The Daily - ‘1619,’ Episode 5: The Land of Our Fathers, Part 2

Episode Date: October 12, 2019

Today on “The Daily,” we present Episode 5, Part 2 of “1619,” a New York Times audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones. You can find more information about it at nytimes.com/1619podcast.The Provosts, a family of sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana, had worked the same land for generations. When it became harder and harder to keep hold of that land, June Provost and his wife, Angie, didn’t know why — and then a phone call changed their understanding of everything. In the finale of “1619,” we hear the rest of June and Angie’s story, and its echoes in a past case that led to the largest civil rights settlement in American history.Guests: June and Angie Provost; Adizah Eghan and Annie Brown, producers for “1619”; and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard University and the author of “The Condemnation of Blackness.”Background reading:“The number of black sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana is most likely in the single digits,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad writes in his essay on the history of the American sugar industry. “They are the exceedingly rare exceptions to a system designed to codify black loss.”The “1619” audio series is part of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Read more from the project here.

This is his father's grave site. You see all the flowers on here. They've been here since Father's Day. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. When we buried my dad, you know, when people were trying to console me, the first thing they would say, you know, look where he's buried. He's buried right next to the cane field, something that you love.

And that really made me feel good at the time, you know, made me feel better, I guess I can say. But after all this happened, I stopped coming to even see my dad because I just couldn't. I just, you know, I just wanted to make him proud. And when all that happened, I felt like I was letting my dad down and it just you know he wanted to pass the form down to his kids and his grandkids and and and I let him down you didn't let your dad down. You know that. From the New York Times Magazine, I'm Nicole Hannah-Jones.

This is 1619. So after this terrible year, did you think about giving up the business? Oh, never, never. I mean, I'm a sugarcane farmer. And I mean, I loved it. This is my family's legacy. This is what I am good at. I've been doing it since I was a little boy. I mean, never once would I ever give up farming. Adiza Egan, why don't you pick up where you left off?

So June and Angie Provost have been struggling for years to keep their sugarcane farm going. It was a repetitive cycle, pretty much. I mean, late loans, underfunded, over-collateralization. And they say it's because they can't get enough money from their bank, called First Guarantee, to run their farm. It's a trickle-down effect. If you can't plant all of your acres that one year, you're going to fill it the next year and the year after that. If you can't fertilize your whole crop, what kind of yields are you going to make on that acres?

And he can't just go to another bank to get the loan. Because he says other banks have told him that he's in too deep with first guarantee. He's put up pretty much all of his assets as collateral. So what am I supposed to do? So I did go to the USDA and ask them to apply some pressure. I need my crop loan. I need to be in the fields. And so June turns to the federal government to complain. Basically, when a farmer goes to a bank to apply for a crop loan, the bank then turns to a local branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Because even though the loan is provided by the bank, the USDA will step in in the event that the farmer can't pay back the loan.

So the local USDA office has to sign off on it. But when June goes to his local USDA office, they say there's nothing they can do. It was almost every year that we would go and complain. Every year I would have to complain because every year the prop loans would be later and later. And then on this one day in May of 2014. That's when everything came to a head. Everything came to a head in 2014. June finally started to get some answers. Well, I was at the shop working, just trying to get equipment ready, trying to set up everything for fertilized season.

So when I get the crop loan, you know, everything will be ready to go. And I got a phone call and it was the USDA's number. He gets a call from a local USDA employee named William Husband. He said, June, he said, you have a second? I'm saying like, sure, Mr. Will. And I'm like, what is wrong? He said, do you realize that you're the only farmer in this parish, in this office, that's going through whatever you're going through. He said no other farmer is going through this. William Husband is named as a whistleblower in June's lawsuit against First Guarantee Bank.

And the lawsuit claims that Husband, who is white, made it clear that this was about racial discrimination. When we reached out to Husband, he couldn't comment and referred us back to the USDA where he still works. But this is what June and Angie say happened. He said, come to my office as soon as you can. At one point after that phone call, William invited June and Angie to come to his office.

I mean, I can remember that William looking quite disheveled. Yeah, he was nervous and red. I remember that. Where he showed them June's files. He said, I want y'all to sit in my office. I'm going to close the door. And he had all the files already on his desk from every year. He said, I want you to go through all of your files and pull out what you need to pull out. And I'll make copies for you.

And June says that what he saw in those files clarified for him what had been going on with his crop loans. He said, do you realize that First Guaranteed Bank is photocopying your signatures? And I'm like, wait, say that again. He said, yes. He, First Guaranteed Bank is photocopying your signatures. And this is to USDA guaranteed loan applications. And not only photocopying my signatures, they were changing the loan amounts. The lawsuit claims that First Guaranteed Bank had been changing June's loan applications without his consent, reducing the amount he's asking for, leaving him with less money to run his farm.

He said, like, I'm shaking. He said, I'm shaking. That's how he kept saying it. He said, June, I'm shaking. He said, I said, Mr. Will, I'm shaking. This is like crazy. I mean, for me, it was just like a shock. But I mean, was I surprised? It almost gave justification to the feelings that we've had all that time. And I think that's what it did. It pretty much answered my questions. And it's like, here's the proof, you know?

