Latest news with #DiscriminationFinancialAssistanceProgram
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Complain to USDA, says head of Black farmers' group after more members voice concerns
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — More members of an advocacy group for Black farmers have turned to WREG saying they're fed up with the very organization that's supposed to be fighting on their behalf. So, NewsChannel 3 took those latest complaints to the man in charge.'USDA is the culprit here, not BFAA,' exclaimed Thomas Burrell. WREG investigates more complaints against Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association That was the message to members, at least to those who turned to WREG with their complaints about the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association. Burrell is the founder and president of the organization. WREG asked Burrell for a response to the numerous, additional complaints we've received from members. Burrell responded, 'Well, the question is, what are they complaining about, ma'am?' A more than six month long WREG investigation uncovered several complaints taken to state and federal regulators about BFAA. Members demand answers from Black farmers advocacy group Some members said they paid dues and were promised settlement money in members received denial letters from the USDA for its $2 billion Discrimination Financial Assistance Program because their applications were filed after the deadline, submitted by individuals they said were working with BFAA. 'If they're complaining about DFAP, you know what they ought to do, join us, because that's what we're doing,' Burrell told WREG. The WREG Investigators further explained to Burrell details about complaints we'd received: 'The complaint is not about the application about DFAP, the complaint is about BFAA and you misleading them regarding DFAP.' He responded, 'How much misleading is there? Are you gonna say that the surgeon general misleads people about smoking when he puts a warning on the back of a box of cigarettes.' Surrounded by members, Burrell hosted a press conference on February 5, exactly one week after the WREG Investigators aired its series of stories. Our newsroom has been flooded with phone calls and emails from even more BFAA members with complaints and questions, like Dortha Miller who says she just recently learned the application window for DFAP closed last year. 'So that really made me wonder why they still going around taking people's moneyand no one taking the applications anymore. The applications it cut off in January of 2024,and they took my money of September 2024,' said Miller. 'The money is gone. The program is not being re-extended yet and still, Mr. Burrell is convincing folks that they have a chance,' said Kiki Singletary-Williams. WREG investigates more complaints against Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association We recently shared the story of Singletary-Williams and her relatives, some who've belonged to BFAA members for two decades. 'You promised all of us $50,000, Mr. Burrell. Where is it? Some of my relatives are on up in age, they've been dependent on this,' said Singletary-Williams to WREG. After suing the USDA to expand DFAP to include heir, BFAA's attorney recently presented their case to an appeals court. Burrell also used his time at the podium during the press conference to explain his push to get President Trump involved. He told WREG, 'We're going to engage in a full, all out effort.' The WREG Investigators asked Singletary-Williams, 'Are you confident that BFAA could get a response from the Trump administration that would be beneficial to its members?' She replied, 'I'm confident on a scale of 1 to a million, zero.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
USA Today
05-02-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Black farmers group confident in appeal of ruling over USDA payouts for heirs
Hear this story Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association President Thomas Burrell said he is confident the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals will rule in the organization's favor in its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Burrell gave an update on the case during a press conference Wednesday in Memphis. "The mere fact that we [were] going to be able to go to Cincinnati and make oral arguments speaks volumes about the validity of our claim," said Burrell, who noted oral arguments concluded Jan. 30. "Congress intended for these heirs to be paid. We argued that USDA made the switch and that DFAP [Discrimination Financial Assistance Program] is unconstitutional... because of the defects in it, because of the fact that it denied individuals a fundamental promise... to be able to inherit real and personal property." During summer 2024, the Department of Agriculture began issuing payouts of $50,000 to Black farmers who were discriminated against by the federal department. The compensation ordered by the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act, of which DFAP was a part. The payments, which totaled $2.2 billion, did not include the heirs of Black farmers who were discriminated against prior to 2021 — Burrell said heirs were even denied the ability to apply. The Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association sued, and though it lost in a Western District of Tennessee court, the case is currently in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Cincinnati. A ruling in the case should be released within one to two months. Founded in 1997, the Memphis-based the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association has more than 20,000 members, many of whom were denied a share of the $2.2 billion compensation. One of those members, Nimon Willis traveled to Cincinnati to hear the association's argument to the court. Willis' late parents and two grandparents were sharecroppers, and he said receiving that compensation would mean a lot to him. "It would mean a great deal to me," he said. "We know they don't want us to have anything, but, hey, you got to fight for what you want. Nothing comes free." LOCAL NEWS:West Tennessee group continues push for Ford to sign community benefits agreement Burrell also said his organization was working with Tennessee Sen. Brent Taylor to bring the case to President Donald Trump's attention, to get him to intervene and settle the case. Despite Trump's proposed sweeping budget cuts and changes, Burrell said he doesn't believe those cuts will factor into this case. "We don't believe that the administration's cut to the government falls within the same category of protecting a person's constitutional rights," he said. "This is a slippery slope here what USDA is doing, and that is if you start denying this group a right to inherit property, when are you going to start denying people who own farms, who died years ago and set up trust and wills and estates for their children?" Jacob Wilt is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal covering DeSoto County, as well as dining in the Memphis area. You can reach him
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
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
