In 1883, less than 20 years after emancipation, Curtis Gentry bought nearly 1,500 acres of undeveloped land in Shiloh, a rural community in the Alabama county where he had once been enslaved. Alongside his brother Turner, with whom he was able to reunite after emancipation—unlike the members of so many other Black families—Gentry cleared that property, uprooting trees, brush, and undergrowth. Once the land was arable, he planted and harvested an array of crops, including ribbon cane, corn, and peas.
“He was a hard worker,” Bernice Atchison, Gentry’s granddaughter-in-law, told me. “Not only did he clear his own land, but he took jobs helping white people clear their land.” He taught his family how to take care of the farm while he worked on other people’s farms, bringing in extra money to the household.
Gentry’s children continued to farm after their father’s death, and each subsequent generation was trained in the ways of tending to their inherited land trust. When Atchison married Gentry’s grandson Allen in 1953, the young couple were given charge of nearly 280 acres of farmland, which included amenities built by those who came before. “We had a ribbon cane mill that made syrup. We had a saw mill. There was an old still that they had used to make whiskey back in those days,” Atchison said. “I loved farming, because you have to come to understand the land.”
In 1959, the Atchisons bought another 39 acres, and two years later, they built a house in which they would raise eight children. The couple sold vegetables and produce to loyal customers, most of whom worked in nearby factories and plants. In 1981, just after the Atchisons were certified as United States Department of Agriculture pig breeders, they received a letter from the USDA notifying them that they qualified for federal loans to buy “farrowing pens for the sows to have their little babies in,” Atchison said. She and Allen had spent years helping neighbors build their own farrowing pens, which had been paid for with USDA farm subsidies. “Helping Mr. Waldruf and Mr. Jones and Mr. Scott, we saw that the loan program had worked for them. So we went down to the USDA to get the money to build ours,” she said.
But there was a crucial difference. “They were white, and we were Black,” Atchison explained. When she and Allen went to the local Farm Service; Agency office in 1981, the FSA representative, a white man named Mr. Byrd, told them there were no loan applications available, Atchison said. On a return visit, Byrd told the couple he saw no reason they needed to expand their farm.
The Atchisons made multiple follow-up trips to the FSA office, but each time, Byrd informed them they would have to wait until local white farmers received their USDA loans before the couple could even apply. From the early 1980s to the 1990s, the Atchisons were denied USDA subsidies not only for farrowing pens and pig feed but also for equipment, fertilizer, and land purchases. “We had several years of trying to go back and get loans that was supposedly available. And, of course, he would just tell us that there was no money or that it was all gone,” Atchison said. “It happened several years, year in and year out. He would tell you, ‘Oh, come back in the spring. Maybe there will be some [money] then.’” Once, when they finally succeeded in filling out an application, “Mr. Byrd tore up our application and threw it in the wastebasket. I gave him a little piece of my mind, and he told me, ‘******, ain’t no money here for you.’”
The couple got no response to multiple complaints they sent to the USDA’s civil rights office in Washington, D.C. Ronald Reagan had gutted the office in 1983, after which, staffers later admitted, they “simply threw discrimination complaints in the trash without ever responding to or investigating them.” Back in Alabama, Byrd kept his position as the agency’s local loan gatekeeper.
Since 1965, multiple federal agencies—most notably the USDA itself—have issued reports citing, as the US Commission on Civil Rights put it that year, “unmistakable evidence that racial discrimination” within the Agriculture Department “has served to accelerate the displacement and impoverishment of the Negro farmer.” Through discriminatory loan denials and deliberate delays in financial aid, the USDA systematically blocked Black farmers from accessing critical federal funds. “If you are Black and you’re born south of the Mason-Dixon Line and you tried to farm, you’ve been discriminated against,” Lloyd Wright, the director of the USDA Office of Civil Rights under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and a Black Virginia farmer, told me. The debts Black farmers consequently accrued cost them millions of acres, which were then snapped up by white buyers. In 1920, the number of Black farmers peaked at nearly 1 million, constituting 14 percent of all farmers. But between 1910 and 1997, they lost 90 percent of their property. (White farmers lost only 2 percent in the same period.) As of 2017, there were just 35,470 Black-owned farms, representing 1.7 percent of all farms. The land Black farmers lost, some 16 million acres, is conservatively estimated to be worth $250 billion to $350 billion today.
