WEBVTT - 'The Last Plantation' 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:07.840 As I got into how my family gained and then 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:10.560 lost control of a plot of land in East Texas, 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.360 I learned that we were part of a broader trend 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:18.880 for Black Americans after slavery. Owning land was freedom, it 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:24.439 was autonomy and importantly economic security because farming was big 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:28.440 business back then, and some black families have been farmers 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.080 for generations all the way up to the present day. 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:36.280 Take one black farmer in Virginia, John Boyd, who grows 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.960 wheat and other crops. He also raised his cows. I 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:44.000 really was trained as a farmer by my dad and grandfather. 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:49.239 My mother's parents were sharecroppers, and I also worked on 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:51.920 their farm as a little boy, so I got to 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.160 see it on both sides. You know what it was 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:57.200 like to to own your farm, and I also got 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.880 to see what it was like having grandparents as share croppers. 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:03.560 John comes from a long line of black farmers whose 0:01:03.640 --> 0:01:06.040 legacy stretches back to the end of the Civil War. 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.800 His farm is located in a southern Virginia town called Baskerville. 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:15.440 In eighteen sixty eight, the Fourteenth Amendment grantited citizenship to 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.720 black people, and after the Civil War, despite many obstacles, 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:22.280 black people were able to purchase some of the very 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:26.280 land they've been forced to farm under slavery. By nine 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.840 black men operated around four of all the farms in 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:34.440 the US, but over the years that share of black 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:39.760 farms declined, and in a big way. Today black people 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:43.559 operate less than two percent of farms in America. White 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.920 people basically run the rest. So what happened to the 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.200 black farming industry over the last century. Of course, I 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:53.559 knew we had racial tensions in the country at that time, 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:56.160 but I didn't see it as what I was about 0:01:56.160 --> 0:02:00.559 to run into this major brick wall and I waken 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.240 in reality check with the government. It was a real 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:07.040 break up call for me. They really let me know 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.040 that there was a difference in the way many in 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:13.360 his country view black and white and race relations. In 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.960 the late nineteen eighties, John Boyd had only owned his 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.920 land for a few years, but he found himself on 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:23.080 the verge of losing all of it and jeopardizing his 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:26.600 family's legacy of ownership. There was a nine year period 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.200 in which I was trying to get farm operating loans, 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:33.560 so I was applying every year. I think I may 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:39.400 have received one one loan and the rest were for denials, 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:44.520 so totally last bit of the eighties and early nineties. Uh, 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:50.200 every every everything just blew up. The thing is what 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.200 happened to John Boyd was also happening to tens of 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:57.520 thousands of other black farmers. And it was happening because 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.280 they were black. But those houses of farmers were about 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:05.080 to take on the government, and their fight represents a 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:17.680 long overlook chapter in the push for black equality. The 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:21.560 data shows that the median white family has ten times 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:24.600 more wealth than the average black family. One of the 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:28.320 drivers of that wealth gap is redlining. Economists often point 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:33.400 to the absence of African American generational wealth forces. Be heard, 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.480 and we're gonna not the United States, the problem of avriculture. No, 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.400 that we're not leaving until we were seeing justice. I'll 0:03:39.440 --> 0:03:42.160 come on in. It's a trend propelled not just by 0:03:42.200 --> 0:03:46.240 economic forces, but by white racism in local white political 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.240 and economic power. It's much easier to integrate a lunch 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.960 counter than it is to guarantee an annual income, for instance, 0:03:54.040 --> 0:04:02.480 to get rid of positive Welcome back to the paycheck. 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:07.119 I'm Rebecca Greenfield and I'm Jackie Simmons. This week we're 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:13.160 talking about land, specifically farmland. Today, when we think about 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:17.000 wealthy dynasties, we don't usually think about generations of farmers. 