Georgia is the state that gave Democrats a majority in the Senate, and one of the two senators who won it, Raphael Warnock, should bow to President Biden when the White House’s “Help is Here” tour visits the peach state on Friday. Warnock is responsible for obtaining debt relief for black farmers in the American Rescue Plan, an issue that has escaped significant action for decades and that he is deeply aware of having grown up in rural Georgia.
It is highly unusual for a freshman senator in his first few months in office to achieve such a remarkable achievement, but his election as the 50th Democrat made it possible to pass the $ 1.9 trillion package. And so, a grateful Democratic leadership wants to make sure voters recognize how central he is to the change that Biden has promised to bring about.
Warnock will be on the ballot next year and the Republican-controlled legislature in Georgia is passing all sorts of barriers to voting to discourage high participation that benefits Democrats and to ensure that they get a different result in November 2022, when Warnock will be running for his first full term in the Senate.
A provision built into COVID-19’s massive $ 1.9 trillion relief bill, for which Warnock is directly responsible, creating a $ 5 billion fund designed to benefit colored farmers who have historically been marginalized and in need aid to cover outstanding debts and avoid foreclosure – aid, in fact, that white farmers routinely receive. In total, $ 4 billion of the total would go to debt relief and $ 1 billion would provide technical assistance and donations, a very late aid to correct a serious historical error.
“Almost from the beginning, US agricultural policy has been racist,” says Zoe Willingham, co-author of a 2019 report on black farmers for the Center for American Progress. The government’s documented history of denying federal loans to black farmers led to the loss of about 90% of their land between 1910 and 1997, while white farmers lost just 2%. “The first significant action for black farmers is the forgiveness of the federal financial loan in the American Rescue Plan,” says Willingham, who gives credit to groups of grassroots farmers and strong progressive leaders like Warnock for generating support in Congress. “It is exciting to see the leadership he has taken.”
Almost immediately after reaching the Senate, Warnock proposed an independent bill, the Emergency Aid Act for Farmers of Color. Its central component is loan forgiveness, and, working with his fellow Democrats Cory Booker and Ben Ray Luhan, he obtained the first significant action in this long and deep problem of financial relief for black farmers. “I hope Biden sees this as a big win,” Willingham told The Daily Beast. “He highlighted a forgotten segment of rural America, which is the colored rural communities.”
Warnock grew up in a public house in rural Georgia, where his mother as a teenager harvested cotton as a tree. “40 acres and a mule” was the federal government’s promise to distribute land to blacks freed after the Civil War. That was a failed promise, and in 1999, 16 years after the United States Civil Rights Commission described in detail discrimination against black farmers, the USDA (Department of Agriculture) filed a lawsuit against black farmers to pay damages.
It is known as the Pigford case, in honor of one of the farmers, and it was a moral victory that fell short of the financial point of view. “This marked the recognition of the battle by farmers, but it in no way made up for the century of discrimination they suffered,” says Willingham.
As a senator, Barack Obama sponsored the Claims Remediation Act for another round of payments. Among the co-sponsors was Senator Joe Biden. In 2010, with the two men in the White House, Obama signed the $ 1.15 billion legislation, saying he would end what he called “a painful chapter in American history”. Conservatives attacked him as a backdoor repair, and while a billion dollars is nothing, he did little to repair the loss of land and the degradation of black rural communities.
When the American Recovery Plan was approved with debt relief for black farmers, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack called to congratulate John Boyd, the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association. A fourth-generation farmer in Baskerville, Virginia, Boyd suffered directly at the hands of racist agents from the USDA County and, after decades of activism, protesting across the country and putting pressure on lawmakers, he knows all the players in Washington.
Vilsack called him twice to “calm the waters” when he was going through Senate confirmation for a second mission at the USDA. “I told him (Vilsack) that things cannot be the same as they were under Obama. He has to be more aggressive in tackling discrimination in debt reductions and reductions. It’s behavior and culture, that’s why we call it (USDA) ‘The Last Plantation’ ”.
Boyd, 55, grows corn, wheat and soybeans, and has 100 head of cattle on 114 acres of land. He has been cultivating for 38 years, long enough to have experienced the most egregious forms of discrimination. He described to the Daily Beast how the local county agent was “the next thing to God”, dominating black farmers, seeing them only one day a week and “loudly and proudly” calling them “boy” and throwing racial slurs . “We called it Black Wednesday,” says Boyd.
Of the 157 agricultural loans made at Boyd’s home in Mecklenburg County, only two went to black farmers. Loan applications for local white farmers took 30 days to process; the same application for black farmers took 387 days.
““We’ve gone through a lot of history, from slavery to partnering with Jim Crow,” says Boyd, “and now we have a chance to get some help, and [Graham’s] shooting him. ““
During the Trump administration, Boyd met with Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who told him that black farmers had to “grow up or leave.” Boyd said he replied, “How are we going to grow if you don’t lend us money?” In the CARES Act, almost all of the billions of dollars foreseen for farmers went to white farmers, according to USDA data.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham characterized the $ 5 billion fund set aside in the American Recovery Plan for debt relief for “reparations” to marginalized farmers, a heavy term. Boyd has been lobbying for Graham’s support over the years and says the South Carolina Republican is “very cordial, but he never did anything about” the issue. “We’ve been through a lot of history, from slavery to partnering with Jim Crow,” says Boyd, “and now we have a chance to get help, and he’s trying to do that.”
Debt relief is for blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans “and any group that falls under the designation of being marginalized,” says Boyd. At the end of our interview, he said there was one thing he wanted in this article, and that was his message: “Don’t give up especially on young people, who are doing this job, you have to keep pushing.” In 2003, he drove his donkey cart to Washington, DC to protest. It took 17 days. He had a sign that said “40 acres and fights”, the name of his mules. “People laughed at me, and here we are all these years later, finally getting some justice.”