Joe Biden: A Reckoning
By: Kordel Davis
Tags: Elections, Politics, Equality, Protest, Agriculture

No celebratory Election Day fireworks were set off by farmer Michael Stovall on November 6, 2012. While Donald Trump was finalizing his agenda to rid this country of its Black President Stain, District Judge Abdul Kallon was preparing to destroy Michael Stovall’s life. Judge Kallon was fulfilling the prophecy begun decades ago by the scaring of the foods — those nasty cow killers — those savvy suits sporting binoculars and futures contracts.

Michael Stovall represents something that elite Democrats will forever be afraid of: that a United States born Black person can go on to become more successful in their career than a United States born White person. It is this very mindset that cluttered the Obama Presidency and found its way into our federal courts throughout his two terms as President.

Abdul Kallon was born on April 5, 1969, in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Coming to America is a goal of many Sierra Leoneans with dreams of attending colonial colleges such as Rutgers, Harvard, and Princeton. Kallon would choose to attend New Hampshire’s Dartmouth, followed by Penn for his Juris Doctor, both chartered as colonial colleges by Great Britain. His education would prove to him a useful asset at megafirm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP in Birmingham, Alabama in the late 1990s, the same era and same federal District Court that Michael Stovall began his campaign against the United States Department of Agriculture.

“They killed my chickens. They murdered my cows. They lit my generator on fire. They stole my computers.” Michael Stovall depicts the events that occurred on his farms throughout the United States as acts funded by the federal government. Researchers Nathan Rosenberg and Bryce Stucki estimate that throughout the course of our nation’s history, the federal government has stolen from African Americans over $1 Trillion worth of land that is rightfully ours. To put this into visual figures, one 8R 310 John Deere Tractor will run a farmer at least $406,508. A new car is never worth more than the reusable road it’s being driven on.

We within the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees have made adamant attempts to explain to President Barack Obama and President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. the systemic racism within the United States Department of Agriculture. On January 9, 2009, the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights sent a letter to the Obama — Biden Transition Team discussing the problems facing urban and rural farmers in America. President Obama left us in the dust. The last Democrats in the Oval Office to give a hoot about us are Bill and Hillary Clinton, along with former Vice President Al Gore. Senator Elizabeth Warren, while not a sitting President, did add our recommendations into the Warren Farm Plan. Currently, two politicians among those giving most favor to the USDA Coalition are Republicans: North Carolina House Whip Jon Hardister and Representative Kristin Baker. It was, after all, Ronald Reagan who first exposed discrimination within the USDA.

On April 21, 2020, Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic sends a public cry to Joe Biden asking him to meet with the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees and myself, writing, “[Kordel] is one of the most interesting people I’ve met on this ‘reporting journey’ I’m on… His personal history of having food withheld from him in foster care is hair–raising — and yet he has used it to fuel a cause. Joe Biden team: meet with this young man. He’s a leader.”

Caitlin Flanagan’s demands were met. After meetings with Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. finally gave us a meeting in the summer of 2020. It would be Trey Baker, Mr. Biden’s Director of African American Engagement, facilitating this meeting. “Hold on, let me go grab the Warren Plan off of the printer so I know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Baker tells us as we explain Elizabeth Warren’s Farm Plan that would increase the number of African American farmers. No meeting with crew Biden ever turned out to be substantial and has only helped to prove how little Mr. Biden cares for the Black farmer.

“What you’re asking for is unconstitutional,” Mr. Biden’s Policy Advisor Seema Sadanandan says to film director Dr. Waymon Hinson as he brings up farm policies for African Americans. “Laws make us unable to help one particular group.” Are such words any surprise? Mr. Biden is the same person who created the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which led to the mass incarceration of African Americans. He told us throughout the 2020 election cycle, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or you’re for Trump, then you ain’t Black.” He ended his 2008 Presidential campaign after calling Senator Obama the “first” mainstream, articulate African American.

Barack Obama is far from the first mainstream, articulate African American. As I speak with Queen Sugar author Natalie Baszile, she explains to me scenes from history that translate to where the Black farmer is today.

