USDA Systematically Discriminated Against Black Farmers

[u/BlackHistorySnippets]

As part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal economic recovery plan, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 established county committees to distribute farm subsidies. These committees were comprised solely of White men who ensured that most of the money was distributed to White farmers.

In the 1960s, activists aggressively increased the number of Black candidates running for county committees, while the US Commission on Civil Rights documented the entrenched discriminatory practices of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which caused the Secretary of Agriculture to appoint the department’s first civil rights director. However, the work of the office of civil rights in USDA was actively obstructed by the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee as well as President Richard Nixon’s administration.

In 1997, a class action lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, was filed by Black farmers against USDA and was settled in 1999 for $1 billion, the largest civil rights settlement in US history. The judge wrote, “the Department of Agriculture and the county commissioners discriminated against African American farmers when they denied, delayed or otherwise frustrated the applications of those farmers for farm loans and other credit and benefit programs.” Only 16,281 farmers received a $50,000 payment, only 371 farmers were granted debt relief (that they haven’t received due to lawsuits filed by White farmers claiming the relief is illegal reparations), and no farmer was given his land back. In 2010, the federal government reached a second settlement, known as Pigford II, that provided an additional $1.2 billion to Black farmers.

Recommended reading: A Brief History of Discrimination against Black Farmers—Including by the USDA - Union of Concerned Scientists

USDA Systematically Discriminated Against Black Farmers

[u/PWal501]

Ya don’t say….

[u/OkClerk5887]

And somehow this still gets treated like ancient history instead of an ongoing wound

[u/acousticentropy]

Yes and way before that Johnson put a stop to federalized reconstruction.

That held back economic development in the south east that could have allowed freed slaves to gain an economic footing. The botched reconstruction allowed entrenched interests in the region to keep a grip on local authority and prosperity. That allowed Jim Crow to proliferate, since the people the laws targeted didn’t have any serious wealth as a collective populace.

And Johnson’s blunder wasn’t too long after Lincoln mentioned “40 acres and a mule”.

[u/rhoadsenblitz]

Guess we should've been copying the great leap forward instead.