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Black farmers consider suit

• Hundreds of area farmers attend an information meeting about a federal lawsuit against the USDA.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — Hundreds of interested black farmers attended an informational gathering hosted by attorneys who have filed suit against the federal government seeking to allow benefits for what they say is past discrimination.

W. Lewis Garrison, a partner in the Birmingham, Ala.-based law firm Heninger, Garrison, Davis, LLC., spoke to roughly 300 to 400 area farmers who he says may be eligible to receive compensation as part of a lawsuit his firm filed July 3. The suit aims to take advantage of the 2008 farm bill, which they say is trying to cure problems associated with a 1999 class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture that claimed discrimination against the nation’s black farmers.

That case, known as the Pigford Case, attempted to resolve discrimination claims black farmers had against the USDA, according to the firm’s Web site.

But the July 3 suit is aimed at providing financial relief to the more than 65,000 black farmers who weren’t a part of the 1999 suit, according to firm officials.

“We are having this informational session to allow local farmers to learn about the possibilities they have of joining this case that seeks to provide some sort of compensation for decades worth of discrimination by the government,” Garrison said at the Albany Municipal Auditorium Friday night.

The most recent suit is aimed at providing relief to those farmers who fell through the cracks of the Pigford case but where also discriminated against.

To be eligible to join the suit, farmers had to have farmed between 1981 and 1996, applied for participation for federal farm credit or benefit programs, filed a discrimination complaint on or before July 1, 1997, and had previously submitted a late-filing request under the Pigford settlement, according to the firm’s Web site.

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