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.400 But for most of the twentieth century, farming was a 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.560 huge part of life in America. It was a huge 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:27.080 part of black life. Running a farm was a good 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.000 way to make a living, and owning the land meant 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.400 farmers could pass wealth to their children. But over the 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.160 last century, black people lost nearly all their farm land. 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.200 We're talking about a huge amount of black wealth that 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.120 assembly vanished. By one estimate, the land alone was worth 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:48.520 three fifty billion dollars. So what made that wealth disappear. 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.960 A lot of it goes back to farming loans, and 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.919 it's the U. S Department of Agriculture that's responsible for 0:04:56.000 --> 0:05:01.880 dispensing those loans. That's where John Boyd comes and Elizabeth 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:10.160 Rembert has a story. John Boyd thought his first piece 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:13.279 of farmland when he was eighteen. He wanted to follow 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.360 in his parents and his grandparents footsteps, and as soon 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:18.440 as he was old enough, he set out to carve 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:21.640 out his own piece of property. I bought my first 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:27.280 farm in from another black farmer by the name of 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:32.400 Russell sally Ah. He was having difficulties with then it 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:37.760 was called the Farmer's Home Administration, and so he agreed 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:40.160 to sell me as farm But what John didn't know 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:43.039 was that the difficulties that Russell was having with the 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:48.400 Farmer's Home Administration, those would foreshadow problems John himself was 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.560 going to have down the line. The Farmer's Home Administration 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.200 was a unit within the U s d A. The 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:58.839 U s d A is the biggest provider of money 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:01.760 to farmers in the US. It has a one hundred 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:05.200 and fifty one billion dollar federal budget, and part of 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:08.240 its mission is to operate like a big bank for farmers. 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:12.400 It lends money to pay for seeds, equipment, and labor. 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:16.800 The us DA's roots date all the way back to 0:06:16.880 --> 0:06:21.159 Abraham Lincoln, who formally established the agency in eighteen sixty two. 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:25.560 He called it the People's Department because back then half 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:28.479 of all Americans lived on a farm. But for a 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.120 long time there was a problem at the U s 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:37.280 d A. The agency, the so called People's Department, wasn't 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:41.599 lending money equally to black and white farmers. In the 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:44.640 nineteen nineties, the agency took an average of two hundred 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.240 and twenty days to process a loan application for a 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:50.479 black farmer versus the sixty days it took for a 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:54.599 white farmers application. And between two thousand and six and 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:58.559 two thousand and sixteen, black farmers represented less than three 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:00.960 percent of the recipients of the U. S d A's 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.880 direct loans, but they made up more than thirteen percent 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:09.080 of the farmers who lost their land to foreclosure. Those 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:13.480 discrepancies had major consequences, and John was about to find 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:18.040 out that, as with many things in the US, landownership 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:23.720 was completely skewed to white people. Skewed as in, black 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:28.119 people own less than one percent of American farmland. White 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:32.800 people basically own the rest. Economists call this the land gap. 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.120 A better name for it might be the land Chasm, 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:41.600 the Grand Canyon of inequity. Black landownership began to fall 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:45.520 off after its peak in nineteen ten. Many black farmers 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:50.760 didn't have wills or estate plans, so banks, real estate companies, 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.560 and other predatory actors were able to force property sales. 0:07:54.600 --> 0:07:59.280 When black landowners died, some stopped farming due to intimidation 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:05.280 violent race riots. One farmer told me she remembers racist 0:08:05.360 --> 0:08:10.080 neighbors burning crosses on the land her family owned, and 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:12.440 then there was the U. S d A, which was 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.320 locking black farmers out and causing them to lose their land. 