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"We Didn't Get Nothing:" The Plight of Black Farmers

Authors:
  • Justice for Black Farmers Group

Abstract

The central thesis to this article is that blacks were intended to work the land, but never to own the land. The progression from working the land via slavery, to peonage, and to land ownership is explored. Africans arrived on American soil carrying with them a rich legacy in caring for the land, and while they did so in America, it was under the most onerous of conditions. Once freed, blacks became prodigious land owners, but with the onset of the twentieth century various systemic factors impacted landownership for blacks. These same factors along with mechanization, herbicides, government policy, and the courts all served to undermine farm ownership for black Americans. The Pigford Class Action Suit is central to understanding the complexities of the plight of the black farmer and the attempts of various advocacy groups to maintain black land ownership.
ARTICLES
We Didnt Get Nothing:The Plight of Black Farmers
Waymon R. Hinson &Edward Robinson
Published online: 9 May 2008
#Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008
Abstract The central thesis to this article is that blacks were intended to work the
land, but never to own the land. The progression from working the land via slavery,
to peonage, and to land ownership is explored. Africans arrived on American soil
carrying with them a rich legacy in caring for the land, and while they did so in
America, it was under the most onerous of conditions. Once freed, blacks became
prodigious land owners, but with the onset of the twentieth century various systemic
factors impacted landownership for blacks. These same factors along with
mechanization, herbicides, government policy, and the courts all served to
undermine farm ownership for black Americans. The Pigford Class Action Suit is
central to understanding the complexities of the plight of the black farmer and the
attempts of various advocacy groups to maintain black land ownership.
Keywords Black farm er .Land loss .Last plantation .Pigford class action suit .
Institutional racism .USDA .FSA .County committee .Sharecropper .Peonage .
New deal
Introduction
When the first Africans arrived on the shores of British North America in 1619, they
came physically and materially naked, but bearing rich cultural baggage. Black
Africans brought with them unique gifts that contributed substantially to civiliza-
tions growth and development on the North American continent. This article, then,
will trace the complexity of life and livelihood for people of the soil from the shores
of Africa to the twenty-first century through the perspectives of race, social and
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
DOI 10.1007/s12111-008-9046-5
The authors offer a special word of thanks to Drs. Jaime Goff, John Robinson, and Tracie Shilcutt, and to
Michelle Finley, graduate assistant to Waymon Hinson, Abilene Christian University, for their helpful
comments on the original manuscripts.
W. R. Hinson (*):E. Robinson
Abilene Christian University, P. O. Box 29444, Abilene, TX 79699, USA
e-mail: hinson@bible.acu.edu
cultural norms, land loss, agriculture, bureaucracy, and the judiciary. More
specifically, this article chronicles racism, discrimination, and institutional racism
in its various forms and contexts from the earliest of days of the enslavement of
Africans to the present day through an examination of agricultural policies and
bureaucracy which reach from the New Deal Era to the present day. Included will be
the role of the judiciary as an extension of white privilege and power. While change
in its various forms including migration, economics, and technology have had their
inevitabilities for farmers, black and white (Walker 2006), land loss and livelihood
via the most egregious of means have been experienced by black farmers. These
variables will be used to deconstruct the complexity of the contexts within which
black farmers are currently found.
One of the earliest known farmers of African descent to cultivate the fertile and
promising land of colonial Virginia was Anthony Johnson, an indentured servant
who may well have been one of the twenty Negarswho came to Jamestown in
1619. Within two decades Johnson had become a married man with four children,
owner of a 250-acre estate, and a reputable farmer in the Virginia colony. He and his
two sons, John and Richard, became so prosperous, growing corn and tobacco that
he himself eventually bought a slave named John Casar (Berlin 1998).
Johnsons work as a tobacco farmer in colonial Virginia reveals that blacks were
among the first agricultural trailblazers in British North America. Blacks, among the
first clearers of the woody forest and tillers of the rocky soil, cultivated the colonys
untamed wilderness. More importantly, Johnsons transition from indentured servant
to prosperous landowner and slaveowner attests that chattel enslavement had not
become entrenched initially in North American society. The institutionalization of
chattel enslavement in the colony of Virginia and neighboring colonies occurred
incrementally between the 1640s and 1660s when white Virginia lawmakers
determined a childs status, whether enslaved or free, on the status of the mother,
and mandated that Christian baptism did not alter an enslaved Africans position.
Through such steps as these, by the turn of the seventeenth century, whites had
completed the process of the dehumanization of black Africans (Franklin and Moss
2000; Jordan 1968).
Institutionalization of Slavery
The process of the institutionalization of chattel enslavement and the dehumanization
of black people was slow and gradual. White planters initially enslaved Native
Americans, but their attempt to reduce Indians to a state of perpetual servitude proved
unsuccessful. Native Americans proved unsuccessful laborers because they resented
European encroachment and in 1622 massacred approximately 400 white settlers in
Virginia; because they possessed better knowledge of the landscape than Europeans
and were able to escape capture easily; and because they tended to be susceptible to the
diseases Europeans brought with them. The resort to black labor seemed most
reasonable to whites. Scholar Edmund S. Morgan maintains that white racism also
played a major role in the colonistsdecision to use enslaved Africans, as the white
Englishmen elite shifted their contempt from lazy, dishonest, and irresponsible poor
whites to enslaved Africans. Historian Eric Williams has argued, however, that the
284 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
decision to rely on black labor was economic, not racial: it had to do not with the
color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor(Williams 1944/1994: 19; cf.
Morgan 1975). In truth, both race and economics played seminal roles in the
institutionalization of slavery in North America.
Unlike the Virginia colony which developed a staple crop (tobacco) before it
discovered a labor source, the colony of South Carolina found a sufficient labor
supply before it landed a profitable cash crop. In 1670 white planters from
Barbados transported enslaved Africans to colonial South Carolina, and these
became a black majorityontheCarolinafrontier.Asblack pathfindersthey
protected livestock from predatory animals, fenced off the land, erected shelters for
livestock, built dugout canoes, chopped timber, created a network of canals,
cleared and cultivated land, and served as frontier soldiers and fishermen. Beyond
this, they excelled as farmers. Historian Daniel C. Littlefield points out that white
Carolinians went to West Africa as students and brought Africans back as
teachers, making the African influence on the development of rice cultivation in
Carolina a decisive one(Littlefield 1981/1991: 114; cf. Wood 1974 and Kelley
and Lewis 2000).
King Cotton
While never economically pivotal outside the South, after the American
Revolutionary War a number of forces combined to erode slavery in northern
states. The inconsistency of revolutionary rhetoric which condemned British
tyranny and condoned black chattel enslavement, the rising voice of anti-slavery
sentiment especially espoused by the Quakers, and the increasing incompatibility
of slave labor amid an industrial economyall contributed to the death of chattel
enslavement in the northern states. Eli Whitneys 1793 cotton gin, which made it
easier to separate seeds from strands of cotton, fueled the great increase of cotton
production within southern states, and this increased cotton production led to
greater demands for enslaved Africans as white planters moved westward in search
of profits and prosperity. The entry of Louisiana into the Union in 1812,
Mississippi in 1817, and Alabama in 1819 as well as the expansion of slaves and
cotton into other states west of the Mississippi River signaled the emergence of
the cotton kingdom.Enslaved Africans brought by their white owners into
southern states grew and cultivated sugar, rice, tobacco, and especially cotton
(Franklin and Moss 2000:125).
The cultivation of the cotton kingdomcoincided with the development of racial
theories, crafted to justify black chattel enslavement. White planters appropriated or
invented medical, classical, and biblical arguments to defend the peculiar
institution.Pro-slavery advocates referred to such scriptural passages as Ephesians
6:59 and Colossians 3:2225 to defend their enslavement of black people.
Historians John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. have noted that white
slaveholders also made extra-biblical arguments which included the economic
feasibility of black chattel enslavement, the assumed inferiority of black slaves, the
sanction of the Christian Church, and the supposed development of a unique and
high degree of culturein the South (Franklin and Moss 2000: 212).
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302 285
Reconstruction
The Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in
1865, and two other Amendments, the Fourteenth (1868) and the Fifteenth (1870),
signaled the arrival of better yet difficult days for African Americans. On the one
hand, emancipated blacks celebrated their new freedom by moving to new
communities, by changing their names, by forming their own churches, by
reconnecting with lost family members, by seeking an education, and by attempting
to become landowners. African-American leaders after the Civil War understood that
the key to their peoples independence and self-reliance was land (Foner 1988;
Litwack 1979; Billingsley 1999).
