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Why isn't Washington paying what
it owes to black farmers?
By
Chris Kromm
For many, the scandal
surrounding Shirley Sherrod's
dubious ouster from the U.S.
Agriculture Department was the
first they'd heard of
civil rights battles over
farm policy, particularly the
landmark
Pigford case focused on
redressing
decades of discriminatory
policies against
African-American farmers.
Filed in 1997 by North Carolina
farmer Timothy Pigford, the
class-action lawsuit against the
USDA led to two momentous
victories for the plaintiffs: In
1999, the black farmers reached
a settlement with the government
for over $1 billion.
However, many black farmers
never had their cases heard
because they filed late—over
73,000 petitions that became
Pigford II. (The reasons for the
late filings have been blamed on
inadequate notice being
provided, extenuating
circumstances like hurricanes,
and, according to one of the
judges, bad lawyers for the
farmers, "bordering
on legal malpractice" [pdf].)
On February 18 this year,
Attorney General Eric Holder
announced that Washington was
settling the Pigford II claims
for a total of $1.25 billion.
Anticipating this, Congress
appropriated $100 million for
the settlement in the 2008 Farm
Bill, so President Obama
requested that Congress include
the remaining $1.15 billion in
its FY2010 budget.
But Congress never coughed up
the money. Sen. Inouye (D-HI)
introduced an amendment to the
spending bill, but on March 10
the Senate voted 66-34
to end debate, immediately
killing the measure.
The Pigford II settlement
funding came up again in
Congress in June, when a measure
to extend unemployment benefits
also included funding black
farmer claims. But Senate
Republicans blocked that bill
on a 57-41 filibuster.
Funding the settlement emerged
again this month, when Democrats
attached it to the emergency
spending bill for the
Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The
House approved the measure, but
last week
the Senate again voted it down.
In all,
51 senators voted
against the version of the bill
including funding for the USDA
settlement, including 11
Democrats.
Why has the Senate failed three
times to provide funding for a
settlement the government agreed
to honor? The answer likely has
to do with election-year
politics.
Most in Congress—even
deficit-hawk Republicans like
House Minority Leader Rep. John
Boehner—are
on record supporting
the settlement. But heading into
November, they likely don't want
to have an additional $1.15
billion next to their name in
campaign ads about government
spending.
But unless the federal
government reneges on the
settlement (there's a loophole
that allows the USDA to vacate
the claims if Congress doesn't
give them the money, but the
Obama administration has said
they won't go this route),
they'll have to pay for the USDA
claims sooner or later.
As it stands, the Senate is just
putting off the inevitable—and
playing politics instead of
honoring its legal obligation to
African-American farmers.
Source:
Southern Studies
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* * * *
Shirley Sherrod long a thorn in
Ag Dept.'s side—By Willie Brown—San
Francisco Chronicle
July
25, 2010—As
an old pro, though, I know that
you don't fire someone without
at least hearing their side of
the story unless you want them
gone in the first place. This
woman has been a thorn in the
side of the Agriculture
Department for years. She was
part of a class-action lawsuit
against the department on behalf
of black farmers in the South.
For years, she has been
operating a community activist
organization not unlike ACORN.
I think there were those in the
Agriculture Department who
objected to her being hired in
the first place. Plus there was
the politics. If you are running
for election in south Georgia,
you don't want to have to
explain someone like Sherrod.
But I have to add that the
overreaction of the White House
once again underscores Obama's
own problem with race. This
president has carefully crafted
his image, and it hinges on his
not being seen as a Jesse
Jackson or an Al Sharpton, as a
flack for the NAACP or the Urban
League.
In other words, he does not want
to be seen as a "black"
president. He wants to be seen
as a president who happens to be
black. That mind-set permeates
his administration. Anytime
there's an issue that is clearly
"black," the Obama people do not
want to be associated with it in
any fashion. We saw it first in
his distancing himself from the
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and to a
lesser extent in the dust-up
between police and Harvard
Professor Henry Louis Gates. And
now this.
Obama has come in for
considerable criticism from a
number of respectable and
important black people. He has a
Latino issues adviser. He has an
adviser on gay rights. He has an
adviser on senior issues, on
labor—but there is no African
American issues adviser. There
has been no big black cultural
celebration at the White House.
There's only one black in his
cabinet. Even George W. Bush had
more blacks in positions of
power than Obama. Frankly, I
think some of the sniping is
unfair. Obama really is trying
his best to elevate the racial
climate and bring this country
into the 21st century—but
there's a lot of mid-20th
century left in America.—SFGate
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Hard feelings about handling of
Shirley Sherrod have deep roots in Georgia—Black farmers in
the South have been subject to discrimination, even in recent
years—and the former USDA
official has been right there with them.—Willie
Adams [photo above] was one of the first farmers to join a
class-action suit for discrimination settled for $2 billion
against the USDA in 1997. . . . |
In Sherrod's southwest Georgia home, many saw a painful
loop of history.