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:31.720 The impact of losing that land lasted generations. I talked 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:34.640 to Thomas Mitchell, a law professor at Texas A and 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:37.680 M about the cost of what black farmers were shut 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.679 out of, not just the land itself, but the economic 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:45.440 power it could have had to secure college educations and 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:50.000 build wealth over generations. He added all of that potential 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:53.040 value that would have been built on the land to 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:56.560 the three hundred and fifty billion dollars he estimates the 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.920 farmland itself is worth, and he came up with a 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.760 dollar figure that represents everything black farmers have lost over 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:08.640 the years. We're thinking that that additional impact could be, 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:14.679 you know, somewhere between four hundred and five billion dollars, 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:19.120 so that the overall negative net impact of this loss 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:23.360 of land could be on the order of a trillion dollars. 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:27.880 A trillion dollars. That's a really huge number to wrap 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.360 your head around. But what Thomas is saying is that 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:35.160 the gulf between black and white land ownership is a 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:40.880 root cause of the gap between black and white wealth. Now. 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:43.880 John Boyd the farmer that we heard from earlier, he 0:09:43.920 --> 0:09:46.840 wasn't thinking about the wealth gap or the land gap 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:51.880 or structural inequality back in the nineties. He just wanted 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:56.439 to farm. And usually when a person wants to farm, 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:58.439 the U. S d A can be a partner in that. 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:03.440 It's purpose is to help farmers with the resources they need. 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:09.160 One of those resources credit. Access to credit is a 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:13.400 make or break issue for most farmers, especially for young farmers. 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:16.800 Farmers often need loans to get the seed in the 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:20.760 ground and the equipment running. After they harvest and sell 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.440 their crops, they can use that money to pay back 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:27.720 the loan, and it's a cycle for every season. But 0:10:27.800 --> 0:10:30.000 if they never get that loan, or if they don't 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:33.560 get it on time or get enough money, it sets 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:36.800 their harvest back and then their ability to pay loans back. 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:42.240 To start the process of getting credit and resources, farmers 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:44.840 head into their local U. S d A office and 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.480 sit down with the loan officer. But in John's first 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:50.840 meeting with his county's U. S d A loan officer 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:54.600 back in the mid nineteen eighties, he could tell that 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.599 borrowing wouldn't be easy for one The U s d 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.880 A officer would own, you see, black farmers once a week, 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:07.280 so we all had the same letters. Your apartment is 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:12.560 at nine o'clock nine am Wednesday morning, and we would 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:14.960 all come to the office with the with the same letter. 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:19.600 And what he experienced next was disturbing. It was, you know, 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:22.680 a time period where he tore my application up and 0:11:22.720 --> 0:11:26.160 tossing in the trash can. This man spat on me. 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:32.760 He left the door open, he talked boastfully loudly about 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:35.240 what he wasn't gonna do, and uh, you know, if 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:36.960 he was going to do something, this is all he 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.440 was gonna do. And it was a real quick, all 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:45.400 right opening experience for the way blacks were treated versus whites, 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.679 especially in the South. John says that white farmers were 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:53.960 treated very differently. He says that once he was meeting 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.280 with a loan officer when a white farmer walked in. 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:00.240 John says the loan officer handed over a government check 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.800 for one hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars. According to John, 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.400 after exchanging pleasantries with the white farmer and making plans 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:12.320 for dinner, the loan officer casually reminded him to come 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.920 back and fill out the paperwork for the loan because 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:20.839 he'd estimated based on the previous year's numbers. John had 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:24.560 been practically begging for a loan for a tiny fraction 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.760 of that amount. So here this farmer have received a 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:31.160 farm operating on for hundred fifty seven thousand dollars. He 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:35.640 hadn't even done the paperwork, the correct paperwork on the loan, 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:38.880 and I was pretty much big and pleading for five 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:44.080 thousand dollar operating loan. And he had this conversation as 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:46.920 though I was invisible. John says the U. S d 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:51.120 A operated like a whites only country club, where you 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:52.640 had to be a part of the club to get 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.840 the money that you need for your farm. And this 0:12:55.960 --> 0:13:00.240 discrimination against black farmers was so widespread that people called 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:05.839 the U. S d A the Last Plantation in news articles, studies, 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.480 and even in court documents. The U. S d A 0:13:09.640 --> 0:13:13.080 is a federal agency, but many loan decisions are made 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:18.280 locally by committee members. They're elected by their local communities, 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:22.640 and the overwhelming majority of these committee members were white, 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.040 So they were just your local guys, but they had 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:31.079 a huge amount of influence and power. On a whim. 