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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September
2002
Black Belt farmers occupy U.S. offices
On
July 1, over 300 Black farmers from 16 states occupied the Tennessee Department
of Agriculture offices to protest farm foreclosures and loan discrimination.
Several discussed the issues with N&L.--Editors *** Brownsville,
Tenn.--Gary Grant: The Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association was
organized in 1997. The Pigford v. Glickman class action, for past actions of
discrimination by the Department of Agriculture (USDA), was supposed to make it
possible for farmers to continue to farm. The government used this document to
continue to do the very process it was doing before, which leads to the farmer
losing his livelihood and then his land. The
consent decree has two tracks. Track A will get you $50,000 and possible debt
relief if you can prove discrimination. We laughed, because the discrimination
has already been proven. Track B is that if you’ve got documentation, you can
go after larger sums of money. Most farmers had to go into Track A. We
had people who were denied loans because they misspelled the county in which
they lived, or the name of the agent. This is the only agency in the government
that has what’s called a committee of “your peers” that determines whether
you get a loan or not. Why would a group of farmers give me a loan? Aren’t I
the competition? What is this madness? A group of white men talking about who’s
going to be able to buy a piece of land and a Black man comes in and says he
wants to buy it? Or a woman, or a white man that’s poor? We
began this sit-in with 10 demands. Some folk in Washington need to be
fired--those that discriminated against us, which has been proven in the Pigford
suit. They have an “administrative process” to settle civil rights
complaints. We have four families who have partial settlements where the
language has been approved, the money agreed on. And they won’t deliver. That’s
one demand. We want a commitment from Secretary of Agriculture Veneman to settle
these in 30 days. We have five Tennessee farmers, in this office, whose
applications have not been processed. I
come from a community in North Carolina that’s called a resettlement
community. Out of the New Deal of the 1930s the government bought 18,000 acres
of plantation land, and made it possible for Black people to buy it. Three
hundred Black families became independent farmers--poor, poor, poor, poor, and
poor. Today,
all the land is being farmed, but not one of those original 300 families is
farming there. We own 93% of the original 18,000 acres, and 98% of it is rented
out to white farmers. Something is wrong, that white folk can make a living off
of the same land that Black farmers couldn’t. “Make a living” means white
people can pay loans off of the same land that Black people couldn’t, raising
the same crops. Of course, they can plant on the day that it’s supposed to be
put in the ground. Tom
Burrell: The lawsuit exposed the USDA’s attempts to eradicate Black farmers.
USDA employees are committed to removing Black farmers from agriculture. The
lawsuit is a win for the USDA. They got rid of 99% of African-American farmers
and they used $615 million of the taxpayers’ money to pay for the lawsuit
settlement. The USDA is good at eradicating things. In California it was the
medfly, and here in Tennessee it is the boll weevil. One species that has also
been put on that list is Black farmers. They have an eradication program that’s
99% effective. Why wouldn’t they continue to discriminate? They’re going to
set up a mop-up operation and get rid of the remaining 1%. This agency is
corrupt. The employees at the USDA are completely out of control. The president
can’t do anything with them. The
USDA stalls, so the farmer would not get money to plant until after planting
season. That guarantees disaster. If you get the loan after the planting fails,
the money, instead of being an asset, becomes a liability. Whatever I borrow
after a certain date is going to drain the equity out of my business. The USDA
is guilty of discriminating against African-American farmers, and they are
conspiring to discriminate against us to render us landless. African Americans
acquired 16 million acres of land after slavery. Today we own less than three
million. Whether
the USDA’s decisions are favorable or not, the farmer needs a decision. It’s
tormenting to deal with local market prices, boll weevil infestation, varmint
infestation, and all the other problems. At least he shouldn’t have to guess
when he’s going to get the money. If they could give him the loan in July, why
couldn’t they have given it to him in time to plant? The
loan applications have to go to D.C. to get processed. The government’s got
people working for them here but can’t make them process our applications.
They wouldn’t even process these applications for the Secretary of Agriculture
while the world was watching! How much bolder, indifferent, and contemptuous can
a group of individuals be when the world is watching to see if you’re going to
do the right thing and you don’t do it. I
was whacked by the USDA in 1982. I appealed to Washington, because I was five
years farming and I only got a loan at the local level one year. I had to go to
Washington every other time to get my money. In this one particular year,
Washington approved the check for $106,000. The check comes to the local office
and the county supervisor wouldn’t give it to me. I
called the state directly and said, “Make the man give me my money!” He
said, “They haven’t given you your money?” I said, “No!” He said, “You
meet me at Congressman Jones’ office at 2:00.” The county supervisor was
there with the check. I was in the Congressman’s office and the State Director
asked him in front of the District Director, “Why will you not give this man
his check?” He responded: “If I give Tom this check, I will not be able to
work in Haywood County.” In
other words, local whites have threatened him. They don’t care what folks in
Washington said. Don’t you give that man the $106,000 because the 3,500 acres
of land he’s working, guess what? We want it back. So they arranged to give me the money so it wouldn’t look like the county supervisor gave it to me. The locals control who gets the check, and they control who gets into office so that certain people don’t get the checks. |
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