Just Harvest: The Story of How Black Farmers Won the Largest Civil Rights Case against the U.S. Government

INTRODUCTION

Beware. This book is a jagged reality pill. If you take it, you will never be able to unknow the truth. The truth about what we are all capable of as a society and what you are liable for in its evolution. I hope this book brings out the best in you, to offset the evil that can be awakened in us all. This book reveals actual history, the realities of how tough it is to get justice, and one lawyer’s account of how your identity impacts both.

Writing this introduction was more difficult than writing the book. The book is simply the story as I lived it. This introduction is why it matters to me that you read it and live it too. The experiences it conveys forever changed the way I practice law, raise my children, love my wife, and stay engaged in the community. I hope it inspires you likewise.

I am frequently asked how it feels to win the largest civil rights case in U.S. history. Most people think the settlement size ($1.25 billion) is what makes the case extraordinary. It is not. Not even close. People ask why it never made headline news the way the Brown v. Board of Education case did. I recently had another attorney tell me, You’re the most successful civil rights attorney in America that nobody knows.

I have thought about that, prayed, lost many nights of sleep, and the best explanation I can offer is that there is no glory in war. In the same way servicemen seldom talk about what they saw in battle, those who engaged in this one have remained similarly silent. I can tell you it was war for me. But my hell working this case was nothing compared to what I discovered happened to tens of thousands of Black families, their businesses, and their farms.

Rape is not a strong enough word for what happened to these farmers. For what happened to generations who had all too recently given their blood and sweat working to feed the very people who had for decades enslaved them. For what happened to working men, women, and children who were time and again stripped of all hope. Listening to story after story of how these farmers rose from slavery to build a foundation that could have helped erase much of the hatred for the very system that had kept them captive humbled and inspired me.

This is the story of stolen glory, of rising from the depths of slavery, empowering future generations to be self-supportive, creating jobs, earning the rights of entrepreneurial freedom, as well as being a source of healing past national crimes. This is the story of true tragedy—and worse, of a missed opportunity for the world to learn from it.

What was committed was not just an assault on Black farmers. It was an assault on capitalism, an assault on the American way of life, an assault fueled by organized evil. And what haunts me today is that unlike flat-out slavery, which I am sure will never happen in my lifetime, the atrocities inflicted by our own federal government can easily be re-established through stealthy government departments that can operate without oversight, creating opportunities for this hell to repeat itself.

The corruption, greed, and racism that these farmers endured is still alive. The government may have admitted guilt and wrote a check but that is not what these farmers wanted. They wanted to be heard. They wanted their stories to be told, they wanted to protect future generations, Black and White, from ever letting this happen again. I want to be clear: the moral of this story is not how to stop racism or revive the Black farming community. The moral of this story is how your individual identity, your beliefs about what you are capable of, and what you are responsible for, determine the level of justice we will have as a society.

History matters. In 1920 there were more than 925,000 Black farmers with families who had risen from slavery, becoming one of the most successful examples of entrepreneurialism this country has ever seen.²

Black farmers owned over 16 million acres of farmland, about one-seventh of all farm operations in the U.S.³

It has been estimated that as much as 30 percent of all food served on American tables back then came from Black-owned farms. But by the time this entrepreneurial genocide got my attention, Black farmers had been stripped of all but about one million acres to farm. Up until the point the federal government got involved, there seemed to be an air of cooperation between the farmers, both Black and White. Farming is an extremely hard life and there was a mutual respect between them. I will not go into the details here because it is so well documented in the book, but the entire reason the federal government got involved in farming in the first place was because of how successful American farmers had become and how meaningful, and yet fragile, the industry was to the overall economy. Farming is one of America’s greatest examples of entrepreneurialism, collaboration, cooperation, innovation, and grit the world has ever seen. Unlike industries where strong iconic figures such as Henry Ford or the Wright Brothers were celebrated by the press, no one figure could represent the little guy, the hard-working American farmer who kept us all from going hungry. Thus, an opportunity for politicians and government agencies to exploit an industry to advance their own political agendas existed. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) did what most government agencies do. They created an infrastructure to facilitate the distribution of taxpayers’ dollars in the form of expansion and operating loans for farmers. These loans were sold to the American people as a way to help American farmers stay solvent through tough times and to ensure that our food distribution capability was never in question.

