According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, in 1910, "thirty- five years after slavery," Black Americans had acquired approximately 16,000,000 acres of farmland in the United States of America.... However, today there are less than 20,000 Black farmers in this country. Even more alarming is the fact that these farmers now own less than 3,000,000 acres of farmland in their community, according to U.S. Census figures....
Contrary to popular opinion, the 16,000,000 acres of land mentioned above which was purchased by Black Farmers was not the result of financial credit received from the agencies above mentioned. Nor did Black Farmers achieve that level of land ownership because they were shrewd Wall Street investors. The reason Black Farmers were able to acquire 16,000,000 acres of farm land in 1910 is due to, among other things: (1) the efficiency and proficiency which Black Farmers had mustered, developed, and otherwise acquired during hundreds of years of farming for their slave masters; and (2) every member in the family, large and small, young and old, participated in the planting, cultivating, growing, and harvesting of the crops; and (3) the need by white landowners, who were devastated economically by the civil war, to generate income. In other words the 16,000,000 acres was bought and paid for by long and arduous days and nights of back breaking work, blood, sweat, and tears....
The Secretary of Agriculture, Dan Glickman's admission of racial discrimination toward Black Farmers is nothing more than an admission of guilt to a lesser crime, as it were. The real crime committed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is not of discrimination against Black Farmers, but is one of defrauding and expropriating land from Black America with the assistance of the local county committee men and women who were...in league with the now discontinued Farmers Home Administration; African American participation on those committees notwithstanding.
The tentative settlement between Black Farmers, through their attorneys of record, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is not, by any stretch of the imagination, indicative of the value of land which has been taken from Black Farmers. Even at a conservative figure of one thousand ($1,000) dollars per acre, sixteen million acres (16,000,000) of land would be worth sixteen billion ($16,000,000,000) dollars....
When we divide the $375,000,00 by the 16,000,000 acres that Black Farmers have had taken from them, they would be receiving in settlements from the USDA Twenty-Three ($23.43) Dollars per acre; in other words two cents ($0.02) on the dollar....
This settlement Sir, is not only a disgrace to Black Farmers but is totally and completely inadequate to accommodate the losses the Black Farm Community has suffered. We hope, therefore, that you will not allow such inadequate, incomplete, and defective relief to become of record in the chronicles of American Justice. Thank you.
Thomas Burrell, et al