One of the most promising events of the Reconstruction era occurred in
Savannah, Georgia, where William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order #15
which allowed freed people to cultivate parts of the Georgia and South Carolina
coasts and the Sea Islands. Through this decree Sherman sought to help former
enslaved Africans become self-sufficient. Congress then passed legislation granting
not more than 40 acres of landto every male citizen, whether refugee or
freedman,but the bill died when President Andrew Johnson, a southerner, vetoed it.
Still feeling betrayed more than 60 years later, African Americans such as Sally
Dixon lamented: We was told when we got freed we was going to get 40 acres of
land and a mule. Stead of that, we didnt get nothing(Noralee Frankle, cited in
Kelley and Lewis 2000: 240). Dixons plaint presaged what would become the plight
of virtually all African-American farmers.
On the other hand, during the Reconstruction period African Americans saw their
meager civil rights dwindle alarmingly. The Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization,
originated in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865, but quickly spread to other southern states.
Designed to intimidate black southerners and their white helpers and to re-establish
white supremacy in the New South, the Klan unleashed a campaign of violence
which suppressed black civil rights and prompted thousands of black southerners to
exit their homeland. Known as the Exodustersafter the second book in the Old
Testament, blacks departed Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee in
search of better social and economic opportunities for their families. One Exoduster,
Henry Adams, testified: In 1877 we lost all hopesthe men that held us slaves was
holding the reins of government over our heads in every respect almost, even the
constable up to the governor. We felt we had almost as well be slaves under these
men.Scholar W. E. B. Du Bois put it more succinctly: The slave went free; stood for
a brief moment in the sun; and then moved again toward slavery(Du Bois 1962: 30).
Jim Crow, Oppression, and Progression
The end of Reconstruction in 1877 ushered in what one scholar has called the
nadirof the African-American experience, as black Americans entered an era of
racial repression which brutally reduced them to second-class citizenship. The
evolution of the sharecropping system into one of abuse and exploitation kept black
farmers in virtual bondage. The passage of the negative Civil Rights Act of 1883,
which overturned the more positive Civil Rights Act of 1875, foreshadowed the
286 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
advent of Jim Crow laws. De facto segregation became de jure in 1896 when Plessy
v. Ferguson legalized segregation and led to the spread of separate water fountains,
separate elevators, separate restrooms, separate schools, separate hospitals, separate
churches, and separate cemeteries across the South. The terror of lynchings
accompanied the legalization of segregation as between 1890 and 1920 approxi-
mately 3,000 black men, women, and children lost their lives to lawless white mobs.
Anti-black literature such as Thomas DixonsThe Clansman(1905), which
glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed black men as predatory rapists, formed the
basis of D. W. Griffiths inflammatory popular movie, Birth of a Nation,which
subsequently helped inspire the creation of the second KKK in Stone Mountain,
Georgia, in 1915. This revived clan quickly spread beyond the old Confederacy with
the northern state of Indiana boasting the largest number of terrorists. These events
so inflamed race relations in the South that one million African Americans abruptly
fled southern communities for northern cities in search of their Promised Land
(Grossman 1989).
Some black Americans, seeking freedom from tyranny, took up residence in
western territories. One of these, Samuel Robert Cassius, brought his family into the
Oklahoma Territory in 1891, insisting that Oklahoma was made for the colored
man, and the colored man for Oklahoma.During his three-decade stay in
Oklahoma, Cassius held various posts: preacher, educator, postmaster, Justice of
the Peace, politician, newspaper publisher, and farmer. As a tiller of the soil he grew
an assortment of vegetables to raise funds for his Tohee Industrial School in
Oklahoma. Cassiuss farming responsibilities conflicted with his desire to evangelize
and educate black Oklahomans; he detested cotton as the bane of the white man,
and the curse of the negro. Its a relic of barbarism, a breeder of ignorance, and an
enemy to the cause of Christ(1897:13). The cultivation of cotton, Cassius believed,
prevented black youth from enrolling in school and black adults from attending
church services. Over a 30-year period Cassius had managed to acquire 157 acres of
land, but he lost virtually all of it because of failing crops and his preoccupation with
preaching responsibilities. Disheartened by lost financial opportunities and stalked
by increasing racism, Cassius frustratingly departed Oklahoma in 1922. The
negros paradisehe thought the federal territory would become had been
transformed into a state now dominated by a racist culture imposed by white
immigrants coming mostly from the old Confederacy (Cassius 1896,1897; cf.
Robinson 2003).
What was true for Cassius proved true for countless African Americans during
this era of social and racial repression as an implacable racism vitiated virtually all
the advances of Reconstruction. Yet in spite of the limited opportunities for
American blacks in the Progressive era, African Americans launched a series of self-
help organizations to improve their lot. In 1900 Booker T. Washington organized the
Negro Business League to empower black entrepreneurs to start their own
businesses. Five years later Ida B. Wells published the Red Record,a paper
devoted to compiling statistics of lynching and to exposing the real causes of this
unprecedented violence. In 1906 African Americans at Cornell University initiated
the first black fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha; 2 years later black women at Howard
University began the first black sorority, Alpha Kai Alpha. The NAACP, in response
to a 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois, came into existence the following year.
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302 287
The National Urban League, designed to help black citizens transitioning from rural to
urban life, was formed in 1911. Halfa decade later Carter G. Woodson began publishing
the Journal of Negro Historyto highlight the accomplishments of black Americans
and to redeem the way whites portrayed them (cf. Franklin and Moss 2000).
The impetus of African Americans to elevate themselves socially spilled over into
the area of agriculture. In reaction to an increasingly urban environment, white
farmers had created the FarmersAlliance, a self-help organization which did not,
however, welcome black participation. So in 1889 J. W. Carter, an African-American
minister and farmer, formed the Colored FarmersAlliance, an organization
designed to encourage cooperative buying among its members and to address the
excesses and exploitation of businesses and banks. Despite the efforts of the Colored
FarmersAlliance most African-American farmers remained uninformed about the
use of modern agricultural methods. In 1892 Booker T. Washington, seeking to
improve the situation of black farmers, convened a conference at the Tuskegee
Institute to urge fellow black Americans to buy land and to cultivate it thoroughly;
to raise more food supply; to build houses with more than one room; to tax
themselves to build better school houses, and to extend the school term to at least
6 months; to give more attention to the character of their leaders, especially ministers
and teachers; to keep out of debt; to avoid lawsuits; to treat our women better
(Harlan 1972:199; Gilbert and Eli 2000:52). Washington insisted that the more land
African Americans owned and cultivated the sooner they would get their rights
(Harlan 1972; Gilbert and Eli 2000).
Yet such activities scarcely touched the majority of black agrarians who remained
ensnared in the virtual peonage of sharecropping. This iniquitous system bound
southern blacks to the white landowners almost as effectively as had slavery. Borne
down by ever-increasing debts, trapped by a legal system which severely restricted
their every movement, weakened by malnutrition and disease, and violently denied
access to legal relief, black tenant farmers labored under a weight of oppression
which offered virtually no escape.
Plantation to Peonage, Owned to Owning
By the outset ofthe twentieth century, then, most African Americans workedthe land for
very poor wages, yet they had no ownership of the land or what it produced. And
southern farm workers lagged far behind their northern counterparts: black farm laborers
in South Carolina, as an example, earned $10.79 each month, while those in New York
received $26.13 per month. Purchasing farmland proved even more difficult for African
Americans. In 1900 black southerners owned 158,479 farms in contrast to white
southerners who owned 1,078,635. A decade later 200,000 blacks through hard work
and fortitude had acquired farms and 15 million acres of land, a remarkable achievement
in light of white southern legislatures which conspired to impede black land ownership
this was a remarkable achievement (Gilbert and Eli 2000).
