Status of Black Farmers Across the US and Texas

Recently a Black farmer was interviewed about the challenges of farming while Black in America. He replied with a touch of humor and sadness in his voice that we are losing so many Black farmers that we ought to put them on the endangered species list.

In the early decades following freedom, Black Americans became prolific land owners, the peak of which was reached in the early 1900s. Approximately 950,000 Black farm operators owned 22,000 farms, worked 47,000,000 acres, and owned 19,000,000 acres. While these numbers paled by comparison to white farmers, they were  staggering evidence that Black farmers violated a tenant stated by the wife of a Black farmer, “We were intended to work the land, but not to own the land.

Dispossession soon began to occur. The number of Black agrarians dropped precipitously over decades. While white ownership remained relatively stable, Black ownership dropped ultimately by 90%.

Currently, there are 35,470 Black-operated farms with 4.7 million acres, or 0.5% of the nation-wide farm land total. The precipitous drop from 47 million acres to 4.7 million is staggering as is the drop from 950,000 to 35,470 Black producers. It is estimated that the value of the losses of land and the value of production from the land between 1920 and 1997 were approximately $326 billion. What a loss in generational wealth.

But what about Texas? We have more Black producers than any other state. There are currently 11,268 Black producers who farm 972,552 acres. This amounts to 3% of the state’s total farm producers. Smith and Freestone Counties each have over 300 Black-operated farms. While statistics are lacking, essentially Black farmers do not trust USDA, so they avoid funding opportunities and services by USDA as they farm smaller parcels or focus on smaller cow/calf operations. In recent years, however, at least one Black farmer successfully prevailed against the USDA and its discriminatory practices, and another family had its debts canceled by USDA’s agency, the Family Service Agency, under current USDA/FSA policies. What has impacted Black farming across the country has certainly impacted Black farmers in Texas.

USDA has readily admitted that their programs and personnel discriminate against Black farmers, especially at the county committee level, but the Department refuses to address it. The list is long and painful. The USDA refuses to supervise the county committee and thus, Black farmers do not get the support they need for loan applications, technical support, disaster relief, and loan restructuring and much, much more. The result is foreclosure and loss of land and livelihood. On one occasion the check written by the USDA was held in a file folder until the land was foreclosed upon and the farming operation was gone. The land was bought by an adjacent white farmer. This only scratches the surface of the acts of discrimination that occur. In 2022 the USDA approved white farmers loans at a rate of 72%, but Black farmers at a 36% rate. Black farmers received only .01% of covid relief funds despite making up 5% of all farmers.  

Certainly, farming is a hard business, but it should not be more difficult because of the color of one’s skin. The pain and suffering experienced by Black farmers are indescribable. Fighting against the system which refuses to change, and facing one microaggression after another has resulted in emotional, relational, and physical damages to persons and family members. Farmers often weep when recounting the damages in their bodies causes by persistent racism within USDA.

The USDA and Congress have made attempts to change but all to no avail. Fifteen Black farmers prevailed against the USDA between 1997 and 1999. Pigford I and Pigford II which stretched from the late ‘90s well into the early 2000s were failed efforts. Reports such as the Jackson Lewis Report, the D. J. Miller Report, the Civil Rights Action Team Report, and the Civil Rights Implementation Team Report, and of late the Equity Commission Report, and others, but racism continues unabated. There must be a will to make changes that harm people and destroy livelihoods.

Congressional actions including the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, both promised much, but delivered little to Black farmers.

Yes, distrust has been well earned and well documented. There must be hope, and the bill recently proposed, “Just USDA Standards and Transparency Act of 2023” along with the Justice for Black Farmers Act of 2023, offer much to Black farmers in efforts to root out racism and to promote transparency and accountability.

What are advocates doing? They are appealing to the White House for changes within the leadership of the USDA, appealing directly to the Secretary of the USDA for more transparency and accountability, challenging the county committee system, and challenging the manner in which funds for discrimination are allocated under the IRA of 2022. They lobby various congressionals including Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, and Raphael Warnock. They held a one-day march in front of the White House back on March 1. This is a righteous cause for this group of people.

Trust must be restored nation-wide and here in Texas. Farmers are vital to our economy and our way of living. Black farmers are equally important to our way of life and must be treated fairly and equitably.

Holy Ground, Sacred Ground

Yes, we sat and talked today.  It was early morning, and we'd driven well over an hour to the farm. The conversation was lively, thoughtful, intense, and laid out the destructive paths of human beings. We were visitors, the photographer, my wife, and me.  We have traveled these roads before, but not this road. This road was the same and it was different.

It was the same. One Black farmer standing alongside other Black farmers to call out the indignities of racism and discrimination. As a member of a rather small group, an elite group, yet not a word that he was use to describe himself nor his colleagues. He is a member of the "Davids" who fought against "Goliath," and they actually won. "Nobody would bet on David to beat Goliath," I observed at one point in the conversation. He smiled and nodded knowingly. But he did.  They did.

And it was a just cause. He expressed much pride in his own version of the civil rights movement.

