Black Farmers Reap a Harvest of Anger

Twenty years ago, when Virginia tobacco sold for $2.10 a pound, John Boyd’s daddy made a fine living off the sweat of his brow and the crop in his field.

“My father did well,” said Boyd, a third-generation tobacco and soybean farmer in Mecklenburg County, Va. “My whole family lived off this farm. They built a home, kept up-to-date equipment and sent me and my brother off to college.”

For black farmers like Boyd’s family, a productive farm meant respect and independence. But today, Boyd and other African Americans complain about a historically hostile climate within the U.S. Department of Agriculture that makes it more difficult for them than white farmers to apply for federal loan assistance and to receive government subsidies.

Blacks represent less than 1% of all farmers, a steep drop from the 1920s when 925,000 African Americans owned about 14%, or nearly 50 million acres, of the nation’s agricultural landscape. Census data show that there now are about 18,000 black farmers (about 250 in California), and, if current trends continue, few will be tilling the soil in the next century.

While many American farmers have left their land as huge agribusiness operations have absorbed small farms and technology has advanced, another development has accelerated the demise of black farmers: racial discrimination.

USDA Is Nicknamed ‘the Last Plantation’

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has acknowledged that his department deserves its nickname, “the last plantation,” for fostering a culture that has forced many black farmers off their land. Shortly after he assumed office in 1995, Glickman vowed to make swift changes.

But much like President Clinton’s call for a national conversation on race that has stalled in confusion and acrimony, the Agriculture Department’s efforts have yet to produce significant results. A recent dispute over the agency’s handling of an independent investigation that pointed out widespread abuses directed at black farmers and a complaint that a top department lawyer used a racial slur last month to describe the leader of a black farmers’ group underscore the difficulty Glickman faces in reforming a bureaucracy that consists of 29 agencies and 110,000 employees.

“As the country struggles with issues of race and past effects of racism, USDA is a microcosm of what’s happening in the country,” Glickman said in an interview. “I’m sitting on top of a much bigger problem than the black farmers. I’m sitting on top of the classic problem between black and white in America.”

The American family farm, a nostalgic symbol of pride and self-sufficiency, continues to lose ground. During the 1980s alone, the number of U.S. farms fell by more than 250,000 to 1.9 million.

African American-owned farming and ranching operations have been particularly hard hit: The USDA found last year that blacks wait three times as long as whites to get federal loans processed.

A report by the department’s Civil Rights Action Team found a pattern of Farm Service Agency officials notifying black farmers that they could not apply for loans that were routinely issued to whites. In some cases, the report stated, black farmers received loans after the planting season had begun, causing lower crop yields and profits.

Fed up with such practices, nearly 500 black farmers filed a $2.5-billion class-action lawsuit against the USDA last August. The suit alleges that complaints by black farmers were destroyed or overlooked after the Agriculture Department’s Civil Rights Office was dismantled in 1983. Without civil rights protections, black farmers were denied loans or did not get them in a timely fashion, the suit says. It notes, for example, that black farmers waited on average 222 days to get loans, compared with 60 days for white farmers.

Calling for a “break with the past,” Glickman responded to the black farmers’ lawsuit in December by ordering an immediate review of civil rights concerns in the sprawling federal bureaucracy. He also embraced a special panel’s findings to revive the department’s Civil Rights Office, which had dwindled in staff and resources after dramatic cutbacks during the Reagan administration. Now, the office operates with a $12.9-million budget and 120 employees.

Additionally, Glickman hired private consultants to investigate allegations of discrimination at county-level farm lending offices and implemented a new zero-tolerance policy for racial harassment or retribution against civil rights whistle-blowers.

“I am committed to making USDA the civil rights leader in the federal government,” Glickman said in March in a report documenting the changes within the agency. “That will be my legacy.”

While Glickman receives praise for admitting that his department has discriminated against African Americans in the past, many farmers and observers contend that the culture of the department remains unchanged. They say that farm lending and foreclosure policies are determined by veteran civil service employees who have been slow to alter their ways.

“The secretary has been sincere,” said Rep. Eva M. Clayton (D-N.C.), a member of the House Agriculture Committee and an advocate for black farmers. “But I don’t think his reforms have been fast enough because he’s run into more resistance from within his own organization than I think even he expected.”

Series of Setbacks Slow Reform Efforts

Indeed, Glickman’s attempts to reform the department have suffered setbacks in recent months.

In March, Atlanta-based D.J. Miller & Associates, a black-owned consulting firm, filed suit against the Agriculture Department alleging that federal officials “unreasonably and without justification delayed, disrupted and interfered” with a study that it did under contract. The study found that minorities and women were treated unfairly by USDA officials in the administration of federal farm loan and payment programs. The suit seeks $400,000 in damages for costs associated with producing a report commissioned by the department’s Farm Service Agency in 1994.

