by Dr. Ridgely A. Mu’min Muhammad

A two day workshop was held by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Albany, GA on Friday
and Saturday of last week, February 9th and 10th. On Friday the monitor, for the Pigford Vs Glickman
class action lawsuit, Randi Roth, was in attendance to update farmers on the status of the lawsuit
and interview individual farmers who had not received payment or had been denied.

According to the USDA’s website of the 21,202 applications that were accepted for processing
60.4% were ruled in favor of the claimant and 39.6% were denied. In other words 3/5ths were approved
and 2/5ths denied which is the same ratio that the Constitution used to count Black people to
determine the number of representatives a state would have in the House of Representatives. The
number of House seats plus the number of Senate seats then determine how many Electors each state
would have in the Electoral College which chooses the president.

Interestingly an article done in the June 7, 1999 Newsweek magazine on the Status of Black
America revealed that the median income for a family of four for Blacks was $35,000 per year but for
Whites was $58,000 per year, or 3/5ths. This ratio of 3/5ths continues like the bass drum in a
march. The underlying tone is set.

We had a chance to interview 29 farmers at the event in Albany and discovered that only 3 had
been approved, 3 did not know their status but 23 were denied. We categorized these 23 denials into
13 possible categories but found that 15 of these denials was either because there was "no
substantial evidence of discrimination", 8 or the farmer had picked the wrong "similarly
situated white farmer", 7. So I asked the monitor for the settlement, Randi Roth, could she
help these 15 farmers.

"Sometimes the monitor will reverse and sometimes we won’t". Now in case of the
similarly situated white farmer she said. "What the word similar means to the adjudicator is
not necessarily what it means to the monitor…" Many people lost on the similarly situated
white farmer however, "It is in the consent decree and it is not something that can change now.
But the judge wrote in his opinion that he thought that class counsel would have the information
about white farmers for people but it turned out that class counsel did not have it." In other
words, Al Pires left a loophole in the consent decree that he was supposed to fill in, but he did
not, leaving the individual black farmers with the burden of finding out which white farmers got
loans from FmHA without having access to those white farmers’ records in the USDA office.

When the leadership of BFAA read that consent decree two days after it was submitted on November
3, 1998, they begged the judge in March of 1999 not to accept that line about the "similarly
situated white farmer". However, the farmers own lead attorney, Al Pires, did not demand that
the wording be changed and the judge signed the decree as written in April of 1999 and now the worst
fears of the Black farmers has come to pass, 40% have been denied.

The "devil is in the details" and the Black farmers got the shaft. However, although
treated like slaves and 3/5ths of a citizen they are continuing to fight to be productive citizens
in the land that they and their forefathers enhanced.

According to Gary Grant, President of BFAA, "Al Pires and the USDA and the other
"beltline bandits" around Washington have not finished hearing from us yet. That is a
promise."