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:36.120 They could reject, delay, or reduce loans to farmers. Here's 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.200 John talking about the loan officer. He told me one 0:13:39.240 --> 0:13:43.600 time he was the next thing to God in his county. 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.679 He controlled all the bank boards, and he said, nobody 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.680 lends more money in this county than I do. And 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:52.280 if you don't learn how to speak to me, you're 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:54.600 not going to get any any money, and you won't 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.160 be and you won't be farming very long. That's what 0:13:58.240 --> 0:14:02.400 he said. And got into it, and I told him 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.600 I didn't I didn't know what Jesus Christ, no God 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:07.920 look like I said. But he can't look like you. 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.880 He can't act like you. John applied every year for 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:15.199 an operating loan, which was essential in getting seeds in 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:17.640 the ground to be able to make money in the harvest, 0:14:18.880 --> 0:14:23.680 but nearly every single application was denied, and without those loans, 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.320 John couldn't get the profit from his farm that he 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.160 needed to pay down the debt he inherited from the 0:14:29.160 --> 0:14:33.960 previous owner. One day, John says, the USDA tried to 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:37.760 take some of the land away from him. John says 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:40.400 his loan officer wanted him to sign over his land 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:44.880 to a white landowner in the area, and then John 0:14:44.880 --> 0:14:48.440 could rent land from the white farmer, So basically, you 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.040 wanted me to be a share crop. John says he 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:54.240 refused to sign the paperwork because he refused to give 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.840 up on his land. He was determined to fight to 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:02.120 keep it. He borrowed money from his family and friends, 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:05.280 and that helped him scrape together enough to make the 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:10.160 minimum payment each month for a while, until one day 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:16.760 he couldn't. And then one night, at midnight, federal agents 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:18.720 sent by the U. S d A showed up banging 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:21.720 on his front door. They woke up his five year 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.680 old son, who looked on as strangers loaded his father's 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.600 belongings into trucks. You know, they kept choosing to sell 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:33.800 me out rather than to work with me to see 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:35.600 what they could do to help me stay on the farm. 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:40.160 John knew this wasn't just happening to him. He started 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:42.360 calling up other black farmers in the area to talk 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.080 about their experiences dealing with the U. S d A. 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.520 And he found the discrimination by local loan officers was 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:52.960 sort of an open secret. We would shake our heads, 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:58.440 but we didn't have a real conversation. Must Old Black 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.960 pride is the definition of that Black farmers like John 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:06.360 were losing their land, their operations and their ability to 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:10.800 improve their lives and their children's lives because they couldn't 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:21.440 get loans. So John decided to fight back. He started 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:25.000 a group called the National Black Farmers Association to represent 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.280 black farmers interests and to get people to take him seriously, 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:33.520 and he started suing the government. First, John tried to 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.080 contest his own loan rejection with the U. S d A. 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:40.480 Then he started finding lawsuits on behalf of other farmers 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:42.840 for their discrimination at the hands of the U. S 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:48.200 d A. And then in he led a group of 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:52.680 sixty farmers to Washington, d C. That was campaigning and 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:57.560 and protesting and cities around the country. And I took 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:01.000 my mule there. I took my tractor there. John's message 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:04.600 as he and a crowd of protesters led literal mules 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:09.040 around the seat of government. We have our mule. Now 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:19.000 we're looking for our forty acres. I went over to 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:22.159 the department for the first day and there were a 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:27.000 group of black farmers picketing the Department of Agriculture. That's 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.679 s Dan Glickman. Today he's a senior policy fellow at 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:35.399 a think tank, but back in he had recently been 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:39.160 appointed to be Secretary of Agriculture by President Bill Clinton. 