It turns out that I spoke with Shirley Sherrod back in 1993, when I was doing that story on Welchel Long, the black farmer in Dewy Rose, Ga., who had been poorly treated by the Farmer’s Home Administration (FmHA), the USDA’s lender of last resort for small farmers. What she told me then was that many black farmers regarded FmHa as just “an agency that is there is take [their] land.” She wasn’t blowing smoke.

“If anybody’s ever been discriminated against, he was,” Billy Daniel, a white retailer who sold Long farm machinery, told me. “They did everything they could to make him a failure, and when he failed they said it was bad management.” In due course, the USDA’s civil rights office found that Long had been discriminated against, but the FmHA refused to forgive any of his loans. That’s as far as I was able to follow the story, but it was obvious that something needed to be done on a grander scale, and in due course a class action lawsuit was filed, and a settlement reached. Sherrod has been personally involved in this, and it’s far from over, as TPM recounts.

Anyway, I’ve posted the two stories I did back then after the jump. 

Journal 0 Edition Date:
Tuesday, 3/2/1993
Section Name: STATE
NEWS Letter & Page: H4 Column
Name:   Label:
 
 
Headline: Fighting to hold on to his land
Georgian charges racism in red tape
Dek Head:  
Byline / Source: Mark
Silk / Staff WRITER, Email:  
Correction:  
Corr.-Unpub.:  
Story: Dewy
Rose, Ga. – His house is sagging, his fields have lain fallow for five
years, and he must spend three mornings a week on a kidney dialysis machine.

But Welchel Long has not given up the fight to keep his farm and prove
racial discrimination against the Farmers Home Administration (FmHA), the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s lender of last resort for small farmers.

“I’d like to have my land clear, ” the 70-year-old farmer said
firmly.

A pillar of the black community, Mr. Long says he has been mistreated by the
white farmers and bureaucrats who run FmHA in Georgia. Seeking recourse in
Washington, he says he ran into stone walls from those monitoring civil rights
at the Agriculture Department.

Between 1982 and 1987, when the last farm census was taken, black- owned
farms declined 50 percent in the South. Since 1920, the proportion of
black-owned farms nationwide has shrunk from one in seven to one in a hundred.

But Mr. Long believes the election of Bill Clinton may mean a new day for
him and the black farmers who remain. Mike Espy, the country’s first black
agriculture secretary, has pledged to end discrimination at FmHA.

Sitting in his modest living room across from photos of his three sons in
military uniform – none of whom has gone into agriculture – Mr. Long told how
he made himself into Elbert County’s premier black farmer.

A sharecropper’s son, he went from World War II to agriculture studies at
the Tuskegee Institute.

He purchased his first farmland in 1955 and planted hundreds of acres of
cotton, wheat and soybeans. So accomplished was he that, before integration, he
taught clinics in farm management to white and black farmers alike.

As president of the Elbert County NAACP, he worked for voting rights and
helped integrate the fire department. He helped other black farmers apply for
FmHA loans.

Mr. Long began getting loans from FmHA in 1978, after 13 years of trying. But
money to buy herbicides would arrive in June, when the weeds were already
waist-high, and he’d lose his crop. Or he’d receive a real estate loan to pay
for land but no operating funds, so he couldn’t get seeds into the ground.

Many other black farmers regard FmHA simply as “an agency that is there
to take [their] land, ” said Shirley Sherrod, Georgia field director for
the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which works with black farmers.

Mr. Long found himself buried in debt. He charged FmHA with discrimination.

In 1982, state FmHA director Orson Swindle said Mr. Long’s charges were
meritless and faulted him for “poor” money management and farming
practices.

He called Mr. Long a “lifelong complainant about discrimination.”

“If anybody’s ever been discriminated against, he was, ” said
Billy Daniel, who is white and sold Mr. Long farm machinery. “They did
everything they could to make him a failure, and when he failed, they said it
was bad management.”

In 1983, Walter Frederick of FmHA’s equal opportunity staff examined the
cases of Mr. Long and 11 other black farmers. He said FmHA’s financing was too
little, too late.