The attempt to suppress black land and property ownership extended well beyond
political measures; sometimes whites resorted to physical violence to eliminate
competition from African Americans in the first quarter of the twentieth century. In
1921 Sarah Page, a white woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, accused Dick Rowland, a
288 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
black elevator operator, of rape. Black residents, some of whom were World War I
veterans, learned of Rowlands arrest and of his impending lynching and took up
arms to defend him. Determined to maintain white-over-black domination, lawless
white men in Tulsa, aided by police officers, roamed through the all-black
prosperous community called Greenwood,murdering black residents, burning
their houses, schools, and businesses, and causing approximately $2 million worth of
damage. The state of Oklahoma has never given reparations to the victimsfamily
members of the Tulsa race riot (Ellsworth 1982; Brophy 2000).
Two years later a similar incident occurred in Rosewood, Florida. Fannie Taylor, a
white woman, falsely accused a black man of raping her. A white mob, motivated by
rage and envy, used the allegation as an excuse to strip prosperous blacks of their
property. Before the Rosewood massacre ended in early 1923, several innocent
African Americans had been lynched, their houses burned, their churches looted, and
their land confiscated. In 1994 the Florida State legislature awarded money to
survivors of Rosewood massacre. The racially-motivated conflagration of
Greenwood (in Oklahoma) and Rosewood (in Florida) attests conclusively that
most white Americans believed that African Americans in the 1920s were meant to
be tillers of the landbut never owners of their own land. Regrettably this mentality
carried over into the 1930s and was reflected in how the federal government dealt
with black farmers (Franklin and Moss 2000).
Twentieth Century Challenges
The twentieth century proved to be even more perilous for black land owners. Jim
Crow laws remained entrenched as a way of life, defining life for persons of color,
placing them in carefully circumscribed contexts and societal roles, all of which
were about less thanand marginalization (Chafe et al. 2001; Wormser 2003).
Against this backdrop, black land loss and the impact on larger society and African
American life in particular were explored initially in Only Six Million Acres: The
Decline of Black Owned Land in the Rural South,a project led by Robert S.
Browne in 1973. A variety of systemic factors including lack of access to credit, tax
laws, intestate death of landowners, and other nefarious strategies were presented as
prompting the enormous loss of land by black Americans. Similarly, McGee and
Boone (1977) wrote of the incomprehensible nature of the economic and
psychological impact of loss of land via tax sales, partition sales, mortgage
foreclosures, absence of wills, limitations on welfare recipients, lack of financial
and/or technical skills in developing land as resources, eminent domain, and
voluntary sale. Essentially, they asserted, It is safe to say that far too often black
land owners have fallen prey to the systembecause of their lack of real estate
knowledge and financial or political clout to defend against the widespread trickery
of land officials(p. 65).
Though these onerous obstacles were entrenched, African American farmers came
to own more and more land (Frazier 1990; Zippert and Watson 2001). With land
ownership came freedom and opportunity, but with Jim Crow laws came oppression
and subjugation, worlds which collided for the black farmer. A decline in farming
occurred for both black and white farmers in terms of the number of farmers, farms,
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302 289
and acres.
1
The decline was, however, much more precipitous for black farmers and
it continues to this day.
Mechanization, Herbicides, and Government Policy
With regard to agriculture in particular, the reasons for the decline in black farms
were originally found in three factors. The black farmer who had previously worked
with a mule, a plow, and a hoe was ultimately forced to deal with the complexities of
mechanization, the development of herbicides, and government policy (Daniel 1985,
1994). Eventually a fourth factor, the court system, would continue the undoing of
black farmers in the 1990s.
Across the South, diversification arrived for cotton, tobacco, and rice, and each
crop had its own demands in terms of labor and equipment (Daniel 1985). An
economy that had been built upon the backs of blacks soon became dependent upon
machines doing the work of many, yet owners who were unable or unwilling to work
their land still needed a labor force. The entrenched tenant farming system enslaved
the poor, and, more disproportionately, the Black farmer (Grubbs 2000).
President Roosevelts challenge was to solve the sharecropper problem without
alienating landowners (Grubbs 2000). With the New Deal came a plethora of federal
policies that transformed agriculture in numerous ways including racially. The power
of the white elite created a complex and invisible set of connections from the USDA
to county and local agricultural committees, and became entrenched both
bureaucratically and socially. Large farmers became privileged, and small farmers,
black and white, including the sharecropper system, became outdated. Daniel
(1994), an expert in southern agriculture and Director of Southern Culture and
History for the Smithsonian Institution, indicts the system by asserting that it
revealed an ill-disguised contempt for small-scale farmersand an indication of
how harmoniously the racial and class biases of the southern white elite resonated
with USDA bureaucrats(p. 80). Displaced farmers, then, moved to the cities. There
were fewer farmers, but more government programs were required.
Specific programs were established in order to stabilize a troubled US economy in
the perilous economic and political times of the New Deal. The black farmer began
to face what would ultimately result in insurmountable conditions that combined the
worst forms of bureaucracy and racism. First, the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration (AAA) in 1933 developed policy in which white landowners often
1
Wood and Gilbert (2000) explain the complications of the use of data from various sources and the
difficulty of analyzing trends relative to ownership, race, and acreage. Gilbert, Wood, and Sharp (2002)
and the USDA (1999) acknowledge the combination of land owners (68,000), acres owned (7.8 million),
and acres leased out by black land lords (4.7 million). They also note that only 1/3 of the owned land is
farmed by its owners and that whites own 98% of the acreage and 97% of private agricultural land as of
1997. The USDA (2002) notes the decline of black farmers by 98% and whites by 63% from 1900 to
1999. Therefore, regardless of the points of comparison, land loss is significantly worse for blacks by
comparison to whites. Gilbert et al. (2001: 2) estimate that African-Americans as a group went from
owning almost no land in the United States after the Civil War to peaking at 15 million acres by 1920. In
that year, 14% of all US farmers were black. Of these 926,000 black farmers, all but 10,000 were in the
South. By 1997, fewer than 20,000, or 1% of all farmers, were black, and they owned only about two
million acres.
290 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
unscrupulously failed to disperse funds allocated to sharecroppers and tenants. Such
egregious behavior occurred due to the county committee system which allowed
white farmers to circumvent courts in dealing with allotments and money (USDA
2002; Daniel 1994; Baldwin 1968). This advantage rested with the white landlord
during a time when half of the African American population farmed, but only 20%
owned land (Moreno 2002).
Second, The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), initiated in 1933
to assist poor, rural Americans, and The Farm Security Administration (FSA),
marginalized black farmers at the expense of the white tenant farmers due to policies
that negated options of ownership for black farmers (Baldwin 1968). All of this was
not unnoticed by African Americans who were advocating for the black farmer who
had substantially fewer sources of credit, more expensive credit when available, and
an absence of legal redress in terms of contracts (Lewis 1935).
Third, the black farmer faced yet another obstacle in the form of the Standard
Rehabilitation Loan program. Designed for high risk farmers regardless of color of
skin, the ratios of utilization for white farmers versus black farmers were
overwhelmingly high in favor of white farmers as racist practices served to negate
options for black farmers (Baldwin 1968).
Ultimately, according to Daniel (1994), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration
(AAA)
embodied class legislation with an insatiable appetite that fed on itself, first
swallowing sharecroppers and tenants, then devouring African Americans, and
finally consuming landowners. Such small farmers had been given a death
sentence, and every federal policy combined to insure that the execution was
carried out(p. 90).
USDA and the County Committee System
The most remarkable change that disadvantaged black farmers was the decentral-
ization of the bureaucracy of the Department of Agriculture. By 1939, the
development of the county committee and county supervisor system, and the
manner in which funding was disseminated resulted in county supervisorsrise in
economic and political power. Many of the county FSA supervisors eventually were
working with the top tier of the low-income farm population (Baldwin 1968), a
subversion of the program and its intended efforts. The net effect was fewer loans to
low income farmers, an inclination toward farms with greater mechanization, a
hopeless attitude toward smaller farmers, and reduced applications from small
farmers (Baldwin 1968; FSA, Rural Rehabilitation Division, Planning and Analysis
Section, 1941, as cited in Baldwin 1968).
Black farmers knew first hand that the county committee system would prove to
be unsympathetic to their interests. While tenants and black farmers attended and
oftentimes voted at committee meetings, the supervisor and the committee
functioned to maintain the prejudices of the status quo with no oversight from
Washington, DC, illustrated by the fact that applications and grievances were heard
at the local level such that state cases dropped after 1933. Composed of a
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302 291
government employee, the supervisor, and an unpaid, elected committee of local
land owners, the needs of black farmers were seldom represented. FSA, then, was
free to speak to family farms, tenancy, greater productivity, and land conservation
via the allocation of loan and grant funds, appointments, farming enterprises,
resettlement efforts, and public information, but racial equality, social justice, and
political action were disallowed (Baldwin 1968).