The problems began when government employees (mostly non-farmers) were artificially empowered as leaders within the farming community. Armed with large sums of taxpayers’ dollars, these bureaucrats were able to pick and choose which farmers received assistance. Bribery, corruption, and racism are the obvious sparks and flames of this national dumpster-fire, but there is an equally repulsive disorder we all have that enabled this entrepreneurial genocide to happen right under everyone’s nose and to last for so long. The systemic racism exercised by our government was so pervasive, so blatant, so evil, that there was never even an attempt to prove that it did not happen, just the surrender of money for it. And again, with taxpayers’ dollars. At times this book will make you sick. When you hear the stories that I heard, you will find yourself asking, How can this happen? What can we do to stop it from happening again? Where are all these evil people?

Better questions to ask yourself are, What can I do? and How can we grow leaders who will never cower from the sacrifice God’s justice demands? Keep reading.

Many nights I fell to my knees crying over the stress these farmers were facing, the stress of navigating our own legal system, and the feelings of insecurity as I tried to convince myself this was not just some ideological fantasy where all evil is vanquished by superheroes. This is America; life is not fair, and God’s greatest lessons are oftentimes brutal. I hope this book challenges you and expands your awareness of your capabilities. As I stated earlier, it took me a while to have clarity. I needed time to unhinge from the organized narrative that government bureaucracies, large law firms, and spineless cowards have perfected to calculate the value of a human’s identity and dignity.

As you read this story, I hope you will begin to understand the value of personal identity; not the acknowledgement from others, but rather, the security, dignity, and empowerment that come from accepting responsibility for you and your family’s role in life. Along this journey I discovered two types of people: those who knew they mattered and those who hadn’t seriously contemplated the subject.

Consider the epic stories in which Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Black Panther, Superman, Neo, and Jesus are told that their life matters to all of humanity. We watch these characters struggle with the weight of discovering that their actions are more important than they are. As bystanders (so we think), we see how they are tormented and we gasp as we witness them grow weak from the battle, at times on the verge of giving up. We say under our breath, You can’t give up, don’t you know what you are capable of, what you are responsible for? If they only knew. I imagine most caterpillars question if their struggles and sacrifice will one day lead to them being able to fly. If they only knew. If you only knew.

All caterpillars can fly—and so can you. Mike Espy, Hank Sanders, John Boyd, and Gary Grant are among the characters in this tragic story that knew they could fly, and that their actions mattered more than they did. So did the Black farmers who refused to give up, who refused to be silenced, lawyers who stood with me when so many others were against me, and my family and friends who believed in me more than I believed in myself. I hope this book makes you tell yourself, your children, and those in your charge that you will never give up and that your identity is never defined by someone else. It is defined in direct proportion to what you accept responsibility for. The Black farmers in this story had accepted the responsibility of feeding your family. I hope when you finish reading these pages, you will accept the responsibility of never letting their story and history be forgotten. Pigford v. Glickman—and the follow-up case I led with Henry Sanders and Andrew H. Marks, commonly referred to as Pigford II—may have been settled, but the struggle of Black farmers, Black entrepreneurs, and Black leaders can never be taken for granted or relegated to the government to be managed—or to any other organization. If we aspire to be free from the unjust oppression of the past, we must build a nation of strong Black communities that include Black participants and leaders, a nation of strong Black-owned businesses, a nation of strong Black leaders, and a nation of strong Black families. But that will never happen until each of us accepts the responsibility of building a strong sense of personal identity. And that can only be viewed from a mirror.

My hope is the dreams of entrepreneurial freedom that those Black farmers fought for will never die and you will find the courage to replant the seeds that God has given all of us. For there is nothing sweeter or more fulfilling than a Just Harvest.

