|
|
Black Farmers' Refrain: Where's All Our Money?
Shaila K. Dewan, The New York Times
August 1, 2004
R. L. Stevenson was bundled into a recliner, a bowl of prescription medicine bottles at his elbow. At 79, he can no longer work his farm here in Oktibbeha County, about 150 miles northeast of Jackson, though until he fell ill a year ago he baled hay and mended fences.
He is a black farmer who toiled for decades at near-subsistence levels - buying used equipment and dairy cows past their prime - with little of the government support that white farmers here received.
"I've been farming now for 70-some years," he said. "And I didn't do too much progress in that time."
Mr. Stevenson expected to benefit from the landmark 1999 class-action settlement with the United States Department of Agriculture, which acknowledged decades of "indifference and blatant discrimination" against blacks in the department's lending programs. When the settlement was approved, the judge hailed it as the biggest civil rights award in United States history, estimating that $2 billion would be paid out to black farmers.
The claims process was to be swift and "virtually automatic," the judge, Paul L. Friedman of United States District Court in Washington, wrote. Most of the claimants were to receive $50,000 each and $12,500 for taxes on that amount.
Five of Mr. Stevenson's sons received the money on the ground that they had been rebuffed by the Agriculture Department in the 1980's. But Mr. Stevenson, like the vast majority of those who submitted claims, was rejected.
His case illustrates the failures of a claims process that even the judge said had fallen far short of what he envisioned. Thousands of claims have been denied for a tangle of reasons including tight deadlines and late submissions, lawyers' bungling and, perhaps most significantly, the resistance of the Agriculture Department, which critics say has used technicalities to deny farmers a hard-won remedy. For those rejected, the only hope for restitution is an act of Congress.
To date, the department has paid $814 million to 13,445 of the farmers who applied for relief. More than 80,000 others were rejected, most because they missed the October 1999 deadline. Many say they did not learn of the settlement until too late; the department has insisted that the deadlines be strictly enforced.
A study by the Environmental Working Group and the Black Farmers Association concluded that the department had spent millions fighting the approximately 22,000 claims that were filed on time. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the agency has filed objections to each application.
Ed Loyd, a spokesman for the agency, said it was not objecting to each claim, but simply fulfilling its mandate "to provide information to the court-appointed operator." The settlement gives the agency the option of supplying such information but does not require it. Even Judge Friedman said he had not expected the agency to fight claims so vigorously - about 40 percent of the timely claims have been rejected, compared with the 5 or 10 percent he had anticipated.
Mr. Stevenson's claim, filed on time, was denied because records showed he had received government loans, he said. Yet according to agency and court documents, even when blacks got such loans, they received less than requested, were forced to provide excessive collateral and had their applications processed too late in the planting season to do any good - ensuring that black farmers would be in debt without benefiting from the money. "They just gave me enough to sink myself deeper," Mr. Stevenson said.
Neither the Agriculture Department nor the claims adjudicator would speak about Mr. Stevenson's case specifically. But David Frantz, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said claims like his had been denied because the department had been able to persuade the adjudicator that the farmer was not discriminated against, or the farmer was unable to name white farmers who had received better treatment in similar situations. The department has refused to provide records on white farmers, citing privacy concerns.
Situations like those Mr. Frantz described point to what some have called a flaw in the settlement agreement: although the Agriculture Department admitted discrimination, black farmers must show that they meet the class membership requirements - that they farmed or tried to between 1981 and 1998, were discriminated against and complained about discrimination - even to have their claims considered. In Oktibbeha and its neighboring counties, many farmers say they did not hear about the settlement until too late. The plaintiffs' lawyers vigorously defend their efforts to notify potential class members, saying they spent $500,000 on a national advertising campaign for two weeks in January 1999, before the settlement was approved. The lawyers say they also held more than 230 meetings, attended by thousands of farmers.
Mr. Frantz said statistics prove the target audience was reached - the 1997 agricultural census showed 27,000 black farmers, and 22,000 people filed their claims on time. But in 1982 there were 45,000 black farmers, according to the agricultural census. And the settlement was open to farmers' heirs as well as those who, like Mr. Stevenson's sons, started other careers after their efforts to farm failed.
The idea that claimants must meet certain requirements does not make sense to the farmers around here, perhaps because as descendants of slaves and sharecroppers they felt the sting of racism acutely whether or not they qualified.
"They said black farmers - I know I was one," said Joe Malone, 75, whose late filing was denied. "They sure shut the door on me. They said black farmers, and I know that's all I ever did, eat fatback meat, drink milk, cornbread - nothing better but on the farm."
For many, even asking for a government loan was unthinkable. It was understood, several farmers said, that blacks need not apply. Robert B.
Johnson, 77, remembered the fellow at the Farmers Home Administration, which gave the loans.
"He was a rough man on the colored man,'' Mr. Johnson said. "You had to go into his office and talk to him, and he'd turn you down right there and then."
There was a second deadline for late filers, and almost 66,000 farmers applied.
But they had to show that extraordinary circumstances had kept them from meeting the original deadline. Lack of notice was not considered a valid explanation. Neither was having two sick parents to care for. Charlie Brewer, a 40-year-old farmer who leases Mr. Malone's land for his beef cattle and horses, said his late claim was denied even though he sent in death certificates showing that his mother and father died in late 1999.
Farmers who missed the deadlines were easily exploited. A group called the National Resource Information Center set up shop in the community center in Shuqualak, Miss., offering to help in exchange for $125 an application. The leaders of the group, Morris James and Parthenia Hines, were later indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that they took more than $25,000 from Mississippi farmers. They are out on bail.
Lawyers say the Agriculture Department has fought the claims every inch of the way - even when farmers have ample documentation.
Eddie Cotton, an 82-year-old Army veteran who lives near Pattison, Miss., was one of the original plaintiffs named in the class-action suit, Pigford v. Veneman, but opted out to pursue an administrative complaint.
The agency acknowledged in May 2003 that he had proved discrimination based on race. But it has yet to make a settlement offer. In the meantime, the agency has garnisheed his Social Security payments because he is in default on his loans. Louise Cobbs of Holland & Knight, a law firm handling about two dozen of the cases pro bono, said several of her clients have had their Social Security payments garnisheed for the same reason, despite their pending complaints.
"It's not yesteryear, but in Mississippi it still is," Mr. Cotton said. "You can sing, dance, do anything you want, but there's no way around the bald facts."
|
|
