Class Action Lawsuit Settlement Pigford v. Glickman, which was to award Black farmers $2.5 billion in damages for loan discrimination practices by the federal government” (from the website http://www.bfaa-us.org). However, as of May 2002, most of the farmers who had filed had still not received their awards and the USDA’s discriminatory practices against Black farmers continued. Not only did this lead to the Pigford II Settlement to enforce the award of the full $2.5 billion in damages, it has led many Black farmers to declare the entire Pigford Class Action fraudulent and has fueled continued resistance from America’s farmers of Afrikan descent.
In this first article of several on the 2015 Black Land Loss Summit and the continuing struggle of the Black Farmer in the United States, we present the statements of two individuals who have worked long and hard on the original Pigford Settlement and now are involved in the continuing struggle for justice. They also present somewhat different perspectives on the relevance and importance of the Pigford lawsuit. First, however, a summary and discussion of the Pigford I and II Class Action Lawsuits is in order.
A Brief Summary of the Pigford I and Pigford II Class Action Lawsuits
The following explanation of the two class action lawsuits initiated by Black farmers against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), beginning in 1997, comes from the publication Black Farmers United: The Struggle Against Power and Principalities, by BFAA President Gary R. Grant, Kansas State University Assistant Professor of Sociology Spencer D. Wood, and UNC Chapel Hill doctoral candidate Willie J. Wright (The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.5, no.1, March 2012, http://www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol5no1/5.1BlackFarmers.pdf).
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