PART ONE

A SENSE OF SELF

CHAPTER ONE

HELL’S GORGE

Even as a young child, I had a tremendous understanding of the power of identity. At its very core, identity is how we define ourselves; how we want our friends, families, and colleagues to perceive us; and, in part, how others ultimately see us. Identity can be a powerful thing—probably more powerful than you even know. Some of my identity derives from the energy of my birthplace. From the people who inhabited it during my time there and well before me. From the lore of how they did the impossible. How they helped tame and harness the temperament of the sea to ensure safe passage for those passing through.

I grew up near the Pedro Miguel Locks of the Panama Canal during the late 1960s and early 1970s. My maternal grandmother, Muriel Burgess, worked as a seamstress, sewing clothes for her ten children and later for her many grandchildren, selling whatever she could to make extra money. We didn’t have much as far as material possessions, but we had what we needed to survive.

My grandmother was a very strong-willed and opinionated woman who was fully committed to her family. I guess you have to be when you have so many children. She also had a tremendous sense of humor. After I was married, she told my wife, You know, I don’t like to kiss. My wife responded, Well, you had to like it a little because you have ten kids. This elicited a hearty laugh from my grandmother.

When I was four years old, I started attending a preschool near my grandparents’ house. Teachers asked students to bring a towel from home to dry their hands before lunch and after using the restroom. We didn’t have paper towels back then. Most kids brought simple white terry towels. Since my grandmother was a seamstress, she stenciled my name and a design onto a soft blue one.

Take this towel because you’re special, she told me. You’re special. That’s why your name is on it.

And for the rest of my life, I’ve believed exactly what she told me. I’m special. Not because I’m better than others, but because I’m someone unique whom God created and am special in His eyes. I’m different. I stand out. It gave me a tremendous sense of identity. I understood who I was, where I came from, and what my family expected of me.

From an early age, I knew I was a descendant of Caribbean West Indian laborers who helped build the Panama Canal, the man-made waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the narrow Isthmus of Panama. It is one of the world’s greatest engineering feats. History books often call it the eighth wonder of the world.

Yet just as the federal government exploited the thousands of African-American farmers I represented in the largest civil rights settlement in U.S. history, they had also exploited the Black laborers who were so crucial to the construction of the Panama Canal. For more than a decade, Caribbean West Indian workers from countries such as Barbados, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Trinidad dug, blasted, and hauled away more than 268 million cubic yards of earth—enough to bury Manhattan to a depth of 12 feet.⁴

My ancestors were among those workers.

Before the Panama Canal was completed, ships sailing between the East and West Coasts of the U.S. had to navigate their way around treacherous Cape Horn, located off the shore of southern Chile. The Cape’s waters are especially hazardous because of powerful gales, large whitecaps, strong currents, and, depending upon the season, daunting icebergs. It was why ship captains from long ago warned their crews, Below 40 degrees latitude, there is no law; below 50, there is no God.

Legend has it that the English explorer Sir Francis Drake took one look at Cape Horn and turned farther south. Spanish conquistadors were so frightened of its dark, haunted waters that they transported their looted Aztec and Mayan gold across land. Yet for nearly three centuries, Cape Horn was the only nautical passage for ships sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

In 1869, the French completed construction of the Suez Canal in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Soon thereafter, they were inspired to try to build the Panama Canal as well. While the Panama Canal would be only 40 percent as long as the Suez Canal, the French were grossly unprepared for the tropical climate, rainy season, and the dangers hiding in Panama’s dense rainforests, including venomous snakes and spiders.

