|
|
Sammy Younge Murdered (Jan)
SNCC Opposes Vietnam War (Jan)
Julian Bond Denied Seat in GA Legislature (Jan)
Vernon Dahmer Murdered (Jan)
Greenville Air Force Base Occupation (Jan)
Lowndes County Freedom Organization Founded (March)
State Poll Taxes Ruled Unconstitutional (Mar)
Alabama Elections (May)
White House Conference on Civil Rights (June)
Meredith March Against Fear (June)
Meredith Marchers Attacked in Canton (June)
Meredith Marchers Attacked in Philadelphia MS (June)
Grenada MS Movement (July-Nov)
Black Power (June)
Clarence Triggs Murdered (July)
Alabama ASCS Elections, 1966 — The Struggle Continues (Sept)
Keeping On — From Cooperatives to Pigford
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Book: Sammy Younge, Jr: The First Black College Student to Die ....
Web: Martyrs of the Movement
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Vietnam War & Civil Rights Movement
Documents: SNCC Position Paper: On Vietnam
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Vietnam War & Civil Rights Movement
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Vernon Dahmer Murder
(Description to be written.)
See Cracking Lowndes County and Murder of Jonathan Daniels for preceding events.
(Description to be written.)
See 24th Amendment Ends Poll Tax in Federal Elections for preceding events.
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Poll Taxes
(Description to be written.)
(Description to be written.)
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Books: Mississippi Movement
Web: Meredith Mississippi March Against Fear
Personal story from the Grenada Movement: Bruce Hartford
(Description to be written.)
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Grenada Mississippi — Chronology of a Movement
Documents:
Demands of the Grenada Movement
Example Flyers From the Grenada Movement
Example staff reports from the Grenada MS Movement.
Grenada County Political Handbook (Freedom Information Service)
Personal story from the Grenada Movement: Bruce Hartford
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Books: Black Power
Web: Black Power
Documents: SNCC Position Paper: The Basis of Black Power
(Description to be written.)
For more information:
Web: Martyrs of the Movement
See ASCS Election — 1965 for preceding events.
Again in 1966, Freedom Movement activists in the South organize Black farmers to contest elections for the Agriculture Stabilization & Conservation Service (ASCS) county committees that dispense crop allotments and subsidies. The struggle is particularly intense in Alabama.
The Alabama ASCS elections are scheduled for the Fall which means that organizing efforts have to commence early in the summer. But both SNCC and SCLC are struggling financially, the majority of SCLC's field staff are working on the Chicago Open Housing Campaign, and both organizations, and CORE as well, suddenly find themselves forced to commit resources to the Meredith Mississippi March Against Fear. Nevertheless, by July those SCLC and SNCC field secretaries still working Alabama's Black-Belt, along with dedicated local activists and a small number of summer volunteers are canvassing and educating farmers, recruiting candidates, confronting ASCS officials over inaccurate voter lists, filing appeals, and preparing to get out the vote.
Then on July 10, state ASCS officials abruptly advance the vote to August 16, drastically cutting the time available for putting together a campaign to elect Blacks. On behalf of 36 farmer-plaintiffs from 11 Alabama counties, SNCC organizer and civil rights attorney Don Jelinek files suit against U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman to restore the original election date.
An anonymous U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) official leaks a USDA civil-rights report to Jac Wassermann of the National Sharecroppers Fund. The report is by William Seaborn, the head of the USDA's new civil rights division which has been established in compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He is the first Afro-American ever appointed to a senior position in the USDA. The report is so explosive that USDA bureaucrats have not only kept it secret from the public for six months, but they also concealed portions of it from President Lyndon Johnson. In fact, the report's cover page actually reads:
January 21, 1966
To: The Secretary [of Agriculture]
From: William M. Seaborn, Assistant to the Secretary
Attached is the year-end report on civil rights activities in the
Department in 1965. If you wish to transmit this report to the
White House, you may wish to omit the sections entitled
"evaluation."
