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Federal aid addresses discrimination for thousands of farmers after years of delay

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mississippitoday.org – Eva Tesfaye, WWNO-New Orleans Public Radio – 2024-08-06 11:20:03

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has sent out long-awaited payments to minority farmers and others in need of aid, but some say it’s not enough to offset years of discrimination.

The department issued more than $2.2 billion in payments to more than 43,000 farmers across the country in the last week of July, with much of that money going to farmers in the Mississippi River delta states. That includes 1,265 farmers from Louisiana, over 13,000 in Mississippi, and 11,000 in Alabama.

Charlene Johnson *Gaston’s family farms beef cattle near Lexington, Mississippi and applied for the program, called the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program. She said they have faced decades of discrimination.

“I am excited about this money being disbursed. I’m thankful for the people who already received these settlements and I’m waiting on ours,” said Johnson Gaston, who said she has yet to receive an official letter from the USDA.

“It would mean justice for my family,” she said.

The money aims to address a history of discriminatory lending practices by the USDA against Black and other minority farmers. A study shows that over the 20th century, Black farmers lost over $320 billion in land, partly due to that discrimination.

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said the Biden Administration hopes the money will help thousands stay on the farm.

“This financial assistance is not compensation for anyone’s loss or the pain endured, but it is an acknowledgement by the department,” he said at a White House press briefing on July 31.

Farmers have been waiting on this kind of money for years. An initial round of payments stalled after white farmers and banks sued over the first version of the program in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act. The plan had a provision that set aside $4 billion for socially disadvantaged farmers, meaning those who had faced racial or ethnic discrimination.

A provision in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 repealed that debt relief and replaced it with $3.1 billion for economically distressed farmers. Most of that money has already been doled out, Vilsack said.

The other component was the $2.2 billion for farmers who faced any type of discrimination by the USDA before 2021, not just racial. Black and brown farmers who were already expecting aid money had to fill out a new application and explain how they faced discriminated. That led some of them to sue the USDA

Angie Provost and her husband June, who farm sugar cane in Louisiana’s Iberia Parish, helped push for the original legislation as they struggled to get loans in the past – due, they said, to discrimination from their local USDA offices.

“As [June] took over the farm, there have been numerous hurdles for him to cross that sort of harken back to the days of Jim Crow contract leasing and indentured servitude,” Angie Provost said.

Provost and her husband are also suing the USDA separately. She said USDA could have made the application process easier and less stressful for them.

The Johnson family of central Mississippi – from left to right, Albert Johnson Jr., Herman Johnson, Albert Johnson Sr., Charlene Johnson Gatson, Linda Johnson and Flora Johnson Hayes – sought federal aid after facing decades of discrimination. Credit: CrImani Khayyam/Ag & Water Desk

Many farmers in Louisiana had trouble with the long application and with gathering proof they had been discriminated against, according to Ebony Woodruff, director of the Southern University Law Center Agricultural Law Institute for Underserved and Underrepresented Communities.

“Remember, a lot of this stuff happened decades ago, and in a place like Louisiana, we have hurricanes coming through, houses are destroyed, people didn’t have the paperwork to supplement their applications,” she said.

The USDA said it has tried to make it easier for farmers to get records from the agency to help them get proof.

“The problem is now that you have put the burden back on the farmer to prove the discrimination,” said Woodruff.

Monica Rainge, USDA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said the question of discrimination on the application was left open-ended on purpose.

“This was not an adversarial thing,” said Rainge. “It was really up to the producer to tell his or her own story about how they experienced discrimination.”

Now that the funding has gone out, Woodruff said the USDA should keep trying to fix equity issues affecting Black farmers. She wants to see more transparency from the agency, and for those who discriminated against loan applicants to be removed from those positions.

“The discrimination that’s happening in these local county committee offices is still occurring in 2024,” she said.

She added that her institute has lobbied the USDA to make its loans process easier for producers. Rainge said the USDA shortened the application from 29 pages to 13 and has also invested in more assistance for producers interacting with their local USDA offices.

“This program is a one-time payment, and we recognize that further investment will be needed to continue to level the playing field for farmers,” Rainge said.

Tegan Wendland contributed to this story, which is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1865

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-24 07:00:00

Dec. 24, 1865

The Ku Klux Klan began on Christmas Eve in 1865. Credit: Zinn Education Project

Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others. 

While the first wave of the KKK operated in the South through the 1870s, the second wave spread throughout the U.S., adding Catholics, Jews and others to their enemies’ list. Membership rose to 4 million or so. 

