The Obama compromise on the expiring tax cuts sucked the news up on the same day that he signed the historic Claims Resolution Act of 2010. This act was the result of a class action lawsuit that had been won by black farmers back in 1997 with the Pigford v. Glickman case.
Don’t be misguided by the Republican jabs that it’s some form of reparations. It doesn’t even come close to the government’s debt of 40 acres and a mule to former African slaves.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has long been the good ole white farmer boys’ advocacy and funding club. The overt and enduring racism on the federal, state and local levels helped to keep politically-connected white farmers solvent while black farmers faced unprecedented land loss.
Black families who had farmed for generations were forced to give up their family farms either through trickery, forced foreclosures or just plain terror.
In 1988, I traveled throughout the South weeks before Super Tuesday to explore how the New South was responding to the presidential candidacy of Rev. Jesse Jackson. I wrote about those accounts for Unity Newspaper. One of the movers and shakers I was privileged to spend time with was Ben Burkett of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund.
I was struck by Burkett’s devotion to the land and his determination to stop the land hemorrhaging supported by the government. The federation has an excellent timeline on its website documenting land acquisition and loss. It cites the peak ownership for land by black farmers around the turn of the Twentieth Century was about 15 millions acres owned by 218,000 black farmers. By 1992, that number has drastically plummeted to 18,000 farmers owning 2.3 million acres.
Will the other 200,000 farmers be made whole? When will black farmers get their land back? The answer is probably never. The truth is that $50,000 that will be given to qualifying black farmers is a pittance for the loss of land, life and dignity that African American farmers suffered for decades.
“I don’t think this is about the money. I think this is about justice,” John Boyd said. Boyd heads up the National Black Farmers Association who provided relentless leadership on the issue. The group organized farmers and supporters to keep the pressure on the various administrations including bringing convoys of black farmers on their tractors to the nation’s capitol.
It sure isn’t about the money, and the little bit of justice that the settlement represents is just on paper right now. Justice delayed is justice denied. We will see how fast the funds are dispensed.
What I’m most proud about is that there are some black folks who understand the value of land and who were determined to fight for it – no matter how long it taked. I think I’ll call Ben Burkett and tell him that.