In 1997, facing mounting debt, Bernice Atchison signed on as a plaintiff in Pigford v. Glickman, a class-action lawsuit against the USDA brought by Black farmers alleging that the agency had discriminated against them and failed to respond adequately to discrimination complaints. In the consent decree issued two years later, and in a second settlement in 2010, the USDA agreed to provide claimants with foreclosure relief, priority consideration for future federal farm loans, access to the agency’s land inventory, and billions of dollars to cancel the wrongful debt and interest charges that resulted from the agency’s discrimination. But the promised resolution never came. Instead, the USDA continued to seize Black farmers’ land through foreclosure, and the Justice Department under George W. Bush and Obama poured millions of dollars into fighting claims and denying payouts. Many surviving Pigford farmers are deeper in debt today than they were before the lawsuit.
Atchison was among those who never received debt cancellation. She has become one of the most visible and vocal Pigford plaintiffs and has testified about the failures of the settlement before Congress. Atchison and her family have lost more than 250 acres since the 1980s. She still farms the 60 acres that remain, raising “enough to fill up my three deep freezers” and to share with her kids. Allen died in 1992, amid the couple’s battles with the USDA.
In March 2021, President Joe Biden signed the coronavirus relief package, which includes $4 billion in debt relief for “socially disadvantaged farmers,” a designation that includes Black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, and Pacific Islander farmers. Despite the diversity of that coalition, the bill was ;attacked by conservatives like South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham as slavery “reparations,” though economists at Duke University and Harvard Law School reported that the measure offers a “pittance” compared with the land’s true value.
@Secure Da Bag @voltronblack @saturn7 @xoxodede @CarolinaBigAggie. @Lord-Yosh @JT-Money @ORDER_66
I emailed my Congressman regarding Biden paying migrants reparations, below is my email. Feel free to read it; then tailor it to your liking, and send your version of my email to your Congressperson.
Hello, I'm deeply disappointed that the Biden administration is planning to compensate migrants who illegally entered the border several years ago.
This angers me especially given that I'm a descendant of Black American slaves(US Freedmen). This country has failed to compensate my family, as well as the 30+ million Black Americans who share my lineage.
My people have long been owed reparations since 1865, yet we have been denied generation after generation by those in power(including by our current president).
If you, Congressman Espaillat fail to demand that Biden repay America's oldest debt(enacting reparations to US Freedmen) before issuing payments to migrants who just got here, then I'll be hard pressed to never support you in future elections.
Yeah I did just got done email them cant wait to see who they have to say@Secure Da Bag @voltronblack @saturn7 @xoxodede @CarolinaBigAggie. @Lord-Yosh @JT-Money @ORDER_66
I emailed my Congressman regarding Biden paying migrants reparations, below is my email. Feel free to read it; then tailor it to your liking, and send your version of my email to your Congressperson.
Hello, I'm deeply disappointed that the Biden administration is planning to compensate migrants who illegally entered the border several years ago.
This angers me especially given that I'm a descendant of Black American slaves(US Freedmen). This country has failed to compensate my family, as well as the 30+ million Black Americans who share my lineage.
My people have long been owed reparations since 1865, yet we have been denied generation after generation by those in power(including by our current president).
If you, Congressman Espaillat fail to demand that Biden repay America's oldest debt(enacting reparations to US Freedmen) before issuing payments to migrants who just got here, then I'll be hard pressed to never support you in future elections.
Thank you for contacting me regarding reports that the Biden Administration may pay illegal immigrant families that were separated at the border in 2019 thousands in compensation. I appreciate hearing from you.
On October 28, 2021, it was reported that the Biden Administration is in talks to offer families who crossed the border illegally and were separated from each other, up to $450,000 per person in compensation. The final number could shift.
Regardless of whether this becomes reality, the idea the Biden Administration is even considering this is insane. We do not even pay our Gold Star families $450,000 in compensation. You may be pleased to know that I signed onto a letter with 75 of my colleagues to the Attorney General, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Secretary of Homeland Security demanding answers and clarity on these reports. Rest assured, I will never support rewarding illegal immigrants for breaking our laws and will fight to ensure the Biden Administration can never commit your hard-earned tax dollars to this effort.
