Pigford v. Glickman. The name of this important legal case perhaps does not carry the same weight as Roe v. Wade or Brown v. The Board of Education — but it is certainly just as important.
Pigford v. Glickman was a 1999 class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which alleged racial discrimination in its allocation of farm loans and assistance between 1983 and 1997.
The outcome of the case, which was a $1 billion settlement paid to more than 13,000 African American farmers, has been heralded as the largest civil rights settlement in U.S. history.
“The numbers tell a sad story, but not the whole story. In 1920, black farmers in the United States owned 15.6 million acres of land; by 1999 that number had fallen to 2 million, and it’s still dropping by 1,000 acres per day. In 1910 there were 926,000 African Americans involved in farming; at the end of the century, just 18,000 remain, and they’re going under at five to six times the rate of white farmers,” writes Carol Estes, Editor of YES! magazine. “Given those numbers, members of the US Civil Rights Commission didn’t need a crystal ball when they predicted in 1982 that black farmers would be extinct by 2000. But they didn’t take into account African American farmers who simply refuse to quit.”
However, while this may be seen as a triumph signaling that America embraces true equality, the failures of this case show how far we haven’t come in our struggle to end racism and discrimination in this country.
The Case
In 1997, Timothy Pigford, an African American farmer from North Carolina, filed a lawsuit and was joined by 400 African-American farmer plaintiffs, alleging that the USDA treated Black farmers unfairly when deciding to allocate price support loans, disaster payments, “farm ownership” loans and operating loans, and that the USDA had failed to process subsequent complaints about racial discrimination.
Dan Glickman, then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, was named as the defendant.
Pigford requested blanket mediation to cover an estimated 2,000 additional farmers who also may have been discriminated against, but the U.S. Department of Justice opposed the mediation, saying that each case had to be investigated separately.
Racism aimed at African Americans became commonplace in banking practices, and governmental procedures, with loans being denied and delayed to African American farmers, resulting in dwindling numbers of African Americans being involved in the profession, and many losing farms which had been in their families for generations.
“Their case was a strong one. Their charges of racism were not only supported by the evidence the lead plaintiffs presented about their own situations. They were also supported by the government’s own reports, investigations and studies in 1965, 1970, 1982, 1990 and three in 1997,” Estes said.
“All of them, including Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman’s civil rights listening sessions held throughout the nation in 1997, had concluded that the USDA was treating black farmers unfairly by taking longer to process their loan applications and denying a higher percentage of their loans. In one case, the USDA’s own investigators discovered that loan applications for white farmers in one Mississippi county took an average of 84 days to process while those of black farmers took 222 days. And in farming, timing is everything.”
The lawsuit ended with a settlement on April 14, 1999, in District Court for the District of Columbia. To date, almost $1 billion has been paid to upward of 13,300 farmers. It is considered to financially be the largest civil rights settlement to date.
However, there is more to the story. Another 70,000 farmers filed late and not had their claims heard, so the 2008 Farm Bill provided for additional claims to be heard.
After protests, in December 2010 Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for what is called Pigford II, the second part of the case. In a statement about the recent settlement, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “The agreement reached today is an important milestone in putting these discriminatory claims behind us for good.”
But many farmers have been left out in the cold, and the government has never formally acknowledged systemic racism.
Lingering racism
While the outcome of the case may be a step forward for the status of civil rights in this country, the way in which some media outlets have chosen to cover the case is a step backward.
“You don’t go into farming for the money,” said Al Hooks, who operates Al Hooks Produce, a 202-acre vegetable and cattle spread, with his 35-year-old son. “You must have something in your heart and keep at it. You have to love the land,” Al Hooks told The Root.
“Al Hooks is almost the model, average black farmer, as per the Department of Agriculture 2007 census data. Hooks is 61, owns about 200 acres — or roughly twice the average black spread — and made about $21,000 last year. By contrast, the average white farmer is 57, owns 418 acres and boasts sales of about $135,000,” The Root reports.
There are some lingering problems articulated by farmers in light of the settlement. One is that while the USDA admitted to “bureaucratic delay,” it never admitted to racism.
It’s hard for the individual farmer to prove their case and claim a settlement, and the individual $50,000 settlement amount is not nearly enough, particularly for a farmer who’s lost his land.
“It’s a joke,” farmer Eddie Ross told YES!.
“Nowadays $200,000 will not buy a substantial amount of land for a good operation, especially on a cotton farm,” farmer Lloyd Schaffer said.
“A new tractor? $125,000. A new planter? $40,000. A cotton picker? $20,000. A better technology cotton seed? One bag, $300. The total cost of raising cotton? $550 per acre,” Ross elaborated.
Pigford has also been active in fighting for Native American, Hispanic and women farmers who have faced similar discrimination from the government as African-American farmers. He wrote a letter to President Obama, urging him to “close the book” on this unfortunate chapter in American history.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News’ editorial policy.