Wm. M. Seaborn
[1]
As later described by Don Jelinek, "The report contained massive confessions of USDA discrimination — not to be seen by President Lyndon Johnson. The evaluations had, in fact, been omitted from the Presidential copy. The report was filled with statements of success, interwoven with "evaluations" which contradicted the [claimed] success. It admitted how racially unfairly the programs were administered, and acknowledged many of the charges in our lawsuit." [1]
The judge hearing the election-date lawsuit in Washington encourages the parties to come to a mutual agreement. At a settlement conference, Jelinek presents a detailed account of specific events, names, dates, documents, and reports, all detailing the state ASCS's systematic pattern of racism and discrimination. USDA officials then respond, a response that Jelinek later summed up as:
"There is a very delicate balance between the relationship of the federal government and the Southern states. If we are ever going to bring about a change down there, we have to go very slowly and very cautiously... We know all of what you've said ... and more. We've had our office of the Inspector General investigating all of these incidents you've described. Great changes have been accomplished, but you people can never have enough. Look how far we've gone. We must learn to live with the Alabama whites or else we can never deal with them. What does a year mean to wait for the 1967 ASCS election when it can be done right? Under no circumstances will the USDA overrule a decision of a state ASCS, ..." [1]
With no settlement, the lawsuit comes to court on August 9. Jelinek presents all the evidence and concludes by citing the USDA's own secret report. The first Black witness, Peter Agee of Magnolia, Alabama (Marengo County), testifies to the threats of physical and economic retaliation he faces for participating in an ASCS election and filing the lawsuit. There are 28 more witnesses ready to follow him to the stand. The USDA surrenders and agrees to extend the election for a month.
But the extra month and the enthusiasm for their courtroom victory over the USDA fail to produce any victories at the ballot box. Black voters are threatened and intimidated, in some cases the wives of white farmers are allowed to vote but not the wives of Black farmers, other ineligible whites once again cast fraudulent ballots, and plantation owners collect the ballots of their Black tenants to save them the "trouble" of mailing them in. No Blacks are elected to any county committee. When challenged to explain why county committees remain all white, Sumter County ASCS manager Woodson Ennis articulates the racist attitudes that permeate the USDA, "Colored people would prefer that the white man carry out their business activities than they would their colored friends"
Three-fourths of the delegation that went to Washington in support of the lawsuit are thrown off their land. Peter Agee's life is threatened and shots are fired. Civil rights worker Dick Reavis calls the police to make a report. When the cops come they arrest Reavis and three Blacks. Agee is forced to flee the state.
See Keeping on — From Cooperatives to Pigford below for continuation.
For more information on ASCS election struggles:
CRMVets: ASCS Election Documents
Web: Agriculture Stabilization & Conservation Service (ASCS) Elections (Links)
Books: Carry It On: the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
See Alabama ASCS Elections, 1966 — The Struggle Continues above for preceding events.
Black tenant farmers whose land is repossessed by white owners are no longer eligible to vote in ASCS elections. The same is true for Black land-owners who are forced out. As their numbers dwindle, the chances of Blacks winning future ASCS elections disappear. For example, in Lowndes County Alabama, 59% of the farmers eligible to vote in the 1964 ASCS election are Black, but by 1966, just two years later, Blacks comprise less than 40% of the eligible voters.
Unable to halt the rapid elimination of Black tenant farmers, Freedom Movement activists shift their efforts towards finding ways to defend Black land-owners from the economic terrorism of the White Citizens Councils and some sort of economic sustenance for dispossessed sharecroppers. In Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and elsewhere in the South, CORE, SNCC, and SCLC organizers work with local farmers, VISTA volunteers, and northern supporters to create agriculture and other kinds of CoOps that can pool scarce resources and provide mutual support.
It's always tough for those at the bottom of the economic pyramid to survive, let alone thrive, and the CoOps face problems of insufficient financing, fields that are too small, low commodity prices & fickle markets, under-mechanization, inadequate training, and the inherent difficulties of building cooperation among those who up to now have been economic competitors. One legacy of the South's segregated school system is that many rural Blacks are only semi- literate, and many don't have telephones, which means that communication and education has to be done face to face in person over unpaved roads that often turn to impassable rivers of mud in the winter.
Black-led groups also have to contend with the vicious opposition of the local white power-structure and the entrenched racism of the USDA — the Federal organization that is supposed to be helping them. Some cooperatives are able to obtain assistance from the War on Poverty through cash grants, loans, and training programs. But they quickly discover that local and state politicians furiously oppose any government support for organizations that challenge established economic interests, and their voices of "No!" have clout in Washington and state capitols.
Some of the CoOps manage to survive, others do not. One of the strongest is the Southwest Alabama Farmers Cooperative Association (SWAFCA) organized under the leadership of SCLC State Director Albert Turner with the help of SNCC and SCLC organizers. Covering 10 Alabama Black-Belt counties, SWAFCA is formed in the summer of 1966, and with the help of a $300,000 War on Poverty grant it soon grows to almost 2,000 Black land-owners, renters, and displaced sharecroppers.
