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Vol. 74/No. 32      August 23, 2010

 
Black farmers say, ‘It’s
discrimination again’
 
BY SUSAN LAMONT  
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate adjourned for a month August 5 without approving funds to pay Black farmers for long-standing claims of discrimination by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Without Senate approval, the $1.25 billion promised to Black farmers in February by President Barack Obama won’t be paid, although the U.S. House of Representatives approved the funding in May.

Also included in the failed measure was $3.4 billion to settle a lawsuit by Native Americans for royalties owed them by the federal government from land held “in trust.”

Black farmers have been demanding the federal government address the failure to provide compensation to farmers for USDA discrimination in loans and other farms programs, as agreed in the settlement of the 1999 Pigford v. Glickman class-action lawsuit. In addition, thousands of Black farmers had their claims denied in the original lawsuit because they weren’t informed about the filing deadline or for other reasons.

Willie Russell, 68, is one of the farmers who missed the original deadline. He grows peas, watermelon, and other crops on land that belonged to his father near the small town of Eufaula in southeastern Alabama.

“Why is this taking so long?” he said in an August 9 phone interview with the Militant. “To tell the truth, I think it’s discrimination against us all over again. They approve billions of dollars for all kinds of things, why not for this.”

“They’re thinking about their own pocketbooks and keeping everybody else down if they can,” said Uzzell Barnes, 74, a farmer from Johnston County, North Carolina, in an interview printed in the Yankton, South Dakota Press & Dakotan.

This was the seventh time the Senate refused to pass the funding. While Democrats blame Republicans for failure to pass the measure, National Black Farmers Association president John Boyd said, “I think one party is just as responsible as the other.”  
 
 
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