USDA to Form Commission to Tackle Racial Disparities That Hurt Black Farmers

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

September 25, 2021

By J.L. Cook, TheRoot.com

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is launching a commission dedicated to rectifying the agency’s history of discriminating against Black farmers.

Farmer John Boyd Jr., runs his hay bailer at his farm in Boydton, Va., Thursday, May 27, 2021. Just two generations out of slavery, by 1910 Black farmers had amassed more than 16 million acres of land and made up about 14 percent of farmers. The fruit of their labors fed much of America. In 2021, they have fewer than 4.7 million acres. Photo: Steve Helber (AP)

Black farmers have accused the USDA of racial discrimination for decades, claiming that the agency is actively discriminatory when it comes to providing aid and loan forgiveness. Data analysis by POLITICO backed this up, finding that the agency granted loans to only 37 percent of Black applicants in 2020 while accepting 71 percent of applications from white farmers.

Years of discrimination culminated in a lawsuit against the USDA in 1997, known as Pigford v. Glickman, which ended with the agency settling the case for $1 billion in 1999 and providing payouts for several thousand Black farmers. Another round of $1.25 billion was made in 2011 for farmers who were denied payments the first time because they missed filing deadlines.

The Biden Administration attempted to further address the agency’s troubled history with racial discrimination earlier this year by providing billions of dollars in federal aid to disadvantaged farmers through the American Rescue Plan–an effort which was held up in legal battles due to white farmers (who, again, were statistically far more likely to get USDA loans than Black farmers) claiming that it was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Read the full article here.

Learn more about Black farming in America here and here.

More Breaking News here.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.