“It’s obvious that Black farmers have struggled for generations, and special attention needs to be paid to their plight and struggles. If not now, when? It’s overtime.” Ms. Baszille’s work has helped to propel the Black Farmer movement forward, being transformed all the way into a television series by Oprah Winfrey. There were calls for Ms. Winfrey to run for President in 2020, in which we would have had only the second Presidential candidate, following Mr. Gore, who physically sits down with Black farmers and tries to understand their stories.

Some Black farmers, including Michael Stovall, believe that even most land-grant colleges are controlled by corporate interests. Many historians argue that any non-historically Black college or university is a predominantly white institution.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) often must find funding in different ways than predominantly white institutions do. The original Morrill Act of 1862 designated only two HBCUs as land-grant: University of the District of Columbia and University of the Virgin Islands. Nineteen additional HBCUs received land-grant status with the Morrill Act of 1890. In December of 2019, these schools received $255 Million in annual funding with a shocking signature: President Donald Trump. HBCUs went from September to December of 2019 with no funding before the Future Act was signed, due to Senate inaction. Democrats must create similar bills and plans in order to regain the trust of Black farmers.

When Senator Warren came out with her original Farm Plan in August 2019, the one problem the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees had with it was her over-reliance on “heirs’ property” as the reason Black farmers lost our land. Ms. Baszille exposes the lies behind that myth:

Black families with land live in Chicago and New York. Imagine your great grandfather buys 400 acres, but then it gets split between grand — children and great — grandchildren. If they are not working together, they can’t pay the taxes on the land, which may lead to land loss. It’s not always ignorance of Black people not understanding what they have, but it is not their choice. You also have the USDA deploying these tactics, forcing Black farmers off of their land. You have developers forcing Black farmers off the land. They can go up to one family member with the largest percentage of the land and get them to force a sale.

Government officials and developers consistently found their way to Michael Stovall’s land attempting to get him to sell. When he failed to nudge, they took matters into their own hands. Mr. Stovall estimates that throughout the years, the federal government stole from him alone over $32 Million worth of land, property, and capital. When Black farmers find themselves in Mr. Stovall’s shoes, they don’t run towards Mr. Biden in hopes of reparations or towards the government in hopes of land-grant extension agents. They run towards Attorney Jillian Hishaw.

“My own family, my great grandmother was taken advantage of by a dishonest lawyer. Kansas City, Missouri. The lawyer pocketed the money and the land was sold without notice to my family. The land was located in Oklahoma, part of where my family originated. This is why I got into this space.” Ms. Hishaw witnessed at a young age the inner working corruption of not only Washington but the Midwest.

A lawyer in Columbia, Missouri once told me, “Here in Missouri, just about every lawyer knows each other. A very tight-knit community. We all went to the same schools. And we all sue each other. We don’t do it because we hate each other–we do it because we’re friends. It’s how we play.” But are the Black men and women used and abused in between these cases so keen on the laughter-filled litigation?

[ Read: Anthony Bourdain discovers agricultural corruption in Detroit ]

In the summer of 2020, I sat at a protest-special City Council Meeting in Durham, North Carolina in front of the police station with Mayor Steve Schewel being the guest of honor. When we bring up the issues of Black farmer land loss within the city, Mayor Pro Tempore Jillian Johnson laughs and asks, “Do we even have any farms in Durham?” The point being all farms in the city are already supposed to be rezoned into multipurpose, new urbanism real estate. I walk Mayor Schewel to his car after the meeting, and as I inform him of the USDA Coalition and all we do to help Black farmers, he says to me, “You live in Raleigh? Do not email me.” Days before, Councilwoman DeDreana Freeman looks me in the eyes and says, “I see you went to Rutgers. I went to Rutgers. We need to get you over to Durham.”

© Pxfuel | Durham, North Carolina | Home of Duke University

Durham is fascinating. During a campaign stop for Mr. Biden in the city, Kerry Washington looks Aaron Thomas of WRAL-TV straight in the eyes and states “Olivia Pope is not real. She’s not going to make a difference.” It’s true — fictional characters such as Pope from the television series Scandal are not real — and it is up to us real Americans to educate our electorate on the issues facing us today. I stand here now in an effort to educate Mr. Biden and his Presidential transition team on the longstanding history of racism in America towards the Black farmer.