Institutional Racism Still Continues
at USDA

BLACK FARMER'S DECRY INACTION,
LAWSUIT RESULTS IN "BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT"
AS USDA INSTITUTIONAL RACISM PERSISTS

NEELY TUCKER, WASHINGTON POST: Back when the class-
action suit by thousands of black farmers against the U.S. Department
of Agriculture was seen as one of the most successful civil rights lawsuits
in American history, William H. Miller was a hopeful man.

It was 1999, and Miller, a south Georgia farmer who was then 68, had
lived long enough to see the USDA offer a new deal to black farmers who,
like him, had sued the agency for decades of discriminatory loan practices.

The suit's colossal settlement was designed to erase farmers' debts to
government creditors, put $50,000 in their pockets and give black applicants
priority for new loans. The agriculture secretary at the time, Dan Glickman,
said it was the government's greatest effort to compensate rural black
Americans since they were given the hope of 40 acres and a mule after
the Civil War. But like that broken promise, the lawsuit has become a
bitter disappointment to the people it was supposed to help.

More than 12,800 black farmers have been paid a total of $623 million,
and more than $17.2 million in outstanding loans has been forgiven. Yet
many thousand other farmers have had their claims rejected, the totals of
payouts and forgiven loans are far short of what was projected, and the
USDA --- which under Glickman had acknowledged racial bias against
black farmers going back decades --- is battling almost every claim filed.

In addition, the farmers' attorneys have made such monumental errors that
a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington has blasted
them for incompetence bordering on malpractice, saying their actions
amounted to a "double betrayal" of the farmers.

The lead plaintiff, a North Carolina farmer named Timothy Pigford, withdrew
from the case in frustration; 60,000 farmers missed a filing deadline, so their
claims cannot be considered; and the nation's largest black farmers'
organization is still staging protests across the country against the terms of
the settlement. "What was promised and what has been delivered have
been two different things," said Miller, who is appealing the rejection of his
$50,000 claim.

From the tobacco fields of North Carolina to the cotton crops of the
Mississippi Delta to the wheat fields of Minnesota, the nation's black
farmers say these problems have so marred the settlement, and
discrimination is still so entrenched in USDA field offices, that little or
nothing has improved for black farmers as a group. And because billions
of dollars in government subsidies continue to be directed to larger,
wealthier farming operations, black farmers say, the settlement isn't
enough to help them survive.

Blacks now make up less than one percent of the nation's 1.9 million
farmers, and their numbers are dropping faster than those of white farmers.
The USDA is a major source of farm loans and subsidies -- loans that
farmers need to get their crops in the ground and subsidies that help
shore up their operations. Access to timely loans is vital, particularly
to those who run small farms, as most black farmers do.

"Many people are disturbed that for all the discrimination that occurred
over so many years that the settlement money, even for those who won
their cases, wasn't enough to really keep them farming," said John Zippert,
director of program operations for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives
in Epps, Alabama. "I've been in this field for 37 years. I've never seen a
black farmer who wasn't discriminated against by the USDA, and yet
their claims are rejected almost as often as they're accepted."

In the Bush administration, problems have continued with the USDA,
said Calvin R. King Sr., president of the Arkansas Land and Farm
Development Corporation and a MacArthur "genius" grant recipient for
his work with black farmers. "African American farmers continue to be
foreclosed on by the USDA; they continue to not have timely access to
loans," King said. "Even with this suit, it's almost a hill you can't climb."

Lawsuits concerning USDA discrimination had been bubbling around
the nation's courts for several years, but the landmark case began when
Pigford and a few other farmers filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington
in 1997. Their claim, which Judge Paul L. Friedman certified as a class
action, was that USDA officials in counties across the country for years
had violated the Equal Opportunity Credit Act by systematically denying
or delaying loan applications filed by black farmers.

Alexander J. Pires Jr., a Washington lawyer with experience in USDA
suits, became the lead attorney, working with local law firms in the Deep
South to pull together meetings of black farmers, enlist them in the suit and
then represent them in court. The settlement, or consent decree, that was
reached in 1999 was a complicated affair. There was no settlement for a
pot of cash for the plaintiffs to divide, as is the norm in class-action cases.
In fact, no one won any money automatically. Each farmer still had to prove
he had been personally discriminated against.

The fast-track process for such claims --- Track A --- required farmers to
prove they had tried and failed to borrow money from the USDA between
1981 and 1996 and had filed some sort of complaint about that denial. They
also had to prove that similarly situated white farmers had been approved
at the same time they were denied. If they could, each would get $50,000
tax-free and their USDA debts would be forgiven.

More than 98% of the eventual 22,891 class members chose this option,
largely because Pires assured the judge that practically every farmer could
meet those standards. "I believe every one of the 80-something cases I've
already done will all qualify," Pires told Friedman in the 1999 hearing that
led to the settlement. "There are only four questions to be answered under
Track A, and with this lawyer you can meet that standard. . . . The government
has no record for most of these cases and those cases will survive. There
is certainty in that."

Friedman approved the arrangement --- and then things started to go wrong.
Pires and his fellow lawyers had initially thought no more than 5,000 farmers
would file claims. Instead, more than 80,000 full- or part-time farmers have
filed, swamping the lawyers. Further, because the farmers' lawyers decided
to skip the discovery phase common in lawsuits, farmers had little access to
USDA records, not to mention the financial dealings of their white neighbors.
In fact, few farmers of any race kept such detailed records.

And once before an adjudicator, their claims did not go unchallenged. The
USDA, despite officials' earlier admissions of discrimination, filed objections
to almost every case in which it had records.

USDA statistics show that although 12,849 farmers won their claims, 8,476
did not. Farmers were so angry that more than 6,000 have filed appeals,
and a court monitor in Minnesota now gets 2,900 complaining phone calls
each week.

For the 184 farmers who chose a different avenue under the settlement to
try to prove a more serious level of discrimination, things have been worse.
This process --- Track B --- is a one-day mini-trial before a court adjudicator.
Although 54 cases have settled out of court, the USDA has won 15 of 25
cases tried --- and is appealing nine of the 10 it lost.

"I understand how they might feel concerned, but there were no guarantees
of prevailing under the terms of the consent decree," said J. Michael Kelly,
the USDA deputy general counsel. "Maybe the paucity of victories says
something favorable about USDA's treatment of black farmers to begin with."

Stephon Bowens, director of the Land Loss Prevention Project, a North
Carolina-based agency that represents black farmers in financial trouble,
rejects that analysis. The problem, he says, is the structure of the consent
decree.

"One would think that if you could prove that if you were African American
and farming from 1981 to 1996, that as a class, based on admissions made
by USDA that black farmers were discriminated against, there should never
have been any secondary phase to further prove discrimination," he said. . . . . .

Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman met with a group of irate black
farmers in mid-July. She said in a statement that she would try to mend
relations with the farmers. "If something is wrong, we need to fix it," she said.
"If our employees need more training, we intend to give it to them. If we need
to help cut the red tape and bureaucracy to better serve our constituents, then
we intend to do it."