BY SAM MANUEL AND STU SINGER
DURHAM, North Carolina - "Until I came to this meeting, I
felt I was all alone in carrying on this fight. But looking
around at all these other people here, I see we are in this
together, I'm not alone." That was the comment of North
Carolina farmer B. J. Switzer at the North Carolina state
meeting of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association
(BFAA), held here January 30.
The 80 farmers participating were from all over North Carolina, plus a delegation from the Virginia BFAA chapter. The meeting opened with a well-attended news conference where BFAA national president Gary Grant said, "This is a fight to the end for justice. The settlement is to fragment us. We have to remain together to fight."
The settlement he was referring to is the consent decree signed January 5 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and lawyers for the farmers in a lawsuit against racist government discrimination. That agreement goes before Federal District Court judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., at a March 2 "fairness hearing" to either approve it or not approve it and continue the case in court.
The suit is known as Pigford v. Glickman, for North Carolina farmer Tim Pigford's initiative in suing U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Daniel Glickman. Farmers won a number of skirmishes in the case over the last year, especially the judge's ruling Oct. 9, 1998, that farmers who are Black constitute a "class... discriminated against on the basis of race" by the USDA. Growing numbers of farmers are speaking out against the proposed settlement of the case.
"There is nothing in this settlement to restore land to farmers who lost it. There is no reprimand for any USDA officer. The same racist bigots will be there in the future when we apply for loans," Grant pointed out.
"We were brought here for agriculture," Grant declared. "It was Black farmers who sustained the civil rights movement. But our upper echelon thinks we're dirty - dirt farmers they call us. We've always been given crumbs. This time we want the whole pie. There will be no coming back. This is the next civil rights movement. We have to understand the importance of the land."
"The settlement was a closed-door deal that left our plaintiffs out," Eddie Wise, a hog farmer who also raises tilapia fish in Whitakers, North Carolina, told the press. "On March 2 every person here has a right to speak before the judge."
"Why should we have to document discrimination to get a settlement?" Dr. Warthell Iles asked. She is a retired nursing professor and farmer from Edgecomb, North Carolina. "We knew they were discriminating against us and we did not always bother to file complaints. It did no good."
Andre Richardson from Wendell, North Carolina, has been farming for 30 years. The $50,000 payment offered in the consent decree "won't buy a tractor," he said.
Griffin Todd, Sr. from Zebulon, North Carolina, related, "We've paid over $100,000 interest for a $20,000 loan from the government. The $50,000 offered in the settlement only pays a portion of that."
Stephon Bowens, a lawyer with the Land Loss Prevention Project in Durham, pointed to the limitations on the debt relief farmers could receive. "The loan forgiveness offered in the consent decree is only for specific loans where the farmers can show discrimination for that incident, not complete loan forgiveness. The USDA does not admit discrimination in this consent decree. There is no relief for all of you when you go back to the USDA," he said.
"This is a human rights issue," Marcus Bernard, a student in Greensboro, said. Bernard is the youth coordinator for the BFAA in North Carolina and had organized a news conference in Greensboro January 13 to support BFAA where a number of students spoke, including children and grandchildren of some of the farmers at the meeting.
Gov't pushes to end farmers' fight
The Agriculture Department and other government agencies
and officials are pushing the consent decree as a way of
ending the farmers' fight. Numerous articles in the news
media have tried to portray the issue as settled. As part of
this campaign, the Agriculture Department organized a meeting
January 27 they called "National Black Organization Leaders"
at the USDA Whitten Building in Washington. The purpose was
to get the organization representatives present to promote
the consent decree.
Some asked how they could help get farmers to sign up for the settlement. But others posed critical questions to USDA associate general counsel for civil rights David Harris and his boss, Rosalind Gray, the director of the USDA office of civil rights.
Henry Ponder, CEO and president of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, said, "this must be a joke. You mean a farmer should get an affidavit from one of the other people working in the USDA office to back up a discrimination complaint. Everyone in those offices is responsible for the discrimination - they're not going to speak against each other."
Mark Harrison of the United Methodist Church Board of Church and Society commented, "All the money farmers receive in this settlement could be taken by other creditors. Will the USDA do anything about that?"
Harris responded that in the past the USDA had paid off private creditors in certain special cases, but they would not do that for any farmers in this case.
One of the attorneys for the farmers who is promoting the consent decree is J. L. Chestnut, from Selma, Alabama. In a column in the Alabama Greene County Democrat January 13, Chestnut wrote, "The lawsuit does not solve all the farmer's problems and does not make him whole.... It is, however, a beginning and a very important beginning and it was not in the farmer's interest to continue this fight for years into the future simply as a matter of principle."
Gary Grant responded, "The lawsuit should make us whole. It should solve most of the problems we are confronted with. For our lawyers to settle for a minute piece of justice and call it justice, continues the type of betrayal Black farmers have endured through the decades. We must restore the farmer, our families, the Black farm industry and our communities. The government has the capability and the resources to do this.
"Everyone is allowed to speak for the farmer except the farmer. Hear what the farmer has to say." The January 30 BFAA meeting in Durham made plans to build both the First National BFAA Meeting to be held in the Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, area on February 20 and to get farmers and their supporters to Washington March 2 for the Fairness Hearing. Both will be important opportunities for farmers themselves to speak out.
Sam Manuel and Stu Singer are members of the United Transportation Union in Washington, D.C.