As a part of the devolution of power as a function of the 1934 Soil and
Conservation Act, local officials were deemed more appropriate decision-makers
than federal government bureaucrats when handling agricultural financing issues
(Havard 2001: 336). While theoretically this protected principles of democracy,
greater citizen involvement, and principles of property ownership, in practical terms
it empowered local citizenry and local interests to over rule federal policy, especially
as the power rested in the elite landownershands.
Looking retrospectively, Havard, a specialist in banking, a faculty member at the
University of Baltimore School of Law, and the daughter of a negro country agent
in Alabama, asserted that
critical race theory provides a basis for understanding how flawed represen-
tational democracy presents an example of political space and its consequences.
In other words, critical race theory provides a basis for examining the
construction of race as a neutral, accepted dominant norm. While there is a
tendency to view what is really a failed attempt at power sharing between the
federal and local government as successful cooperative federalism, I argue
instead that the geographical space (the county) defines the political space (who
becomes representatives or members of the county committee). The all-white
composition of those committees turned the race-neutral process of determining
local eligibility into one of domination and subordination(2001: 337).
Despite a late-arriving strategy of hiring black extension agents in southern states,
the programs were segregated (Reid 2003), and the racial imbalance of the
committee system continued to conceal the voice of the black farmer population.
2
The power of the county committee system cannot be overstated in terms of offering
loans to farmers, costs of transaction, information, and agency became the
foundational principles upon which lending decisions were made. The asymmetrical
nature of information disadvantaged the black farmer. The verification of
information and transactions, and agency costs, within the context of an agency
designed as the lender of last resorts, led to decisions that led to the demise of the
black farmer. Exclusion of black farmers from qualification for loans resulted in
segregation within the farming community such that blacks by definition were poor
2
According to Daniel (1994), by 1964 the Secretary of Agriculture had not yet appointed an African
American to a State Committee in the South. None had been elected as county committee members, and
only seventy-five served on committees out of 37,000 total members. Efforts to advance African American
membership in Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) committees led to
intimidation and violence(p. 97). By 1989, nineteen black county committees were found out of a
total of 8,713. Similarly, county supervisors were predominantly white (only thirty-three of 2,520
supervisors were black). The numbers increased to 765 African Americans out of a work force of 23,000
with the ASCS nationally, and in 1991, only 8.9% of the USDA employees were African American by
comparison to 17.2% within the federal government(Daniel 1994: 98).
292 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
farmers, unworthy of receiving loans and victims of land loss. Such patterns
reinforce white dominance such that the white farmers have racialized the neutral
process to dominate economic access to USDA funds(Havard 2001:341). Willie
Head, black farmer from south Georgia, asserted:
One time at one point, me and my father took the equipment free press
newspaper to the county supervisor and it read that they had funds available for
farmers to produce certain things and this county supervisor looked at us and
told my father and I, Yes, theres moneys in here, but theres none in here for
you all.He openly and verbally told us that(W. Head, personal
communication, October 20, 2005).
The net results as noted in The Decline of Black Farming in Americawere
black land loss and failures of FmHA, an inadequate integration of civil rights goals
by the USDA and FmHA, and the receipt of only 1% of all farm ownership loans,
2.5% of all farm operating loans, and 1% of all water conservation loans by black
farmers (United States Commission on Civil Rights 1982).
Stories of Discrimination
Hidden beneath the factual details of blatant and egregious actions were the daily
lived experiences of the farmers. In broad terms, the USDA had discriminated
against black farmers in terms of processing farm credit, loan servicing, and non-
credit benefits; the disproportionate use and abuse of supervised bank accounts;
misconduct by upper level administrators within the county office; and the failure to
expedite complaints in a timely manner (Wise v. Glickman 2000). Details of black
farmersaccounts reveal overt and covert acts of racial discrimination from both
persons and the institutions of the USDA, FSA, county committees, and county
supervisors. They were discouraged from applying for loans. Their figures on farm
and home plans were altered. They were promised funding which was never
delivered. Their equipment was over-evaluated and continuation loans were not
processed (Williams v. Glickman 1997).
Three stories illustrate the common struggles of the black farmer. First, the litany
of acts of discrimination perpetrated against Eddie Wise and Dorothy Monroe-Wise,
residents of North Carolina, included the failure to provide loan applications when
requested, technical support and assistance in the application process, submission of
applications in a timely fashion, information and assistance relative to guaranteed
loan opportunities, and timely processing of loan applications. The USDA denied
loan applications purposefully, and retaliatory actions were taken by the county
supervisor. Options for socially disadvantaged farmers in keeping with USDA policy
were not offered. The USDA failed to investigate the county supervisor. The couple
experienced loss of land, credit, mental and physical health, and public humiliation
(Wise v Glickman 2000).
Second, Matthew and Florenza Grant, residents of Halifax County, North
Carolina, at the time of filing their complaint, asserted mistreatment in terms of
loan application processes, primary loan servicing, denial of various homestead
protection options, operating loans and loan servicing, discriminatory practices
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302 293
occurring between 1972 and 1992, threats of foreclosure, and the execution of a
settlement with refusal by the Department of Justice to sign the agreement. A
complaint was filed against this couple for foreclosure in 1977 followed by promises
to sell you out.In 1981, a Consent Judgment was agreed upon with the USDA to
avoid foreclosure. This couple also alleged that employees of the USDA denied
black farmers access to programs and processes clearly afforded to White farmers
(Wise v. Glickman 2000).
Third, Welchel Longs discrimination began in 1960 when the county supervisor
discouraged his applications and others threatened him with the possibility that he
might lose his job teaching agriculture at a local high school (Jones 1987, as cited in
Daniel, 1994). Additionally, OCRE (USDAs Office of Civil Rights Enforcement)
found that Long had been affected by systemic discrimination resulting from
FmHA officialslack of consistency and uniformity in their interpretation,
application and administration of FmHA loan policies, practices and procedures
(Williams v. Glickman 1997: 3).
In their own words, farmers tell of difficulties they had in farming. In advance of
planting season, the farmer was ignored or provided no assistance, the loan
application process lasted for several months, well after planting season. Willie Head
tells how he received his funding late April, too late to see the full benefits of the
production from the crop(W. Head, personal communication, October 20, 2005).
Oftentimes, limited funding was offered, but the money was kept in a supervised
account. Felder Daniels, Georgia farmer, describes how it was double jeopardy. You
was losintime and money runninup and down the road just to get a check to pay
your bills(F. Daniels, personal communication, October, 2005). Willie Cooper,
Georgia farmer speaking of the supervisor account system, says that they didntdo
everybody like that. They did the blacks that way, but they didnt do the whites that
way. It made you feel less than a man, you know(W. Cooper, personal
communication, October, 2005).
To add insult to injury, the process resulted in more indictments of the system:
profits were reduced, promised loans never arrived or were arbitrarily
diminished, disaster loans were denied, and then the land was sold or foreclosed
upon. If a buy-back was offered, the appraisal value was often beyond the ability
of the farmer to repurchase it, and, thus, it was sold at auction. Friends or
relatives reportedly often bought the land, sometimes friends and family of the
county officials. All of this simply confirmed what had already been documented
in the mid-60s and the mid-70s in a variety of reports related to civil rights,
cronyism, and nepotism (CRAT 1997).
Bureaucracy and Injustice
A civil rights office was established in the Department of Agriculture in 1971, but
was often reorganized and eventually dismantled. While President Reagans
administration closed the USDAs Civil Rights Office in 1983 (United States
Commission on Civil Rights 2003), President Clintons restoration of the office did
little to move black farmers from the fringes. White farmer loan applications were
processed in 60 days while Black applications took 220 days. Additionally, the 1990
294 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
Minority Farmers Rights Act, authorized to distribute $10 million in technical
assistance to minority farmers, actually delivered only $2/3 million and as of 2002
was in danger of being de-funded (USDA 2002). A Time to Actconfirmed that it
had not served small farmers well (USDA 1998).