Without revealing any more than is necessary given that this is a part of a documentary project and process, here are some compelling things to know.

There were sixteen of them. They have names.  They have faces.  They had lives then and they have lives now, and some are lived on in their families as they have passed on. There are dates when their cases were signed off by the USDA Office of Civil Rights.  Yes.  There are actual dates upon which their cases were signed off, when the USDA OCR agreed and verified that they had been discriminated against.

A farm home plan.  A working plan to buy a chicken house. The county supervisor, all smiles and congeniality until the door was closed and the process of lining up figures started.  Then he began to balk, complain, change figures, stall, forget various documents, lose various documents. A year later, the loan finally comes through to build the chicken house.  By then, the white guy over the way had already built it.  The chicken complex would not wait. It needed chickens to sell to us the consumers. The white farmer worked the process well and got his house.  His white friend got his house.  He has no grudges against the white farmer.  He was working the system.

The system did not work for Mr. Farmer.

He has paid an enormous price for his battle for justice.  He'll perhaps tell his story on screen. It is a horrendous loss of health, family, and livelihood. We'll wait and let him tell his story.

We sat foot on his land. We drove by various and sundry places and he told us who lived where, did what, and how these were back in the day.  This is a different day.

He still owns his farm, thankfully.  It was not a part of the battle with the USDA, unlike many others.

We sat today on holy ground.  We talked for several hours on sacred ground.  His blood is on the soil.  He was made by his creator to farm.

Yes, that was holy ground, that was sacred ground.

Reflections Near the Beginning: Black Farmers versus the USDA

The documentary has been a dream for Shoun Hill and me for a long time. A near miss on a grant opportunity followed by another application that was not awarded to us was then led by a completely “out of the blue,” shot in the dark application that was accepted. We are now on our way.

You are on your way to what, you might ask.  We are on our way to the telling via audio, video, text, and other means the untold stories of the “Davids” of the black farmer movement versus the “Goliaths” of the black farmer movement. We understand David versus Goliath, small, seemingly weak and under prepared and limited in resources against Goliath, strong, fierce, undefeated, prideful, and limitless resources and power.

Several black farmer cases were filed against the USDA in the 1990s and alleged unbelievable yet believable and egregious acts of benign and willful discrimination based simply upon the color of their skin. This does not happen in America, many have said to me, family and friends. Yes, it does happen in America. It did and it still does.

Someone had to catch the vision of litigating these cases. That attorney was found in Texas and one by one a large number of farmers found their way to him. Self-described as a black man who understood walking in the white world, an activist, and one committed to representing the marginalized, he moved to the forefront of the battlefield. Competent, prepared, resourceful, and ostentatious, James Myart was up for the fight.

Recently, Shoun and I spent a day with him as he reminisced about the early days and the battles won and lost on behalf of farmers. Surely, he would do some things over again, but he finds great pride in winning some battles, and grieved that he did not win more. We sat for several hours, talked, remembered, and cried. Without Attorney at Law James Myart, there might not have been a farmer movement. With him, cases were settled out of court via administrative processes, and with those farmers, wins, and trials and tribulations, the Black Farmer Movement would eventually emerge in what is called the Pigford Class Action Suit. Mr. Myart played a pivotal role then, and he’ll play a pivotal role in the documentary.

Recently, Shoun and I traveled to rural Georgia to meet with the Long brothers and to hear their stories of their parents’ fight as Davids against Goliath. We met on a Saturday morning in the shade of the shop of one of the brothers. A cool southerly breeze caressed us as we talked, filmed, and walked about on a hot and humid day. They were full of stories of their parents. 

They were into truth-telling in its most intimate ways. They reflected a commitment to telling their parents’ stories in a way that mirrored their parents’ commitment to justice for themselves and for all black farmers. With intense emotion intermingled with tears and laughter, the brothers three told story after story after story that limned the edges of their father’s farming while black against all manner of odds and discriminative behavior, farm/home plans altered, operating funds received too little too late, too few consults from the local FmHA office, and on and on the story went. These legends in the black farmer movement died too young. Farming is hard work, farming while black is even harder, and farming while black while fighting Goliath is even more arduous, painful, and life-shortening.

We broke for lunch of southern fried catfish, hush puppies, and cole slaw and more story telling. We wrapped up a full day by walking the old home place. The win over Goliath allowed their parents to hold on to the farm and even to fix it up some. A story of a white friend went beyond the bounds of friendship. The white friend bought the farm which kept the FmHA from seizing it. When the Long case was settled, Goliath defeated, the farmer bought the land back from his white friend.

Shoun and I have much, much more to do. We will go southwest, south, and up even into the DC area. We are covering a lot of territory. We are hearing a lot of stories.

We have more to tell.

Grief, Loss, and the Land

Over the last few days I have been working on a grant for a photojournalism project. In re-reading the narratives of African American farmers and family who lost their land, livelihood, and health, it occurred to me that grief was a meaningful way to capture their struggles in part, insofar as I could understand it.  These things are still happening in America.  Yes, even here in America.  Grief is a common human experience whether people, relationships, property, or whatever we hold dear.