"We saw it as the economic arm of the Civil Rights Movement." — Albert Turner. [2]"The whole idea behind SWAFCA is to create some kind of economic basis by which people will be able to think for themselves .... If a man is able to feed himself he votes the way he wants to. Not only is this true, but he does anything else he wants to, and my feeling is that basically the power structure, especially in the South here wants to continue to create that master-servant relationship. As long as it exists, you can control the very destiny of people." — William Harrison. [2]
The SWAFCA farmers quickly discover that by collectively buying their supplies in bulk they cut their costs in half. Denied their fair share of subsidies and acreage allotments by ASCS county committees, Blacks can't compete against white cotton growers. So SWAFCA, like other southern CoOps, helps its members convert to "truck" (food) crops. And when it comes time to sell those crops, they're able to prevent the food processors from arbitrarily setting prices at subsistence levels by playing one farmer off against the others. "[We're] getting $90 a ton [for cucumbers] where we used to make $60 a ton," Albert Turner tells a reporter. Not only do SWAFCA members insist on a fair price, but other farmers (including some whites) follow their lead and in a single season the prices that all farmers get for peas, cucumbers, okra, and other truck crops jump significantly in Southwest Alabama.
But higher prices for farmers means lower-profits for the food processors and they are not amused. With the support of the White Citizens Council and local politicians, they complain to Governor Lurleen Wallace (George Wallace's wife) who arranges a meeting in Washington with the Alabama Congressional delegation and officials of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the agency responsible for running the War on Poverty. The Whitefield Pickle Company (who was forced to pay higher prices for SWAFCA cucumbers) generously provides a corporate jet for the trip. The Governor, the Congressmen, and the local politicos demand that SWAFCA's small OEO grant be rescinded. They don't argue that helping poor farmers get a fair price for their crops is wrong — that is, after all, what the OEO is supposed to do (and the USDA too, for that matter) — instead they claim that SWAFCA is a front for Communists, Black Power, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown.
To his credit, in this instance OEO Director Sargent Shriver refuses their demand, and when Governor Wallace later tries to veto the grant, he overturns her effort. But elsewhere, Black-led and low-income cooperatives of all kinds — agricultural, housing, employment, consumer, credit unions — face unrelenting hostility from the white power-structure who defend their economic dominance with economic boycotts, assaults on funding, legal harassment, investigations of "Communist influence," indictments on trumped up charges, and intimidation and reprisal against CoOp members. Over time, this economic warfare against poor people and their organizations is successful in killing many of the CoOps that emerge out of the Freedom Movement. But some manage to survive.
Twenty-two low-income CoOps from 8 southern states — including SWAFCA, Freedom Quilting Bee, Southern Consumers Cooperative, Grand Marie Vegetable Producers, Mid-South Oil Consumers, Greenala Citizens Federal Credit Union and 15 others — form the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC) in February of 1967. Led by Charles Prejean of Louisiana, the FSC develops advocacy, training, organizing, fund-raising and marketing programs for poor folks CoOps of all kinds. By 1970, the FSC has grown to over 100 CoOps involving more than 25,000 low-income families. And like the individual cooperatives, the FSC also endures harassment and attack from the power-structure and state and federal government agencies. But the FSC survives. In 1985 it merges with the Emergency Land Fund to become the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund, and as of 2012 it is still organizing and fighting on behalf of Black and low-income farmers across the South.
In 1983, the Reagan administration eliminates the USDA's Office of Civil Rights Enforcement and Adjudication (OCREA). Later, in his Pigford v Glickman court ruling, Judge Paul Friedman notes that after OCREA was dismantled:
.. [civil rights] complaints that were filed were never
processed, investigated or forwarded to the appropriate agencies for
conciliation. As a result, farmers who filed complaints of
discrimination never received a response, or if they did receive a
response it was a cursory denial of relief. In some cases, OCREA staff
simply threw discrimination complaints in the trash without ever
responding to or investigating them. In other cases, even if there was
a finding of discrimination, the farmer never received any
relief. [3]
In 1997, with the aid of the FSC, Black farmers file Pigford v Glickman, a class-action civil-rights suit against the USDA. (The Pigford and related cases are often referred to as the "Black Farmers Case.") The lead attorney in Pigford is long-time civil rights warrior J.L. Chestnut of Selma, Alabama:
"What we did say in the lawsuit was that the United States Department of Agriculture — a racist plantation, disguised as a government agency — had discriminated against Black farmers and it had done so since the Civil War. And we wanted money; we wanted damages. ... And we said we wanted injunctive relief. ... The injunctive relief was that we wanted legal assurance that Black farmers from that day forward would receive full, fair and equal treatment with white farmers." — J.L. Chestnut. [4]
Though the Black farmer's lawsuit narrowly focuses on discrimination in loan programs from 1983 when the OCREA was shut down through 1996, it evokes a century of systemic racism throughout all aspects of the USDA. As soon as the case comes to trial in 1998, the Department surrenders — they know they cannot defend their past actions. They quickly agree to a consent settlement that requires the U.S. government to pay significant damages to Black farmers.