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The racism charge was not lodged at just any official.
Her family is intertwined with this region's tortured
tale of racial animus. And the agency that quickly
distanced itself from her was not just any arm of power.
The Agriculture Department has long been a symbol of
lingering institutional discrimination.
And southwest Georgia is no ordinary pocket in the Deep South.
Historians describe it as among the most difficult to integrate
in the 1960s.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. left Albany having accomplished
little. Change was so slow to come that sharecropping, although
rare, existed until the early 1970s.
Erma Wilburn, who once participated with Sherrod in a farming
cooperative, sees much work left to do to obtain equality. The
election of a black U.S. president has not changed that, she
said.
"You don't fire a black woman from the South like that," Wilburn
said. "Don't you know she had to go through something to get to
where she is?" |
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Shirley Sherrod was born Shirley Miller just outside
Albany in Baker County, or "bad Baker County," as it was
also known by blacks in the area. Her father grew corn,
cotton and peanuts on the more than 500 acres he owned.
Sherrod and her sisters worked in the fields, went to
the Baptist church and studied hard.
She was a senior at the all-black East Baker High
School, about to become the first to graduate in her
family, when she got the news on a March afternoon in
1965. Her father had been shot. Relatives rushed to the
hospital to give blood. It was too late.
The family says Hosie Miller was killed by a white
neighbor after a dispute over cattle. No one was ever
indicted in the case. Sherrod says the killing led her
to her calling, to work for justice in southwest
Georgia.
She married Charles Sherrod, who was part of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and had come to town
to register black voters. He was a leader in the
coalition of civil rights groups known as the Albany
Movement.
In 1969, the Sherrods and other leaders formed New
Communities Inc., a cooperative farm run by committee.
For the next 15 years, about a dozen black families
lived and worked there.
"We shared what we had," Wilburn said. "We supported
each other."
 |
The farm, like many in the region, was battered by drought in
the 1980s. Unlike other farms, New Communities' request for a
federal emergency loan to build a small irrigation system was
denied, without clear explanation, an arbitrator later found.
The next year, 1982, the group decided to sell timber to help
keep the farm afloat. But the USDA unexpectedly took the profits
as a precondition for another loan. When New Communities applied
for a loan in 1983, the agency requested a deed on the land as
collateral. It took the deed, but gave nothing in return.
By 1985, New Communities was bankrupt and the last of its farm,
once nearly 6,000 acres, was sold.
Across the South in the 1970s and 1980s, scores of black farmers
lost their land and livelihoods while the USDA, historically a
sort of safety net for family farms, allowed them to slip
through. Unable to get timely loans, denied bank credit, and
poorly informed of the options available, their farms sputtered.
In August 1997, a North Carolina farmer named Timothy
Pigford sued the Agriculture Department, claiming racial
discrimination and arguing that civil rights complaints
had not been responded to since the Reagan
administration had dismantled the Office of Civil Rights
in 1983. |
A USDA study at the time found that blacks waited three
times as long as whites to get federal loans processed.
Hundreds of black farmers signed on to Pigford's
class-action lawsuit. Negotiations in the case turned
ugly when a government lawyer allegedly used a racial
epithet in referring to a farmers' advocate on a
conference call.
Less than a year later, a judge approved a $2-billion
settlement. The pact allowed each farmer to seek $50,000
cash and debt forgiveness, or pursue a larger amount
through arbitration.
|
In 2009, chief arbitrator Michael Lewis ruled the
department had discriminated against New Communities in
denying it a loan. Unlike the Sherrods, white farmers
who put up collateral received money in exchange. The
government's demand that New Communities turn over
$50,000 in profit from the timber sale "smacks of
nothing more than a feudal baron demanding additional
crops from his serfs," Lewis wrote.
New Communities was awarded $12.8 million. Shirley and Charles
Sherrod each were awarded $150,000 for "mental anguish."
By some estimates 80,000 black farmers were shut out of the
Pigford settlement because of late claims and, in some cases,
poor legal representation. Congress has agreed to reopen the
case, but has not yet appropriated money for more settlements.
Last week, it missed another chance. The Senate pulled $1.25
billion for black farmers out of another funding bill.
But for locals here, they still have the gracious example of
Shirley Sherrod. |
 |
On
July 26, a week after she had been attacked, apologized
to, vindicated and interviewed by media out of state,
Sherrod visited a campaign office tucked in a strip mall
here.
A small crowd, mostly middle-aged black women, had come
for a campaign kickoff for the local congressman. But it
was also a homecoming of sorts for a local daughter. The
women sat quietly on folding chairs in neat rows. The
heat from outside oozed in. Hand-held fans were
flapping. A punch bowl was sweating.