The ground swell of Civil Rights complaints gained notoriety. By the time
Agriculture Secretary Glickman appointed The Civil Rights Action Team in 1996
that would hold listening sessions in a large number of farming communities, during
the Clinton Administration (CRAT 1997), discrimination had already been reported
as studies, reports, and task forces have documented the problems in report after
report(p. 2), such as the US Commission on Civil Rights in 1965, and in 1970, a
USDA Employee Focus Group Report which pointed to insensitivities with regard to
civil rights, cronyism, and nepotism. The CRAT report generated 92 recommenda-
tions relative to numerous actions disadvantaging minority farmers as well as the
absence of accountability and other inequities in the wide-ranging and relatively
autonomous local delivery system(CRAT 1997: 14).
Implementation of the recommendations of the Civil Rights Action Team of 1996
was agonizingly slow and uneven at best (USDA 1997,1998). The United States
Commission on Civil Rights, in a 2003 evaluation, stated what black farmers knew
first hand:
Since the Commissions 1996 report, there is little evidence that the department
has changed or improved what the Commission found to be a complicated civil
rights enforcement program, nor has it addressed the Commissions recommen-
dations significantly. The Commission finds a lack of clarity concerning civil
rights authority and accountability, too many short-term civil rights officials, and
too many officials involved in enforcement(p. 11).
Advocacy Efforts
Social justice advocacy groups had been formed at various stages of the struggle on
behalf of Black farmers. Among others, The Southern Federation of Cooperatives
functioned in this capacity. It helped black farmers and their land loss to become a
visible problem with both the black community and the country as a whole (Zippert
and Watson 2001).Foundedinthe1960sandincorporatedin1967,SFCsmission
remains that of improving conditions for farmers and their families via
cooperatives and credit unions, safeguarding land ownership among black families,
and advocating in terms of public policies that would be beneficial. SFC
successfully targeted the 1987 Agricultural Credit Act and the 1990 Farm Bill,
both of which contained benefits for minority farmers (Federation of Southern
Cooperatives Assistance Fund 2006). A number of advocacy groups had their
beginnings during this time period including The Land Loss Prevention Project
(1980s), the National Black Farmers Association (1995), the Black Farmers and
Agriculturists Association (1997), and the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists
Association, Inc. (2002), among others, including numerous state associations.
These groups worked to seek justice for Black farmers, to prevent further
prevention of land loss by Blacks, and to create economic opportunities for rural
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302 295
economic development.
3
The Environmental Working Group (2006), hereinafter
cited as EWG, proved to be one of the strongest advocates. Initially formed in 1993
andcomposedofavarietyofprofessionalsincluding scientists, lawyers, and policy
experts, EWG pinpointed numerous disparities between Black and White farmers
as it reviewed 70 million documents.
4
Eventually, in 1994, under the Freedom of Information Act, the Land Loss
Prevention Project and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives investigated
discriminatory practices by the USDA in the 1980s and 1990s. One thousand black
farmers filed a $3.5 billion class action suit against the USDA in 1996 alleging
discriminatory actions such as denial of loans, disaster relief, etc. during those years
(Zippert and Watson 2001). This led to what was eventually called the Pigford Class
Action Suit, filed in 1997.
The Last Plantation
Chronicled in a number of places, the Pigford case, highly contentious and strongly
debated within and without the black community, became the largest civil rights
settlement in U.S. history (Wood and Gilbert 2000; Zippert and Watson 2001; Havard
2001; Reid 2003). Over 10 years in the making, three African American farmers filed
suit against the USDA representing a putative class of 641 African American farmers
(Pigford v. Glickman 1997; Brewington v. Glickman 1997). The two over-riding
agendas that were evident from the beginning, compensation for losses and reforming
the structure of the USDA, did not come to fruition due to differences between the
farmers and legal counsel (Zippert and Watson 2001). According to Zippert and
Watson, advocates working on behalf of the black farmer, The shifting details of the
negotiations and the pace of the process did not lend themselves to a consultative,
consensus-based decision-making ideal many social justice advocacy groups strive to
live up to(2001:154155). The Pigford case ultimately was only a partial victory.
The government was ordered to release files of the farmers in the case; various motions
were filed on behalf of the farmers; and class counsel was defined. In late 1997, the
government shifted its position from mediation to settlement, and in 1998 Judge Paul
Friedman, United States District Judge for the District of Columbia, certified the
Pigford class which assisted the case in moving forward as a class (EWG 2006).
In the seventh amended class action complaint of Pigford v. Glickman (1998), which
raised the number in the class to 874, and the number of plaintiffs to 14, again, a range
3
See their histories and missions at their respective web pages. For LLPP see www.landloss.org; for
NBFAA see:wwwblackfarmer.org; for BFAA see www.bfaa-us.org; and for BFAA, Inc. see www.bfaa.net.
4
All farmers received $70 plus million between 1996 and 2000. EWG concluded that African-American
farmers averaged significantly less in terms of economic benefits from subsidies by comparison to all
farmers. The greatest disparity was in Texas where it was $21,000. Despite comprising 1% of all farmers
in the US, Black farmers received one-tenth of one percent of all available crop subsidies. The average
African American farmer subsidy was $1,264 per year while all others received $5,345 per year. An
average small farmer received $4,421 per year. The bottom 80% of all farmers, by comparison to the
bottom 80% of all African American farmers, received ten times more funding. This trend held true across
twelve states accounting for 94% of Black farmers. The gap was the greatest in Texas ($21,096) and
lowest in Georgia ($12,717).
296 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
of discriminatory actions were reported: an absence of timely applications; willful
and continuous racial discriminationin denying applications; and refusal to provide
credit and loan servicing. The document noted the advantage to white farmers with
irregularitiesin their files and plans, loss of Pigfords farm and homestead, loss of
the ability to farm and to purchase a farm, and related physical and emotional pain and
distress to himself and his family. Other plaintiffs documented credit denials, onerous
restrictions, retaliation by USDA by delaying and restricting operating loans following
successful reversals of denials, delay of disaster loan funds as early as 1987, disparity
between black and women farmers by comparison to white farmers relative to four
types of loans from 1995 and 1996, and the absence of compensation when
discrimination findings were evident. A farmer from Arkansas filed a complaint in
1986, and the USDAs Office of Advocacy and Enterprise found in 1987 that his case
was justified, and that discrimination was occurring statewide in a variety of ways:
differential calculations of projected crop yields, lack of timely filing of Black farmers
applications, failure to provide black farmers with adequate information, Farm and
Home Plans with computation errors which resulted in rejections, the delay of title
opinions, lack of advice relative to servicing options, and rude and insensitive
treatment of African American farmers. Eighteen states were represented in the suit.
Following testimony by farmers and various supporters, the Congress passed a bill
suspending the statute of limitations, and President Clinton signed the law in October,
1998. John Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers Association, objected to the
proposed consent decree in February, 1999, asserting that the class-wide injunctive relief
was inadequate, unreasonable and unfair as draftedand that class counsel had
inadequately addressed a number of factors in the decree (Boyd 1999). Fifteen
organizations and 27 individuals, including plaintiffs Timothy Pigford and Cecil
Brewington, spoke as to their concerns about numerous aspects of the Consent Degree
(EWG 2005). Pigford almost pulled out of the case, but the Southern Federation of
Cooperatives decided to support the suit despite its imperfections (Zippert and Watson
2001). Similarly, in 2002, when appearing before a Subcommittee on Department
Operations, Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry, Gary Grant, President of the Black
Farmers & Agriculturalists Association pled with the subcommittee to do right by the
members of the Pigford v. Veneman class action suit,citing in particular the onerous
nature of a black farmer finding a similarly situated white farmer,and other
arbitrary and capriciousreasons for denying claims of the farmers (Grant 2002).
Following contentious debates regarding class definitions, the Consent Decree was
eventually settled in March, 1999 with both definitions and a two-track system
(Pigford v. Glickman 1999).
5
5
Class members were defined as those who were African Americans who attempted to farm or actually
farmed between January 1, 1981 and December 31, 1996; applied to the USDA during this window of
time for farm-related programs and who believe that they were discriminated against; and filed a
complaint on or before July 1, 1997. Track A, designed to offer the farmer $50,000 and debt relief, was to
be settled within a total of 110 days. If the criteria were met, the farmer would also receive a $3,000 tax
relief benefit as well as injunctive relief if evidence was submitted. Track B, designed to function as an
abbreviated trial procedure,compelled farmers to prove both claims and damages via a preponderance
of evidence,all within a proposed time frame of 240 days. The farmer had to provide proof that he or she
was disadvantaged worse than a specifically identified, similarly situatedwhite farmer, one of several
objections over-ruled by the Court as it assumed that class counsel would provide needed documentation.
