African-American Farmers Still Being Denied Justice! Congress Ignores $1.15 Billion Settlement Deadline

It's time to plant and farmers in Macklenburg County usually go to the local lender to apply for US Department of Agriculture loans to get funding for planting and harvesting.

A barely out of his teens Black farmer, John Boyd sits uncomfortably in the office of the job-multitasking county supervisor/loan officer. He is a loud, red-faced tobacco chewer that would talk down to Boyd in a degrading tone using words like,"boy and colored"

"Check the box that says colored," the man tells Boyd.

Boyd dutifully checks the box and signs the application. The lender picks it up and barely glances at it. He tears it up and throws the document in the trash while the young man was still sitting there.

The loan officer says,"Boy, you are wasting your time here. I don't have any funds to lend." He tells Boyd that it's in everyone's best interest that he sell his farm to one of the bigger white farmers in the county. And that he had made arrangements for Boyd, his wife and small child to move to the farmers stead, to farm and milk cows.

Boyd pretty much tells Mr. supervisor/lender to stick it where the sun doesn't shine and demands to know, "why can't I get these loans?"

Spitting and sputtering he gets in Boyd's face and threatens that he is going to sell the young farmer out. The lender conveniently pretends to aim for the spit can sitting prominently on his desk and misses. Reddish-brown spittle lands on the front of Boyd's crisp white for meeting shirt.

Boyd says, for the first time in his life "he felt less than a man."

If you think this event took place 100 years ago, you're wrong. This type of discrimination occurred in the early 1990's and is still happening today.

Failing to meet mortgage payments on his struggling farm, the lender foreclosed on Boyd's life dream and posted it for sale in the local paper in 1996.

Boyd and other Black farmers who were discriminated against, decided to fight and took their cause to Washington, DC. His farm was scheduled for auction on December 22. The government stopped the foreclosures on December 17. Boyd settled his case with the government a year and a half later.

According to a report released by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), litigation against the USDA for discriminating against Black farmers began in August 1997, and was known as the Pigford case.

The suit stated that the government agency had discriminated against them because of their skin color and had failed to investigate and respond in a timely manner to the farmers complaints from 1983-1997.

The 1997 case was settled out of court 11-years ago, but many of Black farmers were aging, and could barely read or write, signed too late or missed the September 12, 2000 deadline.

A little known Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama sponsored a measure in the 2008 Farm Bill to reopen the case. It was known as Pigford II.

In February 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a 1.25 billion dollar settlement of the Pigford II claims, but Congress missed or ignored the March 31 deadline to fund it.

Another deadline looms on May 31. This time if Congress fails to settle the lawsuit, there is a provision that allows the plaintiffs to void the settlement altogether.