Even worse were the outbreaks of deadly mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and yellow fever. It is estimated that 22,000 workers died during the attempted French construction, but the toll was likely higher than that.⁵

As one of several books on this architectural feat points out, … the truth was partly suppressed or minimized by the Canal Company in order not to destroy the confidence of the people in the project, and outside of the hospital rolls, the records were incomplete.⁶

The authors added, A virulent form of malaria, known as ‘Chagres fever,’ caused a greater toll in lives than any other one disease. The negro laborers, although immune from yellow fever, succumbed quickly to attacks of this form of malaria.⁷

Finally in 1889, after spending more than $287 million and squandering the savings of more than 800,000 investors, the French effort to build a sea-level canal ended in bankruptcy.⁸

In June 1902, the U.S. Senate passed the Spooner Act, which authorized purchasing the French assets remaining in Panama, presuming the U.S. would successfully negotiate a treaty with Columbia, which controlled Panama at the time.

When the countries couldn’t reach such a deal, President Theodore Roosevelt supported Panamanian rebels fighting for their freedom and in November 1903 recognized the new independent government that emerged. The U.S. and Panama quickly signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which gave America the rights to build and indefinitely manage the Panama Canal Zone. The U.S. paid France $40 million for their holdings that remained there, including excavation equipment and a railroad.

The Isthmian Canal Commission ultimately decided that a lock-and-lake canal system was the most feasible to construct. The commission started by working aggressively to discipline the landscape and its inhabitants. They drained swamps, killed mosquitoes and initiated a whole-scale sanitation project. A new police force, schools and hospitals would also bring the region to what English geographer Vaughan Cornish celebrated as ‘marvelous respectability.’ ⁹

In truth, the destruction that took place to make way for this effort was devastating. Whole villages and forests were flooded, and a railway constructed in the 1850s had to be relocated. The greatest challenge of all was the Culebra Cut, now known as the Gaillard Cut, an artificial valley excavated through some 13 kilometres of mountainous terrain. More than 100 million cubic metres of dirt had to be moved; the work consumed more than eight million kilograms of dynamite in three years alone.¹⁰

More than anything else, the commission needed labor. After the deaths of so many French workers to yellow fever and malaria, White Americans were reluctant to expose themselves to the horrid tropical conditions and grave dangers of blasting rock. As a result, tens of thousands of contract workers, mostly Blacks from the Caribbean, built the Panama Canal.

By the end of 1912, there were an estimated 30,619 laborers from the West Indies working toward this goal, including 19,444 from Barbados; 5,542 from Martinique; 2,053 from Guadeloupe; and 1,427 from Trinidad.¹¹

Promises of lucrative employment and wealth lured them there, but they confronted an entirely different reality. To them, the Culebra Cut was ‘Hell’s Gorge.’ They lived like second-class citizens, subject to a Jim Crow-like regime, with bad food, long hours and low pay. And constant danger.¹²

According to hospital records and data from the Panama Canal Authority, diseases and accidents killed 5,609 workers during the American-led project. The fatalities included 4,500 Caribbean West Indian workers. By contrast, a reported 350 White Americans were killed.¹³

Hundreds, if not thousands, of West Indian workers were permanently injured, including the loss of limbs from botched blasts and falling rocks.

My maternal great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Jordan, and maternal great-grandmother, Kathryn Louisa Green, were among the many Black islanders who left their homes and jobs at sugar cane plantations to work on the canal. My great-grandfather was born in Cuba and raised in Barbados. My great-grandmother was born in Speightstown, Barbados. They met while working at the canal and married sometime later. They had two children; my great-aunt Sybil was born in 1910 and my grandmother in 1924.

About 10 percent of Barbados’s total population and 40 percent of its men worked on the canal, earning and saving money to send home to relatives.¹⁴

Barbados, the most easterly of the Caribbean islands, has a population of about 287,000 today. It is estimated that about 16 percent of Panama’s 3.7 million population traces its roots directly back to Caribbean nations, including Barbados and Cuba.¹⁵

My family members are included in that count.

In so many ways, the Panama Canal Zone, which covered 553 square miles along the canal and was controlled by the U.S. until 1979, was like an American Southern town that had been transplanted to Central America. If that conjures up pleasant images for you, you should know that it had its challenges as well. "It wasn’t all idyllic—for a long time, the zone was segregated between American