J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302 297
Hoping against hope, black farmers came to realize what they feared the most, that
their efforts would be futile. The process of the Consent Decree was not the
predictable, efficient processenvisioned. Track A resulted in high rejection rates and
Track B turned into a contentious, protracted proceeding(EWG 2006). The official
web page for the Pigford Case reveals details of the case, eligible class members,
adjudication in each of the two tracks, amounts awarded, and other information.
6
The EWG asserted that the process and the results were woefully inadequate.
7
EWG also reported injustices related to the manner in which the Department of
Justice provided legal representation as contracted by the USDA while working on
the Pigford case.
8
A grievance even acknowledged by Judge Friedman was that it
was going to be virtually automatic and thats because we thought finding similarly
situated white farmers wasnt going to be a problem(Pigford et al. 2001:4). Legal
counsel for the farmers were repeatedly denied access to information under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), putting the burden of proof on the black farmer
to locate the names of nearby farmers, and then to have attorneys pursue information
via various electronic retrieval means. USDA attorneys not only used public money
to fight claims, but used hard-nosed tacticsand filed numerous frivolous motions
or petitions, while attorneys for the farmers were working on a pro bono basis,
initially assuming a relatively easy process (EWG 2006).
EWG concluded that a startling 86% of the farmers with discrimination
complaints have been unsuccessful and walked away from the settlement with no
money and no ability to redress their grievances in a court of law.Only 18
claimants out of 200 prevailed before the Arbitrator under Track B, a continuation
6
Eligible class members numbered 22,657, a total of 22,485 for Track A, and 172 for Track B. In terms of
Track A adjudication, 15,127 were approved, and 7,144 were denied. Track A relief, including the
$50,000 award, non-credit (taxes), IRS payments, debt relief, and interest on debt relief, totaled
$956,204,830 (Office of the Monitor, 2007). At the end of 2003, the Monitor reported a total of 237
eligible Track B claimants, 71 cases settled, 55 cases reverting to Track A, and 6 Track B cases
withdrawn. One hundred five cases were contested, 77 arbitration decisions were made, and 28 decisions
had yet to be issued. Arbitration had resulted in 17 claimants prevailing, 60 cases in with the government
prevailed, 38 cases dismissed before the hearing, and 22 cases heard in which a full hearing was held, but
finding of no liability. The average award to prevailing claimants was $545,686. In terms of injunctive
relief, i.e., providing farm ownership loans, farm operating loans, and inventory property, 67% of
applications were denied (Office of the Monitor 2007).
7
EWG reported that approximately 100,000 farmers came forward, yet 9 out of 10 were denied. Instead of
the $2.3 billion that was allocated for settling the Pigford case, only a small percentage of that had been
provided to the farmers. Class attorneys had woefully underestimated the number of class members. The
lack of notification had resulted in approximately 72,000 farmers being denied access to the process.
Critics complained that Class Counsel attorneys were responsible for disseminating information, yet many
farmers received the information too late to apply for entry. By the EWGs best estimate, The
overwhelming majority of the farmers who did apply on time, some 63,816 farmers, were ultimately
denied entry into the settlement (Pigford Arbitrator, 2004). Their claims were never heard on the merits,
and they will never again have a chance to seek relief for their discrimination complaints (EWG 2006).
8
The Department of Justice documented 56,000 hours of attorney and paralegal time addressing 129
farmersclaims, averaging 460 hours at a total cost of $12 million USDA dollars by 2002. There was the
blatant absence of accountability in terms of availability of documents. While courts traditionally hold
public hearings, the USDA settlement involved closed hearings; no discovery process; no appeal, only
requests for a re-examination; the prohibition of farmers from seeing their own documents if proceeding
pro se; and for-profit entities employed as adjudicators to make decisions relative to claims (EWG 2006).
298 J Afr Am St (2008) 12:283302
of the disenfranchisement of the African American farmer at the hands of the USDA
(EWG 2006). The advocacy group asserted that the USDA had failed to pay to the full
extent promised, i.e., it had only paid out one in four dollars of total value of the
settlement; USDA opposition to access to key information was denied repeatedly;
the USDA failed to accept the decisions of the private entities secured to preside over
the proceedings; and the USDA openly admitted to the discrimination of African
American farmers in various loan and subsidy programs. EWG recommended full
compensation to the 9,000 farmers who were denied membership in the settlement class,
that Congress should order USDA to reconsider the merits of the 64,000 farmers who
were denied due to the lack of notice; that Congress should compel the USDA to monitor
and enforce civil rights standards throughout the agency; and that Congress should
guarantee complete outreach and financial help designed to aid farmers of color (2006).
Conclusion
American agriculture was built upon the backs of Africans who were enslaved upon
American soil. Rich in culture and history as they came to this land, they were
intended to work the land, but never intended to own the land. Following the
Emancipation Proclamation, they became prodigious landowners despite racism in
its various forms under the complex system of Jim Crow laws. Following the peak of
land ownership in the early 1900s, blacks began to face, and still continue to face,
enormous obstacles in maintaining ownership of their land due to a variety of
egregious systemic factors which impact in incomprehensible ways their economic
and psychological health. Black farmers faced additional challenges to land ownership
following the transitions in the 1930s as the influence of mechanization, herbicides,
and government policy strengthened the agribusiness industry. Intolerable and
intolerant conditions led to an enormous degree of land loss far exceeding that of
the white farmer. In the face of acknowledgements of wrong-doing at the highest
levels of the USDA, underscored by compelling information as to the inner workings
of the county committee system and its pernicious power, the USDA had the
opportunity to right the wrongs of decades and centuries of discrimination. Instead, the
Pigford Consent Decree and its various components including the USDA, the judicial
system, and legal counsel succeeded in continuing the ongoing degradation of African
American farmers. While generally out of the publics eye, efforts continue to be
waged to right these egregious wrongs by various social justice advocates including
BFAA, NBFAA, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, EWG, and members of the
House of Representatives and the Senate. That day cannot come quickly enough. The
farmers are still waiting for justice. They want to work the land they own.
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... This is especially relevant for industries such as agriculture that have long relied on the labor of people of color to pursue continual production. Scholars have argued that the cultural and political heritage of American agriculture is rooted in exploitation of labor groups, and that the effects of this legacy persist in the form of income inequality, employment instability, oppression, and environmental injustices (Wells 1996;2002;Harrison 2008aHarrison , 2008bHinson and Robinson 2008;Perea 2011;. Racial discrimination is often perpetuated through historical and current institutional policies (Bullard and Johnson 2000;Pellow 2005), which can certainly be seen in policies regarding the agricultural industry and its laborers. ...
... For example, during the creation of the New Deal in 1933, Southern and Western congressmen were successful in excluding agricultural laborers from policies like the National Labor Relations Act, which provided employees protections such as a minimum wage and the ability to unionize (Ganz 2009;Perea 2011). At the time, many agricultural policies were structured to preserve a semi-plantation arrangement, which kept farmworkers living on employers' properties, owing farm owners rent and other debts, and keeping farmworkers economically vulnerable (Hinson and Robinson 2008;Perea 2011; for related discussions see Hahamovitch 2008;Mitchell 2012). During this time, farmworkers came to Apopka looking for employment, and by the 1940s, the area became known as a hub for agricultural work. ...
... In this case, we argue that the policies and sociohistorical context of southern agriculture contributed to racial injustice experienced by these farmworkers. The lack of federal and state protections for farmworkers, including exclusions from labor and health regulations and minimum wage requirements, impacted Black women farmworkers across multiple dimensions (see also Wells 1996;2002;Harrison 2008a, b;Hinson and Robinson 2008;Perea 2011;. Local policies reflected white residents' resistance to the integration of Black residents in the area, and restricted opportunities for jobs or education outside of the muck farms. ...