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:43.240 He had served nine terms in Congress as a representative 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.640 from Kansas, and he thought he was pretty well steeped 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.239 on the issues farmers face until he got to the U. 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:53.160 S d A. I was a congressman for eighteen years 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.520 from Kansas, has served on the Agriculture Committee that entire time, 0:17:57.040 --> 0:18:01.119 and do not recall ever one hearing on this subject 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:04.960 of discrimination against a minority or black farmers. He says 0:18:05.000 --> 0:18:07.800 his first impulse was to figure out what was going on. 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:10.440 So I talked to my staff and I said, let's 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:12.600 get into this thing. Let's figure out what's happening. I 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.040 talked to the farmers who are picketing for a short time, 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:17.520 and I said, well, I'll get to work on it. 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.000 I don't know anything about it. Then he went to 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:25.240 the White House and talked to Bill Clinton personally. Essentially, 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.800 he says, the President told him make this right. And 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.439 it was complicated because the picketing didn't stop, and we 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:39.639 had the open sessions that were pretty emotional, not only 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:43.040 in Washington and around the country. I took a team 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.240 and we listened to farmers in various states, particularly in 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:50.480 the South. We did open town meetings, and you could 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:53.880 sense the high level of emotion and the belief that 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:57.639 this system wasn't working for a large number of people. 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:00.800 When Dan listened to the farmers stories, he said he 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:05.639 knew these experiences weren't isolated loan denials or just random offenses. 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:09.600 The stories traced back to a much bigger history of 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:17.360 racism and its hold on agriculture, property and opportunity. One 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:19.679 farmer that Dan heard a lot from was John Boyd. 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.919 By this time, John had filed a lot of lawsuits 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.400 against the U. S d a's Civil Rights Office alleging 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.080 that the U. S d A was discriminating against him 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:36.000 and other black farmers, and Dan, as Agriculture secretary, was 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:44.600 the defendant in many of those lawsuits. The movement was growing. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.800 The protests John led and the lawsuits he filed were 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:54.080 getting national media attention, and that media attention led more 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:56.480 and more black farmers to go public with their own 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:59.720 experiences of discrimination at the hands of the U. S 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:06.080 d A. John got an update from Washington the U. 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:08.840 S d A's Civil Rights Office was going to settle 0:20:08.880 --> 0:20:12.680 the complaint that he had filed against the agency over discrimination. 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.240 John saw it as a victory after so many years 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:21.040 of fighting for him. It confirmed what he had always 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:26.560 known he had been treated unfairly. It included a twelve 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:30.000 page document that stated outright that the U. S d 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:35.120 A had discriminated against John. He wouldn't tell me exactly 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.600 how much he got, but it was enough to buy 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.440 some land back. But the loan officer in Virginia, who 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:45.000 John says, spat on him and tore up his loan application. 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:50.480 John says, he retired, so there there was no no 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:55.760 act of pity for anyone who discriminated against any of us. 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:00.720 John's case turned out to be bigger than him. His 0:21:00.800 --> 0:21:04.520 settlement and all of his activism set the stage for 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:07.840 something that would go way beyond him and put more 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:10.960 than two billion dollars in the hands of thousands of 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:23.320 black farmers. Soon after John's own case was settled with 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:25.760 the U. S d A, he worked with a farmer 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:30.280 from North Carolina named Timothy Pickford to file what would 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:36.040 become the largest class action lawsuit in US history. The 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:41.840 lawsuit became known as Pigford Versus Glickman. Timothy Pigford's lawyers 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:44.840 claimed the U. S d A had discriminated against black 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:48.919 farmers when doling out loans and assistants. It was a 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:53.400 familiar complaint by now, but the Pigford case took things further. 