The study collected evidence of discrimination from minority employees at the department. It also recommended changes in the county committee election process that would increase minority and female participation in the farm loan and complaint review process.

Agriculture Department officials have not acted on the Miller report, fueling speculation among some black farmers that the department failed to take the findings seriously.

Boyd, the Mecklenburg County grower who serves as president of the Black Farmers’ Assn., said in a written complaint to the department’s civil rights office that a racial slur was directed at him during a May 27 conference call with two top agriculture officials.

The complaint states that August Schumacher Jr., the undersecretary for farm and foreign agricultural services, and Teresa Gruber, counsel to the undersecretary, were taking part in a conference call with Boyd and Philip Haynie, vice president of the black farmers’ group.

Apparently believing that Boyd and Haynie had dropped off the line, Gruber continued talking with Schumacher, Boyd’s affidavit states. “That’s the nigger who called for your resignation. Why would you want to talk to him?” Gruber asked, according to the complaint.

“Yes, that’s OK,” Schumacher reportedly replied.

Boyd’s account was confirmed to The Times by Haynie, who has filed his own discrimination complaint alleging that the department unfairly refused him operating loans that were made available to white farmers.

However, in a written statement, Schumacher called Boyd’s allegations “completely false,” noting the department treats “all our customers with the utmost dignity and respect.” His statement also predicted “that any investigation will reveal that these charges are simply untrue.”

Gruber declined to discuss Boyd’s allegation during a brief telephone interview, saying only that she “agreed with [Schumacher’s] statement.”

Boyd said the behavior he described in his complaint suggests that reforms inside the Agriculture Department are only surface-deep.

“What am I to think of their progress,” he asked, “when one of their lawyers calls me a nigger. . . ? It’s still the same old good ol’ boys doing the same old stuff.”

Black farmers say that the incident was only the latest in a series of racist remarks or conduct that is typical of what they have endured for decades. Going back as far as 1965, official studies, congressional hearings and federal reports document widespread racial problems throughout the department.

Phillip Barker, who lost his farm in a foreclosure sale last year, said that he raised the $216,000 that he had been told was needed to buy his 263-acre spread and the three houses on it. But when he showed up to make the purchase, a county agriculture official told him the property was valued at $50,000 more, Barker said.

“They stole our farm,” he said. “I want my land back and restitution for what they’ve taken from me.”

Agriculture Department officials declined to comment about specific cases under review, but they admit readily that such abuses have occurred and will take time to resolve.

“It’s like putting Humpty Dumpty back together,” said John Sparks, acting head of the agency’s Civil Rights Office. “It’s difficult to make people understand why it’s not happening faster.”

Moreover, there is no immediate resolution to the problem that spawned Glickman’s concerns in the first place, as black farmers still must hurdle a legal barrier to gain reparations for past abuses.

Stream of Complaints Trail Department

In April, the U.S. Justice Department ruled that a two-year statute of limitations had expired, preventing Agriculture officials from settling discrimination claims that had been negotiated with some of the black farmers. Sparks said that, of the 211 individual complaints filed by black farmers, 18 have been settled, with the payments falling between $200,000 and $609,000.

One of those farmers, Linwood Brown of Warfield, Va., filed a discrimination complaint in 1992 alleging that a county farm committee unfairly denied him assistance to restructure a loan. Instead of processing his complaint, the paperwork was overlooked until the government foreclosed on his farm last year, prompting another discrimination claim, Brown said.

The second complaint was reviewed by federal officials, who agreed that Brown had been treated unfairly and offered him a settlement that included returning his land, erasing debts and an undisclosed cash payment.

“They said they would send me the deed to my property and a check in 40 days,” Brown said. “But I haven’t seen it or heard from them since last December.”

On Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed an amendment by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) attached to the House Agriculture Department appropriation bill that would grant a waiver of the statute of limitations to individuals who filed civil rights complaints between 1983 and 1996. A similar provision is expected to clear the Senate when it considers the Agriculture bill.

President Clinton met privately in December with a small group of black farmers and expressed support for their cause.

Expectations soared among some black farmers when Clinton tapped Mike Espy as the first African American secretary of Agriculture. Although Espy seemed sympathetic to black farmers’ problems, his tenure at the department was short-lived. In 1994, he resigned in disgrace. He faces a criminal trial next month on multiple counts of accepting bribes from agribusiness executives.

When Glickman took over the department in 1995, he said racial bias in the farm program was not an overriding issue.

Today, Glickman said, “I am convinced we need to get to the bottom of the problem. This has gone on for too long.”