Article
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Research has established that the burdens of externalities associated with industrial production are disproportionately borne by socially and politically vulnerable groups, and this is particularly true for farmworkers who are at high risk for environmental exposures and illnesses. The impacts of these risks are often compounded by farmworker communities’ social vulnerability. Yet, less is known about how the intersection of race, class, and gender can position some farmworkers to be at higher risk for particular types of oppressions. We extend the literature by analyzing the case of Black women farmworkers in Apopka, Florida, which was historically home to a large agricultural community. Drawing on the concept of critical environmental justice, we investigate the lived experiences of these women in the context of racialized, gendered, and economic oppressions during their time working on the farms. We use the case of Apopka to ask: (a) how the policies and socio-historical context of the agricultural industry in the American South contributed to injustices experienced by Black women farmworkers in Apopka, Florida; and (b) how race, gender, and class intersected and intersect to create and legitimize environmental injustices in the workplace for these farmworkers. Our data include semi-structured in-depth interviews, newspaper and media coverage, and archival materials. Our analysis advances work on critical environmental justice and intersectionality by mapping the relationship between structural and environmental intersectional oppressions for Black women farmworkers.
... The USDA, in particular, has a history of discrimination against Black farmers. Mishandling of loan applications, denial of loans, and lack of assistance from this agency is well documented (Hinson and Robinson 2008). The differences and similarities between FFOs who are Black and those who are White have important implications for how landowner assistance and other programs are designed and implemented. ...
Article
The USDA Forest Service, National Woodland Owner Survey asks family forest owners (FFOs) about their attitudes and intentions regarding their forestland. Historically, the number of responses from Black or African American FFOs has been very low, but it is uncertain whether this is because of nonresponse bias or that there are relatively few Black FFOs. To get a better understanding of these FFOs and to test a method to increase response rates, an intensified survey effort was conducted in three southern states: Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Analyses indicate that Black FFOs have slightly different objectives, activities, and ownership structure for their forestland than their White counterparts, who have traditionally represented the majority of FFOs. Study Implications: By conducting an experiment to increase response rates from Black family forest owners to the National Woodland Owner Survey, we find traditional methodology is not effective. More importantly, we see this group has moderately different responses than their White counterparts. This has wide ranging implications for landowner assistance programs and other initiatives that have been designed on the premise that we are accurately capturing responses from all woodland owners.
... In a recent work, Coppess (2021) discusses how discrimination and disparate treatment have been designed into farm programs and policies and reinforced through appropriations, hearings, and legislative revisions, thereby impeding Black farmers' access to the land and capital. Other factors affecting a decline in the number of Black farmers include structural changes in agriculture (Busch & Juska, 1997;Lobao & Meyer, 2001); the Great Migration of the 20th century (Tolnay, 2003); loss of land due to partition sale of property (Dyer & Bailey, 2008;Gilbert et al., 2002;Pennick et al., 2007); nonparticipation in government programs (Gordon et al., 2013;Tyler & Rivers, 2014) and discrimination (Hinson & Robinson, 2008;Pigford v. Glickman, 1999;Wood & Gilbert, 2000) at all levels (state and federal). ...
Article
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Black farmers have historically been discriminated against in services from the federal government, including access to credit. Discrimination can take the form of delayed loan processing requests, which can affect timely planting, harvesting, feeding of livestock, and farm performance. This study uses nationwide, farm‐level data from 2009 to 2021 from the Farm Service Agency's direct farm loan program to investigate racial discrimination in the farm loan program. Findings reveal loan processing times average longer for Black borrowers on operating loans, though with a substantial state‐level variation. Specifically, it takes an average of more than two additional days for Black farmers' operating loan applications to be completed and another two additional days to be processed. However, there was no significant difference in time for farm ownership loans suggesting a more nuanced cause than outright racial discrimination. Other factors that increased loan processing time for borrowers included larger loan amounts, more complex loan types, a mix of collateral, and being a new borrower.
... With regard to agriculture for example, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has a long history of deploying a racist agenda toward communities of color dating back to 1862 when it was known as the Bureau of Agriculture (Hinson & Robinson, 2008;Sanders, 1999). ...
Chapter
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For the last half century, the “right to food” (RTF) framework has been promoted by the United Nations as an important policy framework to end hunger. However, the RTF assumes that states view all of their population as worthy and deserving of food security. Given the legacy of racism in the United States, racialized minorities have not been viewed by the state as deservant of food security. Rather than work to support food security for all, the state instead has used its power to create two food systems, separate and unequal. The chapter begins with an overview of the right to food framework followed by a brief examination of the United States as a white supremacist state. Specifically, we illuminate how the U.S. government has used agricultural, food and nutrition, and urban planning policies to deny food to communities of color. Grounded in these historical patterns, we put forward six key racial equity principles that must be centralized in rights-based approaches to hunger so as not to erase the role of white supremacy in producing hunger. In the final section, we articulate how a racially-sensitive right to food framework can be used to reimagine public policy to support food security for all people, but especially for communities of color. To this end, we identify six reparative public policies that will significantly decrease hunger and build political power in racialized communities: (a) repairing SNAP, (b) restoring food sovereignty, (c) revitalizing grocery stores, (d) reframing restaurants, (e) reconstituting food pantries, and (f) rebuilding communication sovereignty.
... However, just as African Americans understood the connection between power, wealth, freedom, and land ownership, so too did the elite white community with a vested interest in maintaining Black subordination. Black land ownership was seen as a threat to white planters that still relied on place-bound Black labour (Hinson and Robinson 2008;Marable 1979). Throughout the 20 th century, African Americans faced rapid dispossession, and currently own closer to 4.7 million acres (USDA NASS 2019). ...
Article
“Holding Land, Claiming Kin” uses a comparison between the Southern US and the Caribbean island of Barbados to explore the connection between race, property, and kinship. Focusing on the customary practices of family land and the legal category of heir property, we argue that land ownership is used by racially dispossessed populations to name and practise kinship, to assert multiple forms of belonging, and to define their own value systems within racialised, social, and legal structures. Contributing to broader understandings of Black geographies, this work adds to social understandings of land ownership as place making and has the potential to influence US policies around grants, agricultural assistance, and protection of heir property, as well as Caribbean understandings of land as a family resource. Through this comparative analysis we posit dispossession as more than the loss of monetary wealth and land ownership as more than an economic asset.
... The Bureau of Agricultural Economics of the USDA, for example, faced challenges when researchers published work documenting racial tensions in Mississippi or were critical of treatment of Mexican farmworkers in California (Zimmerman 2015). At times, USDA reforms, in which social scientists and public administrators cooperated, were oriented toward progressive change and democratization (Gilbert 2016), but these programs also provided more opportunities for white farmers than Black ones (Daniel 2007;Gilbert, Sharp, and Felin 2002;Hinson and Robinson 2008;Jordan et al. 2009;Reid and Bennett 2012). ...
Article
This article, which also serves as the introduction for this special guest‐edited issue, examines the history of Rural Sociology's scholarly engagement with rurality, race, and ethnicity. We examine the historical patterns of how Rural Sociology has addressed race and ethnicity, and then present results from a meta‐analysis of empirical articles published between 1971 and 2020. Over time, the methodological approaches and scholarly focus of articles on race and ethnicity within Rural Sociology has gradually expanded to include more analyses of power and inequality using constructivist perspectives, and greater numbers of qualitative inquiries into the lived experiences of both white and nonwhite people. The articles featured in the special issue extend from Rural Sociology's growing attention to race and ethnicity. Together, they suggest the ways in which rural spaces are racially coded, how intersections with race and ethnicity exacerbate rural inequality, how the domination of people and the environment are co‐constituted, and how practices of racism are embedded within contextually specific ecologies. In drawing attention to these contributions, we suggest future directions for the discipline's engagement with rurality, race, and ethnicity, while simultaneously suggesting the ways in which our own disciplinary racial reckoning remains incomplete.
... Over several generations, a single property might gain hundreds of legal heirs, many residing far from the property. Managing the property and paying the property taxes become monumental tasks with so many owners, which can ultimately lead to property tax delinquencies and forced sales (Hinson and Robinson, 2008;Hitchner et al., 2017;Rivers, 2006;Schelhas et al., 2019). As a result, heirs properties become a target of predatory real-estate developers (Baab, 2011;Hitchner et al., 2017). ...
