Pigford

TPM has a fascinating look at the timing of the Shirley Sherrod hit job - tying it to the pending grant of $1.25 billion dollars to compensate black farmers for past USDA discrimination.

While I don't see a line of effect from Sherrod's ouster to opponents of the grant getting what they want, I'd certainly be interested in hearing more about this story.

Looking into the Pigford case (Pigford v. Glickman PDF) I ran across this rather grim story on Salon - Black Wednesday

Check this out:

Virginia farmer John Boyd describes a scene from a painful past: a white U.S. Department of Agriculture loan officer only allows black farmers to apply for loans one day a week. "Black Wednesday," the farmers call it, and they line up outside the USDA office in Richmond, Va. The loan officer, James Garnett, leaves the door to his office open so that all the farmers in the hallway can hear the loan requests of their colleagues be summarily, and vehemently, denied.

...

What happened between you and the USDA loan officer in Richmond?

Mr. Garnett had made 147 farm loans in Mecklenburg County, Va. Only one of those loans was to a black farmer, and he was the minority advisor to the USDA county committee. When they investigated Mr. Garnett, they asked him, "Do you have a problem making black farm loans?" Guess what he said? He said yes. He said yes, I think that they're lazy, and they're just looking for a paycheck every Friday.

Mr. Garnett took my loan application and tore it up and threw it in the trash can while I was sitting there in front of him. And he said he wasn't going to lend me any of his money. When I asked him why he wasn't going to make the loan, he said, "Well, I don't have any money now. If you want to come back again next year, that's up to you, but I think you need to go ahead and just sell your farm. I've got a farmer, Mr. Blaylock, and you can milk cows on his farm. I think that would be the best opportunity for you and your family."

I was mad. I was looking for a $10,000 operating loan to plant my crop. After nine years in a row I'd only gotten one loan from the USDA farm services, and I would apply every year.

I said, "Mr. Garnett, I don't think I can go back and tell my wife that I'm not going to get an operating loan again." And he said he didn't care. And when he said he didn't care, I told him to go to hell in a handbasket, and he began to use profanity, and he spit tobacco on my shirt.

When the investigator asked him, "Did you spit chewing tobacco on John Boyd's shirt?" He said, "Well, yeah." He claimed he accidentally missed his spit can.

When was this?

This was in 1994.

What was the result of the investigation?

In my case, they found Mr. Garnett guilty of discrimination. But they didn't terminate him. They allowed him to move to the sister county, which is Greensville County, Va., and they let him retire after two months in Greensville. He didn't see anything wrong with that.

It's easy to think that this kind of virulent racism is a thing of the past - but here's the USDA barring farmers from financing because of their race less than 20 years ago.