So, here are the words I wrote this morning about their stories of grief and loss. With apologies for presuming to speak for someone else.

Grief, Loss, Land, and Livelihood

MY VOICE:

 

Grief wearies the body

It troubles the soul
It can be about life or death
Or about dreams untold.

It may speak of unspoken hopes

It can be about ideas or places.
When it has us against the ropes
It keeps us longing for those other spaces.

FARMER'S VOICE:

 

I once owned that land

As far as you could see
Grew those crops to feed
All these folks and me.

I owned those tractors

That were stored in that barn
Worked daylight to dark
Didn’t mean nobody no harm.

The feds they came

With some papers and those guns
Run us all off
Toward the setting of the sun.

My grandpa he owned this land

Bought by clearin’ out those trees
Used those long saws
Till he wore out his back and knees.

Now they’re takin’ it away

And it don’t seem fair
I paid all my taxes
Just to get us somewhere.

Those white folks sure know

How keep a black man down
If they don’t like the color of your skin
They call it a sun down town.

Yes, I’m filled with grief

Buried deep in my soul
I’ve worked this land
And the stories that can be told.

MY VOICE:

 

Yes that old man grief

It takes hold, sneaks up from behind.
Its clutches are strong and forceful,
And no one is respected, no one.

It comes from wherever it comes,

And it goes wherever it goes.

Grief strangles with its hands,

Squeezes the neck of joy.

It removes the colors

From the rainbow.

It makes the tastiest of

Morsels taste bland.
 
Grief asks a lot of questions
It gives but few answers.
It forces us into chasms of empty space
And then lets go.

Its forces are vast

And uncontrollable.

Its thirst is like the desert
In a driving rainstorm that appears from nowhere.

Its hunger is like an

Animal that is
Lurking about looking for prey.

Grief is like the grave with

No body found down deep inside it.

Grief dulls the senses, robs one of

Words, and
Makes itself the focus as people stare.

Grief keeps us up all night

Filling us with fright.
Grief keeps us occupied all day
Creating shadows to keep us at bay.

Grief reminds us of things we wished

Telling us that all is still amiss.
Grief beats us at every turn
Reminding us that we’ll never learn.

FARMER'S VOICE:

 

Grief weighs me down

Down deep in my soul.
I may be black but
Feelings I don’t lack.

That old friend of mine

Living beneath that old oak tree.
They tried to take his land
But finally he is free.

He lost his family

He lost his wife.
The price he paid
Just to have a life.

MY VOICE:

 

Grief tells us of those who are gone

Reminding us that we’re not really strong.
Grief may let us know who is here
Whispering to our souls not to hold too near.

Grief is a circle goes round and round

Driving us all right into the ground.
Grief has no beginning or end
When it will leave can only depend.

So, I’ll continue to give voice

To the grief in my soul.
Until that day I’ll rejoice
With all its stories finally told.

VOICE OF US ALL:

Grief. A strange thing.

Grief. A very strange thing.

Stories of People Past and Present

In the early morning hours there are several books here on my desk.  There's the Bible, Conversations with God, the Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, The Death of Expertise, Spare the Kids, Reconciliation Reconsidered, and many others including Bioethics, Medical Family Therapy, and God of the Oppressed. It is a wide ranging collection of printed material.

The one that stands out today is Pete Daniel's Dispossession: Discrimination Against African American Farmers in the Age of Civil Rights. I'll review this book later. Here's one for now.  It is an academic and historical perspective against which the stories I have heard can be compared.

With those books as prompts, these words came to mind:

                                   Stories of People Past and Present

Tuesday is here.
Is it just another day?
What happened to Monday?
I thought it was here to stay.

Wednesday will come tomorrow

That is surely for real.
What will be done that day
Or is it for someone to steal?

There are many we have met,

Their stories fill our souls.
We must tell the truth
Much is still left untold.

She is a hero,

She has survived some painful ordeals.
She tells us the truth about life
Even though it’s been more than unreal.

He is a legend

Over there in the southeast
I learned more than I can tell you
For him life was a big old beast.

His single wide sits way out there

On a lonely lane of sandy loam.
He still mourns for his wife who died
He’s alone in his place called home.

All that they wanted

Was to raise that corn and wheat
When the USDA came a knockin’
They knew they’d be hard to beat.

It takes all manner of folk

To fight this ugly war
Righteousness stands on the hills
Looking on from a far.

“Pay day some day”

I heard that old farmer say.
While the old keep getting older
They still pray for a brand new day.

Not many of them prevailed

In the courts across the land.
The thieves made off into the night
Leaving the farmers with an empty hand.

They put their faith in God

Their belief in America was right
The law may be color blind,
Their land was stole in the darkness of the night.

They appeared very resolved,

Strong and determined they stood
Until the auctioneer’s gavel sounded
They’d lost their land for good.

There is no doubt to me

That this system is still unfair,
Except for those who look like me
We get more than our rightful share.

We long for that day down the road

When the system turns around,
He’ll be judged by his character
And not because he’s brown.