Article
Sea level rise and urbanization exert complex synergistic pressures on the provision of ecosystem services (ES) in coastal regions. Anticipating when and where both biophysical and cultural ES will be affected by these two types of coastal environmental change is critical for sustainable land-use planning and management. Biophysical (provisioning and regulating) services can be mapped using secondary data. We demonstrate an approach to mapping cultural ES by engaging stakeholders in iterative participatory mapping of personally and communally valuable cultural ES. We identify hotspots where highly valued cultural ES and high values for biophysical ES co-occur and generate spatially-explicit projections of sea level rise and urban expansion through 2060 to quantify impacts of the ‘coastal squeeze’ on ES. We study Johns Island, South Carolina, USA as an example of a vulnerable community in a low-lying region experiencing both rising water levels and a rapid influx of new residents and development. Our projections of environmental change through 2060 indicate that on Johns Island, cultural ES face disproportionately greater risk of decline than biophysical ES, with almost three quarters of the island’s cultural ES affected. We find that hotspots for cultural ES, such as community heritage sites and scenic vistas of oak-lined roads and marshes, rarely co-occur (only 3% area) with biophysical ES such as high values of carbon sequestration and agricultural production. This confirms the importance of engaging with local stakeholders to map cultural ES and puts them on a more level playing field with biophysical ES in decision-making contexts. Projected declines and limited overlap between biophysical and cultural ES highlight the need for tighter coordination between conservation and community planning, and for including locally valued cultural ES in assessments of threats posed by the ‘coastal squeeze’ of sea level rise and urban expansion.
... The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund and the Land Loss Prevention Project were founded in 1967 and 1982, respectively, to help African American farmers retain their land amid ongoing discriminatory practices and economic crises. In the 1990s, these organizations and the Farmers' Legal Action Group began investigating and further documenting discriminatory practices (Hinson and Robinson 2008). This led to a classaction lawsuit (Pigford v. Glickman) accusing the USDA of denying loans, disaster relief, and other benefits to hundreds of Black farmers. ...
Chapter
The international peasant confederation La Vía Campesina has long understood land as a key battleground in the struggle against neoliberal globalization and in the construction of food sovereignty. Food movements in the United States, however, have been slow to embrace land as a key platform of struggle—this despite dramatic and rising levels of land concentration, magnified by recent trends such as financialization and climate change. This chapter argues that the injustices of the capitalist food system are directly related to dispossession and lack of control over land. As such, it suggests that a sharper focus on land among the seemingly disparate groups that comprise the US food movement could form the basis for political convergence and deeper, more long lasting transformation.
Article
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Blacks have been farming in the USA for about four centuries and in Michigan since the 1830s. Yet, for blacks, owning and retaining farmland has been a continuous challenge. This historical analysis uses environmental justice and food sovereignty frameworks to examine the farming experiences of blacks in the USA generally, and more specifically in Michigan. It analyzes land loss, the precipitous decline in the number of black farmers, and the strategies that blacks have used to counteract these phenomena. The paper shows that the ability of blacks to own and operate farms has been negatively impacted by lack of access to credit, segregation, relegation to marginal and hazard-prone land, natural disasters, organized opposition to black land ownership, and systemic discrimination. The paper examines the use of cooperatives and other community-based organizations to help blacks respond to discrimination and environmental inequalities. The paper assesses how the farming experiences of blacks in Michigan compare to the experiences of black farmers elsewhere. It also explores the connections between Michigan’s black farmers, southern black farmer cooperatives, and Detroit’s black consumers.
Book
The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was the country's bloodiest civil disturbance of the century. Leaving perhaps 150 dead, 30 city blocks burned to the ground, and more than a thousand families homeless, the riot represented an unprecedented breakdown of the rule of law. It reduced the prosperous black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma to rubble. In Reconstructing the Dreamland, Alfred Brophy draws on his own extensive research into contemporary accounts and court documents to chronicle this devastating riot, showing how and why the rule of law quickly eroded. Brophy offers a gut-wrenching portrait of mob violence and racism run amok, both on the night of the riot and the morning after, when a coordinated sunrise attack, accompanied by airplanes, stormed through Greenwood, torching and looting the community. Equally important, he shows how the city government and police not only permitted the looting, shootings, and burning of Greenwood, but actively participated in it. The police department, fearing that Greenwood was erupting into a "negro uprising" (which Brophy shows was not the case), deputized white citizens haphazardly, gave out guns and badges with little background check, or sent men to hardware stores to arm themselves. Likewise, the Tulsa-based units of the National Guard acted unconstitutionally, arresting every black resident they could find, leaving Greenwood property vulnerable to the white mob, special deputies, and police that followed behind and burned it. Brophy's revelations and stark narrative of the events of 1921 brings to life an incidence of racial violence that until recently lay mostly forgotten. Reconstructing the Dreamland concludes with a discussion of reparations for victims of the riot. That case has implications for other reparations movements, including reparations for slavery.
Book
In 1968, Winthrop D. Jordan set out in encyclopedic detail the evolution of white Englishmen's and Anglo-Americans' perceptions of blacks, perceptions of difference used to justify race-based slavery, and liberty and justice for whites only. This second edition, with new forewords by historians Christopher Leslie Brown and Peter H. Wood, reminds us that Jordan's text is still the definitive work on the history of race in America in the colonial era. Every book published to this day on slavery and racism builds upon his work; all are judged in comparison to it; none has surpassed it.
Book
Throughout the history of the African American people there has been no stronger resource for overcoming adversity than the black church. From its role in leading a group of free Blacks to form a colony in Sierra Leone in the 1790s to helping ex-slaves after the Civil War, and from playing major roles in the Civil Rights Movement to offering community outreach programs in American cities today, black churches have been the focal point of social change in their communities. Based on extensive research over several years, this book is the first comprehensive account of how black churches have helped shape American society. The author surveys nearly a thousand black churches across the country, including its oldest, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia. These black churches, whose roots extend back to antebellum times, have periodically confronted social, economic, and political problems facing the African American community. This book addresses such questions as: How widespread and effective is the community activity of black churches? What are the patterns of activities being undertaken today? How do activist churches confront such problems as family instability, youth development, AIDS and other health issues, and care for the elderly? With profiles of the remarkable black heroes and heroines who helped create the activist church, and a compelling agenda for expanding the black church's role in society at large, this book is an inspirational, visionary, and definitive account of the subject. © 1999 by Andrew Billingsley and the University of Maryland. All rights reserved.
Article
No group in America votes Democratic more than black Americans, who from Reconstruction until the Great Depression had clung just as tenaciously to the Republican Party. Historians usually regard the New Deal as the turning point in this political realignment, but they remain uncertain as to why blacks flocked to the Democratic Party in the 1930s. The racial impact of New Deal policies also evokes controversy. In this article, I examine the racial impact of New Deal agricultural, industrial (especially labor), and other policies. I conclude that the criticism of New Deal policies is largely valid. The harm that New Deal policies did to blacks increased the percieved need for remedies such as affirmative action in 1960s, and in several respects such policies were adumbrated in the New Deal itself. Finally, I consider why an economic recovery program that was such a failure had such political success, in particular in the black partisan realignment of the 1930s.
Article
The industrial expansion of the twentieth century brought with it a profound shift away from traditional agricultural modes and practices in the American South. The forces of economic modernity-specialization, mechanization, and improved efficiency-swept through southern farm communities, leaving significant upheaval in their wake. In an attempt to comprehend the complexities of the present and prepare for the uncertainties of the future, many southern farmers searched for order and meaning in their memories of the past. In Southern Farmers and Their Stories, Melissa Walker explores the ways in which a diverse array of farmers remember and recount the past. The book tells the story of the modernization of the South in the voices of those most affected by the decline of traditional ways of life and work. Walker analyzes the recurring patterns in their narratives of change and loss, filling in gaps left by more conventional political and economic histories of southern agriculture. Southern Farmers and Their Stories also highlights the tensions inherent in the relationship between history and memory. Walker employs the concept of "communities of memory" to describe the shared sense of the past among southern farmers. History and memory converge and shape one another in communities of memory through an ongoing process in which shared meanings emerge through an elaborate alchemy of recollection and interpretation. In her careful analysis of more than five hundred oral history narratives, Walker allows silenced voices to be heard and forgotten versions of the past to be reconsidered. Southern Farmers and Their Stories preserves the shared memories and meanings of southern agricultural communities not merely for their own sake but for the potential benefit of a region, a nation, and a world that has much to learn from the lessons of previous generations of agricultural providers. Copyright © 2006 by The University Press of Kentucky. All rights reserved.