Freedom, and how against all odds, they became prodigious land owners, coming to own land even faster than white people at the time. There were enormous road blocks toward buying land and then there were enormous road blocks with keeping the land. Two major challenges of land ownership historically have been the heir property challenges, and then for farmers who choose to work with the USDA, the "lender of last resorts," there have been other challenges with keeping the land. It is amazing how people in positions of power can make a decision to do nothing, decide to change the farm/home plan, deny, postpone, foreclose of farmers needlessly, fail to offer disaster relief when white farmers are getting it, fail to offer other services when white farmers are offered the services, and other egregious acts of discrimination.

All of that became more apparent upon reading
Dr. Henry Louis Gates' latest volume, Stony the

Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow," released just this year.  The book is a heavy read in places, a painful read in other places, and a smooth, narrative read in still other places. Rather than recount the history of Reconstruction, he goes about exploring the social and intellectual history of a sordid time in American history. White people and white institutions used a plethora of strategies to regain from African Americans all that they had prior to Freedom and Reconstruction. White Supremacy led whites down the road of using "science" to prove that Blacks were less than whites, that they come from different species, and that they could never handle leadership, responsibility, and the obligations of the vote.

Whites used literature and art to characterize and vilify a people who had just a few years prior earned their freedom. Each chapter has its own images that are discussed in each chapter. They are hard to see, images from mocking a people's individual and collective physical appearance via pejorative characterizations, comparison of brain sizes for whites versus Blacks, or images of alligators hunters using Black children for bait, and other egregious types of images.

Once African Americans fully grasped what the white world was attempting to do, a movement toward developing the "New Negro" set in or even the "New New Negro." These were attempts by Black artists, authors, business people, land owners, and others to develop more appropriate images in keeping with how Blacks really looked and lived rather than white supremacy's characterizations.

Of note is the Harlem Renaissance, a short-lived time in Harlem where Black artists, musicians, and writers converged around developing the "New Negro." A curiosity is that some did not consider the blues or jazz to typify this time and intentions.

Under girding it all was the machinations of white supremacy.  Reconstruction for the white world was that of Redemption from the Lost Cause.  State Senates and Houses of Representatives which were led by way too many people of color, those seats and states had to be regained. After all, how could a freed Black person be expected to live and represent an entire state even when that state had a minority of White people? While it is true that a minority of freed people could read since it was against the law to learn how to read and write during slavery, it was an overstatement that freed people had no abilities to lead the county or state in which they resided.

So, as stereotypes fostered fear and incompetence and all manner of other things, all at a societal level for freed persons, the same phenomena played out in the world of farming while Black. The peak of Black land ownership was 1910, and from that time until now, African Americans have lost land at a higher pace that white farmers.  "Maybe they are just bad farmers," I have heard white people say.  No, they were good farmers. They had worked the land during slavery.  They knew how to farm. As some have said, "It is in my DNA." Or, another said, "My blood is on this land." Or as a farmer's wife said in our documentary recently, African Americans were intended to work the land but never to own the land.

In my writings, I assert that African American farmers have lost much of their land to heir property problems, a problem that exists when a distant cousin in another state with no attachment to the land sells his or her portion at an elevated price, forcing the entire land to be sold to the highest bidder. Secondly, I assert that machinations of the USDA with its tentacles into farming at the local level via the FSA work to disenfranchise Black farmers.  The law is color blind but people are not.  The county committee system is the best of democracy and the worst of democracy.

For those who want to feel challenged, read Gates' book and then read my two articles and place them alongside each other. It would be a painful learning journey, but one that America needs to take. White America would do well to learn what our Black sisters and brothers experienced then and now.  Frankly, Black land loss at the hands of discriminating folks did not end with Reconstruction. It is going on now.  That's a post for another day.