The president and the farmers

By

Published Tuesday, April 21, 2009

It appears the honeymoon between President Barack Obama and southern African-Americans might have hit a bump in the road over the Pigford case. Briefly, about 10 years ago the U.S. Department of Agriculture settled a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of thousands of African-American farmers, mostly from the South, who had claimed that local USDA offices routinely denied them loans, disaster assistance and other help frequently given to white farmers. As a result, many of the African-American farmers claimed they were driven out of business. At the time of the case, Pigford, 22,500 farmers filed claims. But another 73,000 or so other African-American farmers were denied payments because they missed the October 1999 deadline for seeking claims. Congress held hearings in 2004 and 2007 and determined the farmers didn't get fair notice of the settlement from television, radio and print media by early 1999 and that they should be given another chance to obtain relief for the USDA discrimination. Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, now in private practice as an attorney and Morgan and Morgan P.A. have worked with an African-American group, The Black Farmers and Agriculturist Association, to represent those farmers. Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders (D-Selma) is another of the attorneys working on this case, along with the James Scott Farrin, McEachin & Gee, Heinger Garrison Davis LLC, Pogust, Braslow and Milrood; Conlon, Grantz and Phelan and Phillip L. Fraas. They've put together the Web site attached to their names. Part of the attack by Sanders and the others has been to hold free informational meetings for those farmers who need their assistance or would want to become claimants. The Web site also chastises the government — Obama's administration — for not putting enough money in the budget to pay the African-American farmers. This takes us back to the administration. Last year, Obama lead the charge that allowed the farmers to seek new discrimination claims against the government and they wound up in the 2008 Farm Bill. So far, the government has paid out nearly $1 billion in damages on nearly 16,000 claims. In the 2008 farm bill lawmakers put $100 million on the table. Actually, studies about the case indicated with 65,000 pending claims the tab could run up as much as $2 billion or $3 billion. But the $100 million, lawmakers said last year, was just the beginning and that more money could be approved later. Now, 25,000 new claims have been filed and Obama's folks say the $100 million should be the cap and split among successful cases. If you figure out the money, that would come to about $2,000 or $3,000 per farmer. Advocates call the cap "insulting." This is not yet over. Those who speak for the administration say the president is just as passionate about this issue now as he was when he was a U.S. senator. Perhaps so, but if the administration doesn't do something, you can bet a wide rift will increase between the White House and the southern African-American farmers.