Black Farmers Protest Delay On Claims Agriculture Department Has Acknowledged Discrimination; Backlog Of Complaints At 900

John Boyd led his mule named “Struggle” up Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday in a small march of black farmers who say the Clinton administration is failing to address their claims of discrimination despite its supposed focus on improved race relations.

“I’ve got my mule,” said Boyd, a farmer from Baskerville, Va., who is president of the National Black Farmers Association. “I need my 40 acres.”

The march of about 250 farmers from the federal courthouse to the Capitol followed a hearing at which U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman set a Feb. 1 trial date for a $2 billion lawsuit filed by 350 farmers hoping to force action on their complaints.

The Agriculture Department has acknowledged past discrimination and is trying to resolve a backlog of about 900 complaints from farmers over denial of loans and other benefits. The lawsuit seeks to represent all black farmers who made claims between 1983 and 1997, which lawyers estimate at about 2,500.

At the hearing, the farmers’ attorneys told Friedman that government lawyers were using the statute of limitations to block cash payments for claims made before 1994 - about three-fourths of the total - even though many were lost or thrown away. They asked the judge to rule on that action.

“It is creating another form of injustice,” said Alexander Pires, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer.

In the coming weeks, Friedman will decide that issue and whether the case is a class action involving all farmers with discrimination complaints. He set the trial date at the request of the farmers’ attorneys, who said it might speed up a mediation process the judge previously ordered as an alternative to trial.

“It took us 15 long years to get here,” said J.L. Chestnut, an attorney from Selma, Ala., who represents 80 farmers. “Without a trial date, there will be another 15 years of injustice,” he told the judge. His words prompted applause and cries of “Yes!” in the packed courtroom.

Government lawyers, meanwhile, contended the statute of limitations must be observed and said President Clinton and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman are committed to settling as many cases as possible without a court battle.

“We remain convinced that mediation is the most appropriate method,” said Justice Department lawyer Michael Sitcov. “We are willing to be as creative as we can be.”

Pires, however, said little progress has been made in the first month of mediation, with no settlements reached among eight initial cases. The Agriculture Department’s own civil rights process has produced just 15 cash settlements in over a year.

“The only thing the government likes about mediation is it takes a long time. It never comes to an end,” Pires said.

But Friedman said he believed Clinton and Glickman were sincere about resolving complaints and said mediation should get another chance.

“I would like very much to keep mediation going,” the judge said. “It’s not working now. It may work.”

Joining the march after the hearing were the Rev. Joseph Lowery, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, who is facing trial on charges he took illegal gratuities from companies he regulated as agriculture secretary and then tried to cover it up.

“We’re not going back, we’re going forward,” Lowery told the group that carried a large red-and-white banner reading “Justice for Black Farmers.”

Tim Pigford, a farmer from Riegelwood, N.C., and lead plaintiff in the case, said farmers hope the complaints are resolved soon so they can plant crops next year.

“That is way too late,” he said. “We wish the government would just go ahead and settle.”