July 2, 2007 at 19:18:33

Land pirates drive out black Texan rancher: but there's hope for others

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By Monica Davis, Posted by M. Davis (about the submitter) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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It is so ironic, that in the state where Juneteenth was first celebrated, black folk still aren’t free, free to own property, free to partake of all of the freedoms that this great nation offers. To top it all off, evidence points to a possible land theft plot separate from the divorce shenanigans.

It seems that officials from the local farm loan agency “restructured” the young rancher’s loan with no legal reason for doing so. Historically, “restructuring” has been a prelude to driving a farmer into bankruptcy and foreclosing on his land, because of the way the Farm Services Agency (FSA) interprets (some say misinterprets) Congressional intent in federal law.

It works like this: a farmer gets into financial trouble and has problems paying his federal farm loan. The feds restructure the loan, decreasing the length of the loan, from, let’s say 40 years to 30. As part of this Shared Appreciation Agreement and restructuring, when the land is actually sold, the feds receive as much as 75% of the appreciated value of the property. Now, here is where the snakes come out of the woodwork.

The farm service loan officers are interpreting this as meaning: sell the land and take 75% of its appreciated value. Farm activists say this directly contradicts congressional intent. Unfortunately, as far as the Texas rancher is concerned, his foot was in one trap, just ready to get chopped off when another trap snapped shut first.

His wife, egged on by her “friends”, filed for divorce and is scheduled to receive half of the property’s post-mortgage proceeds, roughly $30,000. And so we have another black farmer/rancher being driven out of a business in which he has invested long years of hard work and money, leaving him with less than ten percent of the value of his land.

The realtors are making out like bandits. Various other unindicted co-conspirators in and out of county government, as well as several illegal beneficiaries and closet bigots are telling each other “I told you so (meaning, they were right in claiming “blacks can’t run businesses”)”, never once admitting their own collusion in the entire nasty mess.

This and other cases are ongoing proof of the need for more blacks in the media, and of your support of Black Media. This case, like the case of Farmer Harry Young of Owensboro, KY, are just two of tens of thousands of cases of wrongs against African Americans whose stories never make news outside of the black community.

Even though media personnel were present during Harry Young’s June protest against the allegedly illegal sale of his farm in front of the Federal Court House, that story never made the news on non-minority news outlets in the tri-state. The protest was significant because it was one of the few times that black and white farm supporters came together to protest the mistreatment of Black farmers.

One group of white protestors drove all the way from Michigan to support Mr. Young. Likewise, the farm activist who is seeking support for the young black Texas rancher is also white. The fact that whites and blacks are working together on the farm issue shows that the divisiveness that has heretofore been part and part of relations between black and white farm operators is being dismantled in favor of a more practical relationship based on the shared threat from crooked land dealers, corrupt public officials and a Congress which often speaks with a forked tongue.

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