USDA & Black Farmers' Crisis: Secretary Vilsack, Ralph Paige and John Boyd respond

     

In 1997 with a class-action lawsuit known as the Pigford case,Timothy Pigford, a Black farmer from North Carolina and  400 black farmers sued the US Department of Agriculture [USDA] claiming they had for years been denied government loans and other assistance that routinely went to whites. 

After the lawsuit was filed, Pigford requested blanket mediation to cover what was thought to be about 2,000 farmers who may have been discriminated against, but the U.S. Department of Justice opposed the mediation, saying that each case had to be investigated separately. As the case moved toward trial, the presiding judge certified as a class all black farmers who filed discrimination complaints against the USDA between 1983 and 1997.  The plaintiffs settled with the government in 1999. Under the consent degree, all African American farmers would be paid a "virtually automatic" $50,000 plus granted certain loan forgiveness and tax offsets, if they could present substantial evidence that they had been discriminated against on the basis of race. To do so, they needed to show that they had applied to the USDA for farm credit or benefits, had to have made a complaint before 1997, and had to show that the USDA had treated them less favorably than the USDA had treated similarly-situated white farmers. This process was called "Track A". 

The government settled paying out some damages on almost 16,000 claims, but many other inquires and letters seeking information were never answered by President Bush's USDA's Civil Rights office.  Now, John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association and Ralph Paige, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund are using different methods, but with the same goal to help Black farmers.

On Tuesday, April 29th, John Boyd, as well as an estimate of 200 Black farmers gathered at USDA in Washington DC to bring attention to their plight and wanting USDA to live up to a promise last year to pay black farmers for years of discrimination by the agency.

Protesters carried signs that read "Stop Promising, Start Paying" and chanted, "Pay the black farmers." Boyd led his famous mule to the Capitol and unrolled a scroll with the names of 75,000 black farmers.  They will also meet today with members of Congress and federal farm officials to discuss the funding and other issues.  

Boyd believes President Obama has changed his position on Black farmers, and the change isn't sitting well with black farmers who thought they'd get a friendlier reception from Obama after years of resistance from President George W. Bush.  Former Senator, Barack Obama led the charge in 2008 to pass a bill allowing black farmers to seek new discrimination claims against USDA.

However,  Ralph Paige believes USDA is planning to address the problem, and wrote for the Seattle Medium.  For more than 40 years and through nine (9) Presidential administrations, Paige has personally seen Black farmers discriminated against by the USDA.

Paige wrote "I have never seen a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) like this one. At the very beginning of the Obama administration, Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture, has developed initiatives to address the extensive and infamous civil rights problems at USDA."

He continued, "Usually, lip service is paid to these problems shortly before the end of an administration and nothing is done as a result. But this time it looks to be a different and new era at the USDA. The “People’s Department,” which is what its creator President Abraham Lincoln called the Department of Agriculture, might actually become a department for the people. I applaud the secretary’s efforts."

Paige's article discuss the discrimination against black farmers:

• lack of credit opportunities 
• and access to programs for Black farmers and other minority farmers (which includes women) at the USDA’s Farm Service Agencies across the country and in other USDA agencies.

Results

• tragic loss of land, which has gone from a peak 15 million acres of Black owned land in 1910 to a little over 3 million acres today.
• in 1999 Black farmers filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA (known as the Pigford case); some claims in the case have yet to be resolved. Congress later offered in the 2008 Farm Bill, an opportunity for thousands of Black farmers who were initially left out of the Pigford case to participate.

Paige believes that President Obama's USDA Secretary Vilsack has a plan and knows his department has Civil Rights problems and will:

1. analyzing services at USDA agencies to develop recommendations for equitable access to these agencies – particularly the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and in Rural Development
2. strengthening a weak and poorly run Civil Rights office at USDA
3. reviewing the 1,000 plus civil rights complaints since 2000 to see if they have been properly addressed
4. working with the Department of Justice to resolve the remaining Pigford claims against USDA
5. addressing the civil rights issues of other minority and socially disadvantaged farmers across the country and confront the discrimination of employee and promotion practices within the USDA.

I feel, it doesn't matter which approach Black farmer advocates like Paige or Boyd take, the Black farmers have been discriminated against and their case needs to be resolved.  Some of the same banks, the government bailed out have denied the Black farmers access to loans.

For an understanding of how it was put into law read: Pigford Case.

Read more at    http://www.seattlemedium.com/news/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=96128&sID=34&ItemSource=L 

Second Chance For Black Farmers by Carol Estes

USA Today: Black farmers file new suit against USDA

Pigford Case Settlement

Other references

1. Timothy Pigford, et al., v. Dan Glickman, Secretary, United States Department of Agriculture, US District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 97-1978 (PLF). Paul L. Friedman, U.S. District Judge.
2. "The Pigford Case: USDA Settlement of a Discrimination Suit by Black Farmers", Tadlock Cowan, Congressional Research Service, January 13, 2009. Fetched February 9, 2009.
3. The Pigford Case: USDA Settlement of a Discrimination Suit by Black Farmers", p. 5. Tadlock Cowan, Congressional Research Service, January 13, 2009. Fetched February 9, 2009.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman"