Greetings Members,
Our March 15th Program titled: The Future of Farming: Women in the Forefront featured the State of Georgia’s youngest certified farmer, Kendall Rae Johnson with her mother Ursula Johnson and ASALH Rochester New York Branch President, Pamela Reese Smith a member of Black Farmers United NYS.
Discussion topics included the legacy and future of Black farmers both historically and personally.
You should also know that on Anita Russell’s most recent trip to Atlanta, she had the unique opportunity to visit Kendall Rae Johnson and her parents.
We look forward to Anita sharing photos of her trip and continued dialogue on the subject of the terrible plight of Black farmers throughout the USA.
The loss of 326 billion dollars in land by said Black farmers and their families represents only a tip of the iceberg with reference to the unique harm done to Black farmers.
Further, Black farmers who are today an endangered species have suffered discrimination under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
We sit by daily and watch the US government give billions of dollars of military aid to a country in Eastern Europe while this same US government in concert with local, county, state and municipal governments and corporations including institutions of higher learning refuse to come up with a comprehensive or address a plan to repair the harm done to African Americans for 246 years of free uncompensated labor and another 150 years of pernicious Jim Crow and James Crow II practices, is way beyond my grasp.
Black lives didn’t matter in Rwanda in the 1990’s as evidenced by the cowardly behavior of President Clinton to intervene in the genocide.
This same President Clinton did in fact send US troops to Bosnia to intervene in that ongoing ethnic conflict.
One could make a strong assertion that President Clinton’s action were the classic case of disparate treatment on the basis of race.
Black Lives didn’t matter as police shot and massacred 250 Blacks in Sharpsville South Africa on March 21, 1960.
Black Lives didn’t matter in Elaine, Arkansas as from 237 to 870 Blacks were brutally slaughtered in the Elaine Massacre of 1919.
The victims and descendants of the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 can’t even receive a penny from the City Government , County or State Governments and the Federal government is complicit by its lack of action to remedy the descendants.
The bottom line is regardless of whether Democrats, Republicans or Independents are in the WH, African Americans have not been treated with respect or dignity relative to our
ongoing battles of systemic racism and discrimination that are pervasive throughout the entire American landscape.
It took a systematic reign of terror by Local, County, State, Federal actors along with ordinary Caucasian citizens to swindle African Americans off of said lands in many cases where said ancestors struggled and toiled under chattel slavery.
I do recall in 1980, the great President Jimmy Carter stepped up to the plate and gave $81.5 million dollars and thousands of acres in the State of Maine to two tribes, the Passamaquoddy and the Penobscot, who had their lands confiscated by settlers and government.
These two tribes filed a lawsuit . President Carter signed the payment of $81.5 million under the Maine Indian Settlement Act.
Also note that in July 1980, the Sioux Tribe refused to accept a $106 million award given to them by the United States Supreme Court in a ruling as settlement of a lawsuit filed by Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota.
The tribes refused to accept the paltry $106 million dollars for the theft of the Black Hills which said tribes considered sacred and to this very day they will not accept payment for the theft and genocide committed against their ancestors.
Read article by The Grio…