His office told Mr. Swindle to employ farm manager Lonzie White to make sure
the black farmers got their money on time. Mr. White says he was given other
duties – “I was not able to do the job.”

“The agency had an obligation and did not fulfill it, ” Mr.
Frederick said. “Mr. Long would have been in good shape if the agency had
allowed Mr. White to do his job.”

In 1990 congressional testimony, the head of the Agriculture Department’s
civil rights office, Evelyn M. Wright, conceded that FmHA often failed to
comply with civil rights requirements.

In Washington, the resources of FmHA’s equal opportunity staff were cut
repeatedly during the Reagan-Bush years. Mr. Frederick, an aggressive
investigator of civil rights complaints, was forbidden to handle cases.

“I have been silenced, ” Mr. Frederick said.

But having denounced discrimination at FmHA as a congressman from
Mississippi, Mr. Espy as agriculture secretary may change the way the agency
does business.

“I think you’ll see an immediate and dramatic departure from the status
quo, ” said Joel Berg, Mr. Espy’s press secretary.

“I will use the full force of my new office to fight to ensure equal
opportunity for all Americans in the FmHA, ” he said in a recent interview
with the Associated Press.

What can Mr. Long hope for?

In response to a reporter’s inquiry, the USDA civil rights office is
reviewing his entire FmHA file, beginning in 1978.

“On a finding of discrimination, we do everything we can to make people
whole, ” said the office’s director, Jim Westbrook.

Even if Mr. Long were to get his farm clear, there is little hope for the
future of black farmers in his corner of northeast Georgia.

Back in the 1950s, he says, 324 of Elbert County’s 1,200 farm families were
black. Now, besides himself, there is one black farmer left. He blames the
FmHA.

“We had some good farmers, ” he said. “They just stomped
‘em.”

 

Constitution 0 Edition
Date: Tuesday,
9/7/1993 Section Name: STATE NEWS Letter
& Page: A3
Column Name:  
Label:  
 
Headline: First bias, now red tape for farmer in FmHA debt
Dek Head:  
Byline / Source: Mark
Silk / Staff WRITER, Email:  
Correction:  
Corr.-Unpub.:  
Story: The
Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) has declined to forgive any of the loans it
made to a black Georgia farmer even though the U.S. Agriculture Department’s
civil rights office found the agency intentionally discriminated against him
because of his race.

In response to the discrimination finding, FmHA last month informed Welchel
Long of Dewy Rose that he could refinance his 162-acre farm,
lease it or purchase his home and 10 acres – options available to FmHA
borrowers regardless of whether they have been discriminated against.

“They are really not offering me anything, ” Mr. Long said.
“I’ve done my best to be straight with them, but they really don’t play
the game right.”

Mr. Long, 70, began borrowing money from FmHA in 1978 to plant cotton, wheat
and soybeans. But the funds would arrive too late to buy herbicides or would be
earmarked for land purchase rather than for seed.

After an internal investigation, FmHA’s Georgia office was ordered to employ
a farm manager to make sure Mr. Long and other black farmers got their money on
time, but that man was given other duties, then transferred.

Although eligible for loans at a 3 percent interest rate, Mr. Long was
charged as much as 18 percent, and his debt rolled up to $300,000.

This spring, the Agriculture Department’s civil rights office reopened an
investigation into Mr. Long’s case, and in June it found that he had been
blatantly discriminated against. Yet FmHA took the position that it can legally
do no more than offer Mr. Long its standard refinancing remedies.

“We’re trying to remedy the situation, but we can only remedy it within
our regulations, ” said FmHA spokesman Joe O’Neill. “There are no
specific regulations for civil rights cases.”

Mr. O’Neill added that FmHA had asked the Agriculture Department’s general
counsel to determine whether additional remedies could be provided to Mr. Long.

“It’s disappointing that an agency that admits discrimination is unable
to come up with a remedy, ” said Rep. Don Johnson (D-Ga.), who has made
inquiries on Mr. Long’s behalf. “I think they need to change those
regulations.”

Within the Agriculture Department, there seems to be frustration with FmHA’s
response.

“We believe that Mr. Long should be made whole, and the proposal falls
short, ” said James Westbrooks, deputy associate director of the
department’s civil rights office.