The KKK returned again in the 1950s and 1960s, this time in opposition to the civil rights movement. Despite the history of violence by this organization, the federal government has yet to declare the KKK a terrorist organization.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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An old drug charge sent her to prison despite a life transformation. Now Georgia Sloan is home

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mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-12-24 04:00:00

CANTON –  Georgia Sloan is home, back from a potentially life-derailing stint in prison that she was determined to instead make meaningful. 

She hadn’t used drugs in three years and she had a life waiting for her outside the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women in Pearl: a daughter she was trying to reunite with, a sick mother and a career where she found purpose. 

During 10 months of incarceration, Sloan, who spent over half of her life using drugs, took classes, read her Bible and helped other women. Her drug possession charge was parole eligible, and the Parole Board approved her for early release. 

At the end of October, she left the prison and returned to Madison County. The next day she was back at work at Musee, a Canton-based bath products company that employs formerly incarcerated women like Sloan and others in the community facing difficulties. She first started working at the company in 2021. 

“This side of life is so beautiful. I would literally hold on to my promise every single minute of the day while I was in (prison),” Sloan told Mississippi Today in December. 

Next year, she is moving into a home in central Mississippi, closer to work and her new support system. Sloan plans to bring her daughter and mother to live with her. Sloan is hopeful of regaining custody of her child, who has been cared for by her aunt on a temporary basis. 

“This is my area now,” she said. “This has become my family, my life. This is where I want my child to grow up. This is where I want to make my life because this is my life.” 

Additionally, Sloan is taking other steps to readjust to life after prison: getting her driver’s license for the first time in over a decade, checking in monthly with her parole officer and paying court-ordered fines and restitution. 

In December 2023, Sloan went to court in Columbus for an old drug possession charge from when she was still using drugs. 

Sloan thought the judge would see how much she had turned her life around through Crossroads Ministries, a nonprofit women’s reentry center she entered in 2021, and Musee. Her boss Leisha Pickering who drove her to court and spoke as a witness on Sloan’s behalf, thought the judge would order house arrest or time served. 

Circuit Judge James “Jim” Kitchens of the 16th District.

Instead, Circuit Judge James Kitchens sentenced her to eight years with four years suspended and probation. 

He seemed doubtful about her transformation, saying she didn’t have a “contrite heart.” By choosing to sell drugs, Kitchens said she was “(making) other people addicts,” according to a transcript of the Dec. 4, 2023, hearing. 

“I felt like my life literally crumbled before my eyes,” Sloan said about her return to prison. “Everything I had worked so hard for, it felt like it had been snatched from me.”

She was taken from the courtroom to the Lowndes County Detention Center, where she spent two months before her transfer to the women’s prison in Rankin County. 

Sloan found the county jail more difficult because there was no separation between everyone there. But the prison had its own challenges, such as violence between inmates and access to drugs, which would have threatened her sobriety. 

She kept busy by taking classes, which helped her set a goal to take college courses one day with a focus on business. Visits, phone calls and letters from family members and staff from Musee and Crossroads were her lifeline. 

“I did not let prison break me, I rose above it, and I got to help restore other ladies,” Sloan said. 

She also helped several women in the prison get to Crossroads – the same program that helped her and others at Musee. 

Sloan credits a long-term commitment to Crossroads and Musee for turning her life around – the places where she said someone believed in her and took a chance on her. 

Georgia Sloan, left, and Leisha Pickering, founder and CEO of Musee Bath, sit for a portrait at the Musee Bath facility in Canton, Miss., on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. Pickering has supported Sloan through her journey of recovery and reentry, providing employment and advocacy as Sloan rebuilds her life after incarceration. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Pickering, Musee’s CEO, said in the three years she’s known Sloan, she’s watched her grow and become a light for others. 

The bath and lifestyle company has employed over 300 formerly incarcerated women in the past dozen years, but Pickering said not everyone has had the same support, advocacy and transformation as Sloan. Regardless, Pickering believes each person is worth fighting for. 

When Sloan isn’t traveling for work to craft markets with Pickering, she shares an office with her Musee colleague Julie Crutcher, who is also formerly incarcerated and a graduate of Crossroads’ programs. She also considers Crutcher a close friend and mentor.

Sloan has traveled to Columbus to see her mother and daughter whom she spent Thanksgiving with. She will see them again for Christmas and celebrate her daughter’s 12th birthday the day after.

Her involvement with the criminal justice system has made Sloan want to advocate for prison reform to help others and be an inspiration to others.

“I never knew what I was capable of,” Sloan said.  “I never knew how much people truly, genuinely love me and love being around me. I never knew how much I could have and how much I could offer the world.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1946

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-12-23 07:00:00

Dec. 23, 1946

Chuck Cooper Credit: Wikipedia

University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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