Black Farmers Still Seek Justice

The scene at the Federal District Court House in Washington D.C. on March 2 was one of high expectations and emotional pleadings as black farmers, on the verge of a $400 million settlement to compensate for decades of discrimination at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, pleaded for a full, fair, and complete redress of the grievances.

The farmers, some dressed in bib overalls, told how they were taunted, humiliated and denied federal loans while their white neighbors in similar circumstances were approved for loans by the mainly white councils that administer USDA programs at the county level. The stoic, devout and long-suffering black farmers cried out to "let justice roll like waters, and let freedom ring" for them. They hoped that Federal Judge Paul Friedman, as part of the Consent Decree, would answer their call for a complete redress of their long oppressive and unjust treatment by agencies of their own federal government.

But Judge Friedman was there merely to hear objections to the settlement, which would award participating farmers about $50,000 each and forgive any outstanding loans they had managed to wangle from the USDA. While that may seem a sizeable jackpot, the farmers complained it was a pittance after decades of mistreatment that had driven many into bankruptcy. The agreement also did nothing to install systemic change in the white-dominated USDA bureaucracy.

Judge Friedman told the farmers that the District Court was not capable of redressing their litany of grievances in any comprehensive manner. The President, the Congress, and ultimately the American people were the only ones that could begin to alter the attitudes and the governmental structure that is responsible for their oppression and mistreatment because of the color of their skin, the judge said.

While small farmers of all races have been run off the land over the past 20 years, crushed by a combination of bad weather, trade and agricultural policy geared toward multinational agribusinesses and a tightening of farm credit, blacks have been especially hard hit, dropping from 14% of the nation's farmers in the 1920s to less than 1% today. Only 20,000 black farmers are tilling the soil today. "Most of them will be gone by the end of the year," Tim Pigford, a plaintiff in the original class-action suit against the USDA, predicted to Jeff Stein of the online magazine Salon. "The rest will be gone soon after 2000."