Judge Friedman notes in his ruling that of the 925,000 Black-owned farms in 1920 only 18,000 are left and that:
The USDA and the county commissioners to whom it has delegated so much power bear much of the responsibility for this dramatic decline.He further noted,...the widespread belief that the Department is "the last plantation," a department "perceived as playing a key role in what some see as a conspiracy to force minority and disadvantaged farmers off their land through discriminatory loan practices.[3]
Pigford and follow-on cases are still in the news today (2012).
Ultimately, the damages awarded to Black farmers may exceed $2.5 Billion.
But as the judge also noted: The settlement ... will not undo all
that has been done [to harm Black farmers]. Nor does the settlement
even attempt to address the history of racism and discrimination in other
USDA programs such as ASCS, allotments, subsidies, extension service, soil
conservation, 4-H, and so on.
Important as the Pigford cases are, they don't directly address
the broader USDA context nationwide. Every year hundreds of billions are
spent on agricultural programs and subsidies, all of
which — according to the politicians — are
designed to help and protect the "family farmer." Yet year after year,
decade after decade, the number of American farms and farmers of all races
continues to decline, while the amount of acerage under cultivation remains
roughly the same. Meaning that as small farms go under, large
farms — many of them owned by "Fortune 500"
corporations — become ever larger and more profitable. As
author Pete Daniel observed in the Journal of Southern History:
Federal agricultural policy and laborsaving science and technology
became tools that ruthlessly eliminated sharecroppers, tenants, and small
farmers. ... The increase in USDA programs had an inverse relationship to
the number of farmers: the larger the department, the more programs it
generated, and the more money it spent, the fewer farmers who
survived.
[5]
In her 2010 speech to the Georgia NAACP, USDA official and Freedom Movement veteran Shirley Sherrod noted: "... it's really about those who have versus those who don't. They could be Black. They could be white. They could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people ... God helped me to see that it's not just about Black people — it's about poor people." [6]
It is this speech that the right-wing media-lie-machine then distorts and takes out of context to charge Sherrod with the false allegation that she is a government-paid racist. And the same deceptive pundits and bloggers who smear Shirley Sherrod also attack the Pigford settlements as fraudulent rip-offs of taxpayer funds by greedy Black con-artists and their liberal stooges. To justify their false accusation, they cite the fact there are only 18,000 Black farmers in the entire United States, yet 86,000 people have filed claims for a share of the Pigford settlement.
But as Mark Twain observed: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics," and "Figures don't lie, but liars figure:"
Therefore, it is entirely possible to have 86,000 legitimate settlement claims.
To this day, many Freedom Movement veterans remain skeptical that the institutional racism which so permeated the USDA for so many decades has actually been eradicated. And many believe that the USDA's illegal and unjustified firing of Shirley Sherrod was as much (or more) due to her tireless support for Black and low-income farmers as from the Obama administration's panicked fear of the far-right's media distortion and smear machine.
For more information on CoOps and the Pigford case:
Web: Pigford v Glickman "Black Farmers" Case
Books: Carry It On: the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
1. Dr. King, the Farmers Will Tell You..., Don Jelinek
2. Carry It On: the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama
3. Opinion, Judge Friedman, Pigford v Glickman
4. Transcript of Attorney J.L. Chestnut's Speech on the Black Farmer Lawsuit (FSC-LAF)
5. African American Farmers and Civil Rights (Journal of Southern History, 2/1/2007)
6. Shirley SherrodAddress at the Georgia NAACP (American Rhetoric)
1965
1967
© Copyright
Webspinner: webmaster@crmvet.org
(Labor donated)