When Sherrod entered, the cheers began.
"Shirley! Shirley!"
Source:
LaTimes
* * * * *
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The civil rights heroism of Charles Sherrod—Andrew Breitbart
sure picked the wrong people to symbolize black "racism." Taylor
Branch and Clay Carson weigh in— July 22, 2010—People who
care about civil rights and racial reconciliation may eventually
thank
Andrew Breitbart for bringing Shirley Sherrod the global
attention she deserves. Really. Her
message of racial healing, her insight that the forces of
wealth and injustice have always pit "the haves and the
have-nots" against each other, whatever their race, is exactly
what's missing in today's Beltway debates about race. What's
even more amazing, but almost completely unexplored in this
controversy, is the historic civil rights leadership role of her
husband,
Charles Sherrod, an early leader of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, who served on the front lines of the
nonviolent civil rights movement in the early 1960s. . . . |
Sherrod was SNCC's first field
secretary, and he co-founded the Albany movement after a student sit-in at
the local bus station (to test a recently enacted desegregation law) led to
a years-long campaign that ultimately involved Martin Luther King Jr. and
the intervention of President John F. Kennedy. He traveled to the historic
(and almost all-white) 1964 Democratic National Convention, when the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party fought for more black representation.
He was jailed several times and stayed with SNCC until 1966, when Stokely
Carmichael became chair and whites were expelled, but he'd already become
more focused on his work in southwest Georgia than SNCC politics. Sherrod
got his doctor of divinity degree from New York's Union Theological
Seminary, then returned to Albany to found the Southwest Georgia Independent
Voters Project, then the agricultural cooperative New Communities Inc. He
served 14 years on the Albany City Council, and he still lives there, known
to civil rights movement veterans but obscure to the wider world, until his
wife was attacked by the ignorant bullies of the right. . . .
Taylor Branch hopes the ugly treatment
of Shirley Sherrod has the unintended positive consequence of "adding some
context about a truly remarkable couple." Branch was sequestered in a
Philadelphia library, researching his next book, and emerged to see
headlines about some squabble over a USDA official. He read the story: "I
said, 'Oh my God, it's Shirley Sherrod?' She is such a gem, and he is such a
gem. We should really be listening to what she has to say."
Clay Carson agrees, but he couldn't
resist voicing disappointment in President Obama for the administration's
rapid dismissal of Shirley Sherrod before all the facts were in. "This is a
symbol of something much larger: On civil liberties issues, he's just lost
it. Nobody should ever be dismissed from a position for something they're
saying on Fox. As a matter of principle, you don't fire someone without some
kind of internal due process and investigation. But this is an
administration that can order the assassination of an American citizen. It's
disappointing, to say the least."
Salon
* * * * *
Lies and the Vilification of Black Women /
Olbermann: The witch-hunt vs. Sherrod
 |
The rapid and misguided
condemnation—and subsequent resignation—of Shirley Sherrod has
reignited a lot of questions about the role of race in America's
political landscape. As Nation columnist
Melissa Harris-Lacewell explained last night on Countdown,
American politicians have long been assigning blame to black
women—and "the mythical welfare queen" in particular—for a whole
host of problems.
"The vilification of black
women for sport and political gain has been sort of a basic part
of the American political strategy for both the Republican and
Democratic parties for a couple of decades now," Harris-Lacewell
says. And the fact that the NAACP, the organization that should
have come to Sherrod's defense, lacked the basic understanding
of her background that would have helped them correct the
problem is the worst of it.
"To say her last name alone should have
prompted, for the head of the NAACP, an immediate moment of pausing,"
Harris-Lacewell says.—Carrie Battan |
* * * * *
Black farmers, Indians closer to US settlement—By
Mary Clare Jalonick—20 November 2010—Under legislation passed by the
Senate on Friday, black farmers who claim discrimination at the hands of the
Agriculture Department would receive almost $1.2 billion. American Indians
who say they were swindled out of royalties by the Interior Department would
split $3.4 billion. Both cases have languished for more than a decade, and
plaintiffs say beneficiaries are dying off. "The Senate finally did the
right thing," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers
Association. "They stepped up and told the world civil rights still matter
in America."
The legislation was approved in the Senate by voice
vote Friday and sent to the House. The money had been held up for months in
the chamber as Democrats and Republicans squabbled over how to pay for it. .
. . For the black farmers, it is the second round of funding from a
class-action lawsuit originally settled in 1999 over allegations of
widespread discrimination by local Agriculture Department offices in
awarding loans and other aid. It is known as the Pigford case, named after
Timothy Pigford, a black farmer from North Carolina who was an original
plaintiff.
