40 Acres and a Mule, Denied

All the Johnson brothers ever wanted to do was farm. After all, for Leon, Milton and Shade Johnson, it was their birthright. Born on a 44-acre plot in the thriving African American farm community of 1950s Tillery, N.C., the hard-working threesome spent endless days harvesting corn and peanuts alongside their mother and uncle in this cotton-clad northeastern corner of the state. By the early 1970s, Leon – the oldest of the three and the first to have farming aspirations of his own – had accumulated an adjacent 74 acres of land while renting out another 1,200, making him one of the most prominent black landowners in Halifax County. Upon their mother's death in 1974, Milton and Shade went to work for their older brother.

Though he now controlled large amounts of land, one thing Leon could not control was nature. Like many southern farmers, the Johnson brothers were plagued by the relentless drought and low crop yields of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1978, Leon began borrowing money from the Farm Services Agency (FSA) – a local arm of the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) – for disaster assistance, operations and equipment.

It was the worst move he ever made.

Despite his large amount of land and collateral – and his uneventful credit history – the Halifax County FSA placed Leon on a "supervised" loan account, a time-consuming status that severely limited the farmer's ability to act in his own best interest. "You'd have to go to the farm supplier and have them write out a bill, and then go back to the FSA to sign a check for it," says brother, Milton. Since the checks were made payable to both Leon and his creditors, the farmer lost entire days in the field running between FSA and suppliers – something, the Johnsons later found, area white farmers with less land and worse credit were not required to do.

The ongoing drought and the mounting debt from supervised and chronically delayed loans -such delays are costly for farming due to its seasonal nature-put Leon in a financial bind. In March of 1983, the desperate farmer sold a bin of corn outside of his supervised arrangement in order to make payments on his home and tractor. "The USDA sent federal marshals to my home and handcuffed me for selling mortgaged crops," recalled Leon, in a 2001 interview with Insight magazine. He was convicted a year later and spent four months in a federal prison, while FSA foreclosed, selling off his property and equipment.

His brothers fared no better. By the time of Leon's conviction, Milton had already purchased and lost a large plot of land, his house and equipment after FSA subjected him to supervised loans, high interest rates and an accelerated foreclosure. Shade – who FSA unjustly denied an attempt to buy land in 1979 – was eventually and unsuccessfully brought up on similar charges as Leon.

Unfortunately, the Johnsons' plight was no anomaly. In 1997, they joined black farmers throughout the South and West in a class-action discrimination suit against the USDA, alleging a variety of biased practices including unjust loan denials and delays, high interest rates, accelerated foreclosures and unnecessary supervision. In April of 1999, after admitting to discriminatory practices, the government settled Pigford vs. Glickman and created a two-tiered framework for compensating those affected between 1981 and 1996. Track A provided $50,000 and possible debt relief for claimants. Track B had a higher burden of proof while offering compensation for actual damages. Judge Paul Friedman wrote that the landmark settlement will "serve as a reminder to the Department of Agriculture that its actions were unacceptable" and "deter it from engaging in the same conduct in the future."