Black farmers demand justice--again
By Monica Moorehead
"Land is the basis of all independence.
Land is the basis of freedom, justice
and equality." --Malcolm X
The struggle of Black farmers to win a semblance of social
justice from the U.S. government has not gone away. In fact, it
is very much alive.
Five years ago, thousands of African American farmers sued
the United States Department of Agriculture, charging
decades-long racist discrimination. Another class-action
lawsuit, by many of the same farmers against this same USDA and
for similar reasons, was filed Sept. 9. Many of these farmers
are based in the Black Belt, the land comprising fertile, rich
soil in the South.
This latest lawsuit seeks $20.5 billion in damages, and
class-action status for upwards of 25,000 Black farmers who
grew or tried to grow crops between 1997 and 2004. The lawsuit
exposes how the USDA retaliated against many of the farmers who
won money from the 1999 lawsuit. The USDA denied them new loans
and subsidies, from the time that lawsuit was settled until
now.
The Black Farmers and Agriculturalist Association and 11
other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in Washington, D.C., on
behalf of these farmers.
In August, the Environmental Working Group and the National
Black Farmers Association released a report denouncing the 1999
settlement because the courts have dismissed the overwhelming
majority of these farmers' claims of being systematically
denied federal loans to farm.
In other words, the farmers charge the U.S. government with
racism.
This report states that out of an estimated 96,000 Black
farmers who sought restitution under the 1999 class-action
lawsuit, more than 72,000 saw their claims rejected in
arbitration. Another 7,800 claims were dropped for failing to
meet "filing deadlines."
Many of the farmers have gone on record saying they were not
made aware of any USDA deadlines for filing claims.
When the 1999 lawsuit was approved, a judge proclaimed that
it would be the largest civil-rights lawsuit in U.S. history,
and that $2 billion would be shared by the 96,000 farmers. As
of today, less than $815 million has been paid to just a little
over 13,000 farmers.
Minus lawyers' fees and other costs, these farmers have
received on average about $50,000 or less--a mere drop in the
bucket.
"The last thing in the world the African American should be
denied is the right to farm--that is the reason we were brought
here [slavery--MM]. ... Farming should be an entitlement to
Black folk. Our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers paid
for that opportunity," said Thomas Burrell, president of the
Black Farmers and Agriculturalist Association. (Associated
Press, Sept. 9)
Black farmers staged many sit-ins at local USDA offices in
the South in 2001-2002 to bring media attention to their
plight.
Fighting extinction
These farmers' struggle is rooted in the legacy of U.S.
slavery and Jim Crow racism.
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 did not deliver the
promise of 40 acres and a mule to the former slaves, but the
short-lived radical Reconstruction period did breathe some life
into Black farming.
There was an increase in land ownership. African Americans
owned 3 million acres by 1875, 8 million in 1890 and 12 million
in 1900.
By 1910, African American farmers owned an estimated 15
million acres, with 175,000 farms fully owned, 43,000 partially
owned and 670,000 sharecropped.(foodfirst.org)
Black ownership of the land continued to thrive even under
semi-enslaved conditions after the Great Compromise of 1877.
This act instructed Northern troops to leave former slaves
unprotected from former slave masters, which undermined the
struggle for full social equality for Black people in the
South.
Sharecropping was the U.S. version of feudalism. Black
farmers were treated like serfs or tenants. In essence, the
white landowners leased them a small plot of land to grow food.
A smaller portion of this food was for subsistence for
themselves and their families. The larger portion of the crops
went to the white landowners, who sold the food on the market
to make a profit.
According to foodfirst.org: "In 1920, 925,000 farmers (14
percent of all farms) were African American. By 1950, Black
land ownership had declined to 12 million acres, and in 1969 it
was down to 5.5 million acres, a drop of 54 percent in just 20
years.
"Between 1982 and 1992, the number of Black farmers in the
United States dropped by 43 percent, from 33,250 to 18,816.14.
A 1990 House Committee report said Black farmers were on the
verge of extinction.
"At that time, African Americans made up roughly 1 percent
of the nation's farmers and were disappearing at a rate almost
five times greater than whites. The African American farm
owners who still survive are bucking a dismal trend.
"In 1999, less than 18,000 African American farmers, out of
a total 1.9 million U.S. farmers, owned less than 1 million
acres. It was then predicted that by the year 2000, there would
be no Black-owned land in America."
The answer is solidarity
Historically, white farmers have been pitted against farmers
of color by succumbing to a more privileged status. White
farmers have not been victimized by the banks' racist loan
policies as have Black farmers and other farmers of color in
disproportionate numbers. The banks and the U.S. government
rely on racism to divide the farmers in order to keep the
profits flowing into their coffers.
Consider these startling statistics--91.4 percent of 1997
farm loans went to white farmers, 2.3 percent to Black farmers,
4.2 percent to Latino farmers, and 1.2 percent to Native
Americans. (Farmers Home Administration)
Getting a loan from a bank is the only way a farmer can buy
expensive earth-moving equipment, seed and much more that is
needed in order to plant and sustain crops.
In 2003, the revolutionary Cuban government signed an
agreement to buy crops from some of the Black farmers in the
United States with the assistance of the NAACP. The Cubans did
this to expose the fact that crops grown by Black farmers were
being excluded from the worldwide capitalist market.
The emergence of imperialist agri business on a global scale
has helped to impoverish peasants and farm workers around the
world, and to accelerate the demise of the livelihood of
hundreds of thousands of farmers of all nationalities in the
United States due to capitalist restructuring. White farmers'
privileged position is fading more and more as foreclosures and
seizures of farmers' land by agribusiness intensifies.
It would be in the interests of white farmers to show
concrete support for this current lawsuit against the USDA
initiated by Black farmers. It is this kind of anti-racist
class solidarity that would shake the very foundations of the
agribusiness bosses and the U.S. government.
Reprinted from the Sept. 23, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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