The government already has paid out more than $1
billion to about 16,000 black farmers, with most getting about $50,000. The
new money is intended for people—some estimates say 70,000 or 80,000—who
were denied earlier payments because they missed deadlines for filing. The
individual amounts depend on how many claims are successfully filed.—AJC
* * * * *
Charles Sherrods Uncle Toms /
Sherrod New Communities Suit /
Rev. Charles Sherrod
Delivers Keynote Address at Race and Law Conference
The Rev. Charles Sherrod delivers a keynote address at "50
Years After the Sit-Ins,"
a conference at the
University of Virginia School of Law.
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev.
Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery
* * * * *
Ten years ago, Rohan Marley, Co-Founder
and CEO of Marley Coffee, set out to fulfill one of the visions left by his
late father to establish a business centered on giving back to the
underprivileged and voiceless. Bob Marley always said he wanted to return to
farming one day after his music career was completed, but he never had the
opportunity after his passing in early 1981. Here is where the story of
Marley Coffee begins.
Marley recalls a story from his
childhood to help explain his desire to become a farmer and pass on the
legacy his father had set forth so many years earlier. “The idea of farming
was always interesting to me growing up as a child because my father, my
mother and my grandmother would always discuss it,” he says. “My entire
family still deals with farming. When I lived in Miami, we had a garden in
the backyard where we grew all types of fruits and vegetables.”
He vividly remembers his grandmother
drying their wild coffee berries in the sun, hulling and roasting them for
her own cup of coffee each morning. But it was on a vacation years later to
Jamaica where Marley came to the realization that farming was ultimately his
calling.
“In 1999, a friend of mine introduced me to this land
in Jamaica and when I first approached the land I fell in love with the
river,” he recalls. “Once I purchased the land north of the river, I
realized we had all of this land. There were fruits and coffee already
growing on the land. So I figured I couldn’t let it go to waste. I said to
myself I might as well learn the process of growing coffee and get into the
full ideology of what farming is all about, but not just farming, but
learning the intricacies of marketing coffee because it’s a real commodity
around the world.”
Three years ago, Marley and his longtime friend Shane
Whittle officially launched Marley Coffee in Jamaica, the United States and
Canada. Marley Coffee is an international gourmet coffee company with
corporate offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, Los Angeles, California
and Jamaica. The Marley Coffee 52 Acre Private Estate sits atop the Blue
Mountains in Chepstow, Portland Jamaica. This land has been long revered in
the region as the home of the world’s most desirable coffee beans. . . .—
Soul Culture
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Part 1) One Cup Of Coffee /
Part 2) One Cup of Coffee
Marley's rich, aromatic coffees are a
result of careful, loving cultivation and roasting we believe that ethical
coffee tastes better. We use the highest standards of sustainable farming
and pay our farm workers twice the average wage.
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things about
The Persistence of the Color Line
is watching Mr. Kennedy hash through the
positions about Mr. Obama staked out by
black commentators on the left and
right, from Stanley Crouch and Cornel
West to Juan Williams and Tavis Smiley.
He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr.
Smiley consistently “voiced skepticism
regarding whether blacks should back
Obama” . . .
The
finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it
could nearly be the basis for a book of
its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father:
Reflections on Blacks and Patriotism.”
Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s
former pastor, Mr. Kennedy writes with
feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children
through Princeton but who “never forgave
American society for its racist
mistreatment of him and those whom he
most loved.” His father distrusted
the police, who had frequently called
him “boy,” and rejected patriotism. Mr.
Kennedy’s father “relished Muhammad
Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never
called him ‘nigger.’ ” The author places
his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform
Why We Need It and What It Will Take
By Bruce Bartlett
The United States Tax Code has undergone no serious reform since 1986. Since then, loopholes, exemptions, credits, and deductions have distorted its clarity, increased its inequity, and frustrated our ability to govern ourselves. At its core, any tax system is in place to raise the revenue needed to pay the government’s bills. But where that revenue should come from raises crucial questions: Should our tax code be progressive, with the wealthier paying more than the poor, and if so, to what extent? Should we tax income or consumption or both? Of the various ideas proposed by economists and politicians—from tax increases to tax cuts, from a VAT to a Fair Tax—what will work and won’t? By tracing the history of our own tax system and by assessing the way other countries have solved similar problems, Bartlett explores the surprising answers to all of these questions, giving a sense of the tax code’s many benefits—and its inevitable burdens.
Tax reform will be a major issue debated in the years ahead. Growing budget deficits and the expiration of various tax cuts loom. Reform, once a philosophical dilemma, is turning into a practical crisis. By framing the various tax philosophies that dominate the debate, Bartlett explores the distributional, technical, and political advantages and costs of the various proposals and ideas that will come to dominate America’s political conversation in the years to come. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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