Thanks again for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or comments you or your family might have in the future.
Sincerely,
Lisa McClain
Member of Congress
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) says it wants to ban private prison companies that profit from mass incarceration, as do many criminal justice reformers. The caucus states on its website that banning private prisons is part of its agenda for the current session of Congress, and it has posted on Facebook recently in support of cities that end their contracts with private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group, scoring hundreds of likes each time.
Despite its public statements, the caucus’ affiliated institute has financial ties to CoreCivic, a private prison company that activists say stands in opposition to reforming the criminal justice system.
In a lobbying contribution report filed with the House of Representatives, CoreCivic disclosed donating $25,000 in “honorary expenses” to the CBC-linked Congressional Black Caucus Institute (CBCI) on April 15, 2019. The filing lists CBCI chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and CBCI board members Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Cedric Richmond (D-La.), the former chair of the CBC, as honorees. CoreCivic made a similar donation of $25,000 to CBCI in 2018.
CBCI is one of several affiliated entities that are legally distinct from the Congressional Black Caucus but share personnel and operate under the caucus’ brand and banner. CBCI says its mission is to “educate today’s voters and train tomorrow’s leaders,” and according to tax documents its main activities are candidate training, policy research, and an annual conference.
Another connected nonprofit, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, got $10,000 from the foundation of GEO Group in 2017, according to tax records.
It’s clear that the kind of prioritization on fundraising has outweighed the principles that these people should be governing under—one being that you can’t sell out our communities to the people who want them to be incarcerated, people who have benefited from the racial bias in the criminal justice system.
Scott Roberts, Senior Director of Criminal Justice Campaigns at Color of Change
Thompson is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and committee member Richmond chairs the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Innovation subcommittee. The committee oversees the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency that provides CoreCivic and fellow private prison giant GEO Group with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts each year. ICE has given GEO Group nearly $1.9 billion worth of contracts and CoreCivic over $1.1 billion worth of contracts since 2008, according to usaspending.gov.
Earlier this year, Richmond was named as the first co-chair of the presidential campaign of former vice president Joe Biden, who sponsored the 1994 crime bill that drastically accelerated mass incarceration. Richmond’s office declined to answer questions about CBCI’s relationship with CoreCivic and referred Sludge to the CBCI. Clyburn’s office also declined to comment.
“Companies like CoreCivic are amongst the most committed entities in opposition to transforming our criminal justice system,” Scott Roberts, Senior Director of Criminal Justice Campaigns at racial justice organization Color of Change, told Sludge. “They are the most invested in maintaining the status quo that’s got us to being a country that is leading in the history of the world in incarcerating its own people.”
“It’s incredibly disappointing to know that any of the entities affiliated with the Congressional Black Caucus continue to take money from CoreCivic or any other private prison company, so there’s just no excuse for it,” Roberts said. “It’s unacceptable.”
CBCI did not return an email and a voicemail from Sludge, and the offices of Clyburn and Thompson did not respond to emails.
In its 2019 annual report CBCI’s 21st Century Council—a “membership-based business council” that is “comprised of government relations and policy professionals” and meets four times per year—lists top lobbyists from CoreCivic and GEO Group as “platinum members.”
CoreCivic’s Managing Director of Government Relations, Jeremy Wiley, is a platinum member of the 21st Century Council. Wiley is a registered lobbyist who most recently reported lobbying Congress on DHS funding regarding “issues pertaining to the construction and management of privately-operated prisons” and “ICE detention facilities,” as well as “issues related to Real Estate Investment Trusts.” Both CoreCivic and GEO Group converted into REITs in 2013 as part of their tax avoidance strategies.
Fellow 21st Century Council platinum member Emanuel Barr is National Director of Legislative and Community Affairs at GEO Group. On LinkedIn, Barr describes part of his job as “the negotiation of contracts to design and build reentry facilities on behalf of government accounts.”
CoreCivic did not respond to Sludge’s questions about why the company donated to CBCI, why a top lobbyist is a platinum member of the 21st Century Council, whether CoreCivic has directly impacted CBCI’s policy agenda, and about criticisms of large private prison companies making money from transitional programs.