& THE LAND LOSS FUND

July 21, 2010

As the president of the 20,000 plus members of the Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Association (BFAA) and the sixty-six year old son of two lead plaintiffs in the Wise v. Venneman class action, the late Matthew and Florenza Moore Grant whose 30 year old case was supposedly settled but painfully never paid, I would like to weigh in on the racially embedded political/media controversy and the “destroy the black woman syndrome” of the Shirley Sherrod incident.

I am personally acquainted with Ms. Sherrod, and have always found her to be an honorable and hard working representive to save farmers suffering from the economic impacts of an unfair and often discriminatory and racist USDA.

The statement from Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, that USDA does not “tolerate” racial discrimination is a complete lie.

Talk to almost any family member of a black farmer or check out the C.R.A.T. Report (February 1997) puslished by the USDA resulting from the “Listening Sessions” of 1996 and see the government’s documentation of how USDA employees, on the local and federal level discriminated against Black farmers, in particular. And nothing was ever done to penalize the all white officials bent on destroying a society of black farmers across the nation: not one firing, not one charge brought, and not one pension lost.

Yet at the first erroneous offering by a conservative blogger that a black woman from USDA might have discriminated, she is immediately forced to resign. This is becoming a vicious pattern against black women: outstanding examples are former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), Bertha Lewis of Acorn where black women were in charge, Desiree Rogers, social secretary for the Obama White House, and now Shirley Sherrod, led by the prestigious NAACP, respected African American reporters, and the Obama governing complex.

Arguably, these kinds of actions are also a symptom of the callous and brutal way black men often treat black women and their children in everyday life.

USDA is a perfect example of the power to create, destroy, and redistribute wealth and employment, in the past and for future generations. At the funeral service of my 86 year old uncle yesterday, I was reminded of the long standing economic impact on the life and death of black farmers.

As three of his daughters ritualistically drove bronze screws with an automatic drill into his handsome self-handcrafted oak casket, a former sharecropper and self-described “conservative democrat,” was among one of the few successful claimants in Track A of Pigford vs. Glickman. But his life of worry and abuse by USDA and local farm offices imperiled his economic security and life choices, and those of his children.

A law suit that has already cost the American tax payers over $1 billion dollars in settlements with another $1.25 billion waiting approval by the U S Senate, that semeingly has worked tirelessly to prevent justice from being served. However, no one has had the balls to introduce the bill on its own merits, neither black nor white, based on the judges ruling.

But let Fox News put out an outrageous news story with no investigation and a Black woman can be summoned to pull off a Georgia Road and forced to resign her position with USDA, immediately, while all those other agents who truly did discriminate and cost the American tax payer billions, have gone free and to higher positions in the USDA agency. Oh what an indictment on just how far we have come on the race issue as a nation.

Besides the US Congress calling for the immediate reinstatement of Ms. Sherrod, it must set the example of leadership on justice and fairness by allowing the Pigford Class and all outstanding Civil Rights claims at USDA to be “settled once and for all” which will allow the country be able to begin to move toward the healing process of racial disharmony in the nation.

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The Federation Sends Letter to USDA Secretary Vilsack Regarding Sherrod Resignation

ATLANTA....On July 19, former Federation staff member and head of the USDA’s Rural Development Office in Georgia was asked by the USDA to resign her post. The reason was because of the ramifications of a distorted video from a March 2010 speech she gave at the NAACP in south Georgia that was publicized by Fox News. In response to this the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund has sent the letter below to Thomas Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture.


July 21, 2010

The Honorable Thomas Vilsack
Secretary of Agriculture
Washington DC

Dear Secretary Vilsack:

We at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund are writing regarding your decision to ask Shirley Sherrod to resign. We think you must reconsider and immediately reinstate her as Georgia USDA State Director of Rural Development.

Your decision to force Ms. Sherrod to resign was taken in haste without a thorough and complete review of the facts, context and circumstances of her actions. We feel you were unduly influenced by distorted and edited videotape that completely misrepresented a speech Ms. Sherrod made to the NAACP in Georgia.  

It is a sign of leadership to admit to mistakes and quickly corrected them. We feel you as Secretary of Agriculture must quickly correct this injustice committed against Ms. Shirley Sherrod and the people she has struggled for years to serve. This is the transformative awareness and enlightened judgment we are expecting from you.
 
We note with interest that your concern is to move forward to solve the problems that USDA has had in the past in terms of its sad record on civil rights. Yet your decision to fire one of the few persons in the country who could likely do the most to help achieve that goal stubbornly negates your stated interest of moving forward toward equal access and equality of opportunity at USDA with integrity.

At the NAACP gathering in March this year, Shirley was sharing with the group her experience in the 1980’s of assisting the white farmer Roger Spooner. She, in fact, was instrumental in helping to save his farm. She describes the process of getting beyond her assumption that whites didn’t need services and assistance. She realized that being white did not make anyone immune to the problems of and to the lack of access to services.  She realized rather that it was a matter of who has and how does not.  This was a life changing experience for her. Her message was that all of us need to get beyond race and assist each other whether black or white.

Another of your interests we know is to finally resolve the lawsuits against USDA. Lack of access to services at USDA is the basis for the Pigford lawsuit. In addition to securing the necessary funding for settling Pigford from Congress to finally resolve this injustice to individual farmers, we know that another essential step in moving forward is to assist and assure farmers have access to the USDA programs. Programs, in fact, that are supposed to be available on an equitable basis to all farmers.

Shirley Sherrod in her remarkable career has been one of the most active practitioners in assisting untold numbers of black and white farmers to access the credit, conservation and other programs at USDA. Shirley has essentially been an ambassador for the USDA in her work at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives and as Georgia State Director of Rural Development. If anything, she deserves to be honored for this work and not falsely condemned and forced to retire in disgrace.

We find it ironic that in the one hundred years of USDA’s history of discrimination, not a single white person has been dismissed for discrimination, however, a Black women who is doing her job well is falsely accused of discrimination in an altered video and you decide that she can no longer do a credible and nondiscriminatory job of dispensing USDA rural development programs and must resign.

Once Shirley is restored to her position, we feel it would enhance USDA’s goals by utilizing her as an ambassador for USDA. She could offer USDA staff throughout the country training and teaching about transformation on the issue of race and what it means to offer service to all farmers with justice and integrity regardless of race.

In summary, the inference that Shirley Sherrod is a racist is beyond comprehension. For you to make a decision without consideration of Shirley’s long and impressive work in civil rights is uncalled for. It is not only an insult to her, but also to the communities she has worked for and with all these many years as well as our organization that has for decades fought against racism and injustice in the rural South

We ask that you immediately reconsider your decision to fire Shirley Sherrod, apologize to her and consider instead the tremendous asset she has been and could continue to be for the USDA and rural America. We urge you to learn from this disagreeable incident and make it a shining example of a true change of heart and direction at USDA toward a brighter day of racial reconciliation and justice for all.

Cooperatively yours,


Ralph Paige
Executive Director