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:56.960 It also said the U. S d A had not 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:03.040 properly handled complaints of prejudice. In fact, the agency wasn't 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.600 handling the complaints at all. The U. S d A 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:11.040 Civil Rights Office, which was supposed to investigate reports from farmers, 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:15.960 hadn't functioned properly for more than a decade. That meant 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:20.560 submissions were ignored and complaints of racism were just collecting 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:27.120 dust for years while farmers lost their livelihoods. Pigford recruited 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:29.480 more than four hundred other black farmers to join the 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:33.240 class action lawsuit, and the case landed in the hands 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:37.240 of a federal judge named Paul Friedman, who approved the 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:41.760 landmark settlement, and in the order he released in court, 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:46.760 he traced the legacy of racism and agriculture all the 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:50.240 way back to the U. S. Government's original reparations promise, 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.560 when Union generals pledged those forty acres and a mule 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:57.080 to freed slaves at the end of the Civil War. 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:01.760 He called the dysfunction of the agency's civil rights office 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:06.080 the quote culmination of a string of broken promises that 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:09.359 had been made to African American farmers for well over 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:15.680 a century. Paul Friedman's decision provided a starting point for 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:20.120 any black farmer who felt they'd experienced discrimination between nine 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:25.800 and nine. They could now come forward to try and 0:23:25.920 --> 0:23:30.280 prove their case for damages. Some people wanted the money 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:34.960 because of just compensation for past wrongs. Some of the 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:38.920 people wanted money to use for operating their existing farms, 0:23:38.960 --> 0:23:41.720 operating loans, and some of the people wanted it to 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:46.800 buy additional farm land. Black farmers were struggling with economic 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:49.679 problems and agriculture that it was that were affecting almost 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:55.080 all farmers. That's Dan Glickman again. He says the way 0:23:55.119 --> 0:23:59.040 the settlement was structured was probably the closest thing the 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:04.000 US has come to issuing real reparations to Black Americans. 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.000 When black farmers around the country heard about the lawsuit, 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:12.240 they started coming out in droves, each with their own 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:15.560 personal story of racism at the hands of the U. 0:24:15.640 --> 0:24:19.639 S d A. Now came the question of who was 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:24.040 entitled to payments and how much? How do you prove 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:27.280 that as a black farmer you lost your land because 0:24:27.320 --> 0:24:31.520 of systemic discrimination and how much money can really make 0:24:31.560 --> 0:24:36.120 that right. The court appointed a monitor named Randy Roth 0:24:36.720 --> 0:24:40.439 to review every claim of discrimination and determine who was 0:24:40.480 --> 0:24:45.720 eligible for compensation. Randy and her team traveled the country 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:49.399 and processed tens of thousands of those farmers claims to 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:52.640 determine if the U. S d a Had discriminated against them. 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:56.119 So for a farmer to win in the case, the 0:24:56.240 --> 0:25:02.280 farmer had to specifically identify similarly situated white farmer who 0:25:02.320 --> 0:25:06.240 was treated more favorably. The way they did that was 0:25:06.280 --> 0:25:10.199 by digging through old public documents. One of the ways 0:25:10.400 --> 0:25:13.880 that they found the information was to go to their 0:25:13.960 --> 0:25:20.600 county courthouse and see what loans white farmers had recorded. 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:24.560 You record a security interest in a loan, and that 0:25:24.720 --> 0:25:29.400 was for many people a very fruitful way to get 0:25:29.440 --> 0:25:32.879 information about white farmers loans. By the end of the 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:36.880 settlement and a subsequent class action suit known as Pigford, 0:25:36.880 --> 0:25:40.520 two over two billion dollars was paid out by the 0:25:40.600 --> 0:25:47.879 US government to black farmers across the country. The thing 0:25:47.920 --> 0:25:51.760 about Pigford was, by the time of the settlement, a 0:25:51.800 --> 0:25:55.640 lot of the damage had already been done from nineteen ten, 0:25:56.320 --> 0:25:59.320 which is largely considered the peak of black land ownership. 0:26:00.280 --> 0:26:04.800 Black people had lost nine of their land, and even 0:26:04.840 --> 0:26:07.840 the two billion dollars that the Pigford suits doled out, 0:26:08.800 --> 0:26:13.680 mostly in fifty dollar increments to individual farmers, didn't come 0:26:13.720 --> 0:26:16.520 close to the amount of money that black farmers really 0:26:16.560 --> 0:26:19.720 lost at the hands of the U. S. D As 0:26:19.800 --> 0:26:25.560 discriminatory practices. But John Boyd says that the money did 0:26:25.640 --> 0:26:29.520 help a lot of people. Fifty dollars to struggling in 0:26:29.560 --> 0:26:32.440 farmer who has no money is a real shot in 0:26:32.480 --> 0:26:35.680 the arm up. So it did help. Did it give 0:26:35.720 --> 0:26:38.560 the land back? No? Was the enough settlement to to 0:26:38.680 --> 0:26:41.359 make all of the discrimination go away from U? S 0:26:41.400 --> 0:26:44.399 toda to answer is no, But did it help the 0:26:44.400 --> 0:26:48.400 people who got the money? Absolutely? So you know, here 0:26:48.400 --> 0:26:51.520 again I see it. I see it on both sides 0:26:51.560 --> 0:26:55.320 of the coin for farmers who were were treated brutally 0:26:55.480 --> 0:26:59.240 and awful by the government. No, it was not enough 0:26:59.280 --> 0:27:03.359 money for settlement, but it was a building block. And 0:27:04.359 --> 0:27:06.240 you know, if you're building the building, you build it 0:27:06.240 --> 0:27:10.520