RALEIGH, N.C. — Thousands of black farmers are close to receiving reparations for alleged racial discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the 1980s and 1990s.
The government settled the largest civil rights lawsuit in history in 1999, and up to 90,000 black farmers or their families are eligible for a piece of the $1.2 billion settlement under a bill signed by President Barack Obama. The deadline for settlement claims is Friday.
"In the worst possible way the USDA was putting black farmers out of business while giving white farmers everything they needed," said attorney Hank Sanders of Alabama, one of three lead attorneys on the class-action lawsuit.
Sanders said black farmers from 20 states were unfairly denied federal loans or assistance from 1981 to 1996. Sometimes, Sanders said, USDA officials wouldn't even let black people have applications. The time period follows the closure of the civil rights division of the USDA by the Reagan administration that was later reinstated by President Bill Clinton.
The Black Farmers Litigation Discrimination Settlement grew out of Pigford v. Glickman, a 1997 class-action lawsuit. The government settled the lawsuit in 1999, but about 90,000 people turned in claims for assistance after an Oct. 12, 1999, deadline passed because many thought it was a scam or were not notified, Sanders said. After years of lobbying, Congress passed a measure in the 2008 Farm Bill that allowed late applicants to pursue claims. The president in 2010 designated $1.2 billion to fund the new settlement.
"To be honest, a lot of farmers are deceased," Sanders said. "It can't help them at all but it can help their families... It's certainly been a long time, but much longer than that is the discrimination that has been going on."
About 7,000 black farmers in North Carolina may be eligible for the payouts of up to $250,000 if they can prove actual damages related to racial discrimination from the USDA. The vast majority of farmers would be eligible for up to $53,000. Almost all of the cases are confined to the south with Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina having the largest number of cases.
To be eligible for money under the most recent settlement, a black farmer must have sought a loan for his farm between 1981 and 1996 and have registered a written or verbal complaint about discriminatory treatment. Also, applicants must be farmers who missed the initial deadline and filed a late claim for the first settlement.
But with one day to go, only about a third of the 90,000 eligible farmers have filed claims. Multiple black farm groups and advocates petitioned Judge Paul Friedman in the US District Court to extend the 180-day filing period by another 90, but Friedman denied the requests. A Friedman aide said the judge felt the deadlines had been extended enough and families had already waited too long.
Sanders, who has worked on the Pigford case for 15 years, said there is no amount of money that could return the farmers' way of life interrupted by the USDA.
"There's no justice when someone has lost their way of life," Sanders said. "I don't consider it justice, but it's fair."