Afterwards they demanded and got an emergency meeting with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) official Rosalind Gray, director of the Office of Civil Rights.

Organized by the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), the February 28 protest was one in a series of actions by farmers defending their land and fighting the racist practices admitted to by the federal government.

The farmers hold USDA director Dan Glickman, Gray, and other officials responsible for continuing discrimination and the fact that many farmers have yet to see any benefits from the April 1999 federal consent decree. In settling the suit the government promised farmers debt relief and compensation. Instead, the farmers say they are facing continued discrimination, recrimination, foreclosures, and ruin at the hands of the USDA and their local officials.

Mae Savant, a hay farmer from Hope Mills, North Carolina, said she and her husband received notice they had been approved for a $50,000 settlement but not for the debt relief, which is crucial to them keeping their farm.

In addition, she has been notified that their income tax return will be applied to unspecified existing farm debts. She is concerned that she may never see the check for $50,000, and that it will be applied to debts for farm loans instead.

After the meeting at the USDA, Griffin Todd, a farmer from Zebulon, North Carolina, said, "The good old boys are still at work. There is no justice for Black farmers. But we will get justice!"

Gary Grant, president of BFAA, told the USDA officials, "All we want to do is to work our land. Meanwhile your local agents have called us [racist epithets], have crumpled up and thrown our loan applications in the trash....We say, stop it now! Stop playing games."

Wayne Alexander, a specialty grass and tree farmer from Texas, is facing imminent foreclosure on his farm despite a consent decree provision that is supposed to suspend foreclosure proceedings while the farmer's claim is being processed. He told the officials that "under this agreement we will have the demise of a great number of farmers."

According to a lead attorney in the class-action lawsuit, some 40 percent of the plaintiffs have been denied compensation in the federal settlement. Stephon Bowens, director of the Land Loss Prevention Project, said the average debt relief received by those who are receiving settlements is $17,500.

The appeal hearing on contested provisions of the consent decree was held before a panel of federal judges convened by Judge Paul Friedman. One of the two original attorneys for the class action suit, Alexander Pires, sat alongside the government attorneys and chimed in on their arguments against any change or challenge to the consent decree's wording and execution.

Melvin Bishop, president of Georgia BFAA, said, "The way it goes in court still won't solve the problem of what the USDA is doing to farmers. We need the secretary of agriculture to make sure justice is being done with this decree."

At a farmers' strategy session after the hearing, Eddie Slaughter, vice-president of Georgia BFAA, urged the farmers to "reach out to others in the same or similar circumstances." He read out loud the flyer for the "Rally for Rural America" on March 21 sponsored by the National Farmers Union.  
 
 
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