Will Obama's USDA Atone for Decades of Racism?

Native American North Dakota ranchers George and Marilyn Keepseagle applied for their first loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture back in 1975, hoping to buy higher quality livestock. George, now 69, remembers having the strange feeling that the county loan officer charged with evaluating their application didn't seem to want them to succeed.

Two decades later, after struggling to get USDA loans to help recover from storms, low cattle prices and other calamities, the Keepseagles have no doubt the county loan officers did not have their best interests in mind.

The Keepseagles allege the USDA's farm loan program unfairly forced them to sell 380 acres of George's family land in 1999, wreaking financial havoc on their lives and pushing them into foreclosure. They are the lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit charging that tens of thousands of Native Americans suffered about a billion dollars in economic damage because of blatant discrimination at county USDA loan offices.

For a decade, scores of Native American, black, Latino and women farmers have been seeking damages in four separate lawsuits charging the USDA with rampant racial and gender discrimination in the agency's loan program. The cases garnered almost no attention under the Bush administration, but President Barack Obama has promised to clean up the USDA's sordid history, and plaintiffs in all four lawsuits hope they will soon see justice after decades of discrimination that took a devastating financial and emotional toll.

Marilyn Keepseagle, 71, says USDA officials refused to help her with loan applications or tell her about available programs. She says they withheld promised loans until after other farming payments were due, causing the couple to lose access to crucial supplies and legal farming rights.

Many of the Native American plaintiffs live in swaths of the country where tribal land and land privately held by Native Americans form a complicated pattern intermixed with land held by whites. Since the loan committees were primarily staffed by white men, plaintiffs say the loan process became a de facto forum for deep-seated resentment and racism toward Native Americans.

Montana rancher Luther Crasco testified that a loan officer told him, "You Indians are always getting free money and you don't pay taxes." He sought a loan for a sprinkler system but was denied, he said, because the loan officer thought he would turn around and sell it. Crasco, 66, is sure a white rancher would have gotten the sprinkler loan, no questions asked. He said he knows many Native Americans whose land was sold to white people after problems with USDA loans. "There goes part of your reservation," he said. "That is the ultimate goal of the FSA [Farm Service Agency, part of the USDA] -- to sell all the Indian land out. I'm sure of that."

When Nancy Carnley, the vice-chief of the MaChis Lower Creek Indian tribe in Alabama, visited the county loan office with her children and father, employees called them "injuns" and made "war whoop" noises, according to the lawsuit. Steven Defender, a Native American who served on one of the loan committees in North Dakota, observed firsthand the other committeemen tabling Native Americans' applications and using slurs like "prairie nigger."

Latino farmers likewise say racism and retaliation have been evident in the USDA process. Texas farmer David Cantu’s father had always made loan payments on time, Cantu said, but he was denied a USDA loan after attending a protest and speaking out about problems with the system in a listening session.

For farmers and ranchers who have already lost family land or moved on to other ways to make a living, a settlement would be a moral victory and a sorely needed financial boon. But it won’t restore more important things they’ve lost -- ties to the past, the love of working the land.