31-01-2025
Black farmers' heirs challenge USDA payments at federal appeals court in Cincinnati
CINCINNATI — When Johnny Gray was born in 1952, his family expected he'd grow up and become a farmer just like his dad.
But things didn't work out that way.
It wasn't that Gray didn't want to stay in the family business. He'd grown up working alongside his father, Joseph, on a 40-acre plot his grandparents owned in Phillips County, Arkansas, where his dad cultivated cotton.
'He was such a good farmer,' Johnny Gray said of his late dad. 'But every time he would apply for a loan, he would go in and they would tell him, 'It's not come in yet, it's not come in yet.''
Because he never got support, Joseph Gray eventually lost the family land and his son lost his dream.
It's a familiar story among families of American Black farmers, who endured more than a century of systemic discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many were denied USDA low-interest loans and grants afforded to white farmers.
Under former President Joe Biden, the agency launched the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program to provide monetary help to farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who were discriminated against prior to 2021.
Gray and hundreds of others expected the program to help people like him – the heirs of late farmers who'd been discriminated against – but they've hit a snag: The USDA insists that only people still alive can apply for the program.
This doesn't sit well with people like Thomas Burrell, president of the Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association, who said discriminatory practices denied farmers' heirs generational wealth.
'What is the purpose of saying on one hand, we're going to go back and cover discrimination that happened 20, 30, 40 years ago but not pay the heirs?' Burrell said.
Burrell and more than a dozen farmers, many of whom traveled from out of state to attend what they deemed an historic hearing, gathered at the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse, where the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on the matter Thursday.
Percy Squire, a Columbus-based attorney representing the farmers, centered his argument on 'legacy claims.'
'You have people who were farming in the '50s and the '40s and the '30s who were discriminated against, who had to sell their farms, had to sell land in order to survive, and those people's estates should be eligible for financial assistance because their heirs would have benefited from that,' Squire told The Enquirer.
He said similar USDA programs have allowed for heirs of other minorities to at least apply for relief.
'They wouldn't even accept the applications' from Black farmers' heirs, he said. 'They could have accepted them and denied them, but they wouldn't even accept them.'
The government's attorney, Jack Starcher, argued to the appellate court's three-judge panel that the program applications were only open to 'living farmers, the actual people who experienced discrimination.'
Those blocked from submitting applications could still choose to sue the government, Starcher said.
The appellate panel heard arguments from both sides and peppered the lawyers with questions.
"How can you provide an assistance to someone that's deceased," asked Judge Andre Mathis, who's weighing the case alongside judges Chad Readler and Helene White.
Squire acknowledged that the assistance would go to the dead farmers' heirs, but he said assisting still-living-yet-elderly applicants would also benefit heirs.
The federal program in question was passed in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, through which Congress allocated $2.2 billion. In August, the Biden administration announced it had issued payments to 43,000 people in all 50 states, in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $500,000.
"No matter how it is sliced, the $2.2 billion in payouts is historic," John Boyd, president of the Black Farmers Association, said at the time.
People gathered for Thursday's arguments still applauded those payouts while arguing that the USDA was wrong to prohibit heirs from applying for them.
"We are here because our parents died before they got anything," said Shirley Frierson, 70, whose mother, Beatrice McIntosh, farmed land as a sharecropper in Lexa, Arkansas.
The panel isn't expected to render a decision for months. If it sides with the Black farmers, the program would have to reopen applications, which closed last January.
'I came here to stand behind what is right,' said Nimon Willis, a former farmer from Memphis who attended the hearing with his wife, Mary, the daughter of sharecroppers. 'I know they really don't want to give us anything, but we're here to make a stand.'
According to USDA data, there were nearly 47,000 producers who identified as Black in the U.S. in 2022. Texas had the highest number, at about 11,500. Ohio's number of Black farmers has dwindled from about 2,000 at the turn of the 20th century to fewer than 350 today, according to The Nature Conservancy.
Kentucky numbers were slightly higher at about 430 Black farmers, according to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Heirs of Black farmers challenge USDA in federal court hearing