So, yeah. Here's the proof, you know? So, yeah. So what was the bank's explanation for why it had lended June so much less than what he had asked for? First Guarantee Bank would not speak with us. But in a statement that they made to The Guardian last year, they called these allegations, quote, completely unfounded and frivolous. And said that it, quote, has not and does not engage in discriminatory practices. The year after William Husband first told June and Angie about the discrimination, First Guarantee Bank denies June a crop loan altogether.

Hank denies June a crop loan altogether. Without the funds, he couldn't afford to do anything on the limited number of acres he had left. And he couldn't pay the landlords he rented from. So he had to give it up. He lost land his grandfather had farmed. He lost the land he learned to drive a tractor on. And he lost the patch of land off Highway 90, where June and his father had opened rows and covered cane for the last time.

And in 2018, the bank foreclosed on their home. How far is the home from where we are now? I mean, it's actually maybe 50 yards away from my mom's home. I mean, and that's the reason why I built there, so I can take care of my parents. And to have my home taken like that is just, it's unreal. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. You know, and every day I walk out of my mom's house and I have to look at our home. You know, it's not like where I live a few miles away and, you know, you barely pass by it.

I get up every single morning and the first thing I see is my home. I lost the home in September of last year. They have yet to cut the grass. Fences like falling down. I mean, it's just a, you know, I got to relive that every day, relive it every single day. And I tell you what, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. It's, you know. So, you know, those are things that's, you know, that is so hard to take. So hard. The sugar industry always saying we need young farmers. We need young farmers. What they should be saying, they want young white farmers.

So how do we know that the bank wasn't justified in this assessment? Well, we don't know. This is an active litigation, which is in the discovery phase, basically where both sides are gathering evidence, obtaining documents, interviewing witnesses, and taking depositions. And what we know is what June told us and what the bank has denied. But we also know that this isn't the first time that a Black farmer has accused a lending institution of using a crop loan as a tool of discrimination. of using a crop loan as a tool of discrimination. In fact, it's the allegation at the heart of the largest civil rights settlement in the history of this country.

To Kill a Mockingbird is the most successful American play in Broadway history, says 60 Minutes. Rolling Stone gives it five stars, calling it a landmark production of an American classic. To Kill a Mockingbird is all rise. One of the greatest plays in history, raves NPR. The New York Post says it will change how you see the world. This is what great theater is for. All rise for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, a new play by Aaron Sorkin. This is a phenomenon, says New York Magazine. On Broadway at the Schubert Theater. Get tickets at telecharge.com. I'm going to say his whole name.

Really? That's how you want me to introduce him? Khalil. Hi, Nicole. Hey, so say your name. Khalil Gibran Muhammad. Gibran, okay. Mm-hmm. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, you're a history professor at Harvard.

Tell me about this lawsuit that led to the largest civil rights settlement in history. Well, it's pretty remarkable. One day in the late 1990s, a man named Timothy C. Pickford and a couple of other farmers, black farmers, walk into a lawyer's office in D.C. Would you introduce yourself to me and pronounce your name, please? Sure. My name is Alexander Pires, P-I-R-E-S. Doesn't really rhyme with anything. Okay. And could you talk... This man named Alex Pires, who had been suing the USDA for various reasons, and they told him their story. we get a lesser amount than a white. If we do get a loan, it's got more restrictions than a white. If we do get a loan,

we get it late in the season. White farmers get it on time. If we do get it and get something going the next year, they'll have problems to keep us from building momentum. And I told them that my experience had been that nobody's going to listen to us unless we have numbers. Numbers is what they get. And I told them, if you could go out and get me 50 black farmers

who could tell that same story, I'll file a class action on behalf of you. But what happened was they came back with, I think, 60 or 70 names and addresses. And I said, let's go on the road and see how widespread it is. I grew up on a farm, my dad's farm. So it's just in my blood, I guess. We went on a tour. 155 acres. Throughout the South. 60, 70 acres of cotton. Peanuts. 20 acres of corn. Tried to purchase the land that had been in the family for such a long time. I applied for this loan and I didn't get it. Just giving him the runaround. They told me I owed too much.

Tried to discourage me in every way possible. Messages on my answering machine, nigger, you're going to get killed. And we were successful. When I got whatever it was, a hundred and something names. We were forced out of farming. Yeah. And that's what we love to do. I came back, I wrote the complaint, and we filed it.

We got a judge named Judge Friedman. And that's how it started. That's how Pickford and these other farmers came to sue the United States Department of Agriculture. farmers came to sue the United States Department of Agriculture. So as his lawyer is investigating these farmer stories, what is he learning? Well, he's learning that the process itself is troubling because the way that crop loans are distributed, even though the money comes from Congress, all of the action happens at the local level. And in agriculture, the really local level, I mean, county by county, parish by parish, if you were in a place like Louisiana.

The history had been something like this. Black farmers got really good at specific crops. Year after year after year, they would farm the same crops for white landowners, and they got really good at it. So it was just a matter of time before a younger black farmer would say to himself, what am I doing? I do the same thing over and over again. The white farmer gets rich on my skill. Why don't I just go down the street and lease 100 acres, 200 acres, and do it for myself? You know, very American, very logical. 100 acres, 200 acres, and do it for myself. You know, very American, very logical. The problem was, that was frightening to the white farmer in the South for three reasons.

One, there goes my labor and my skill. Two, here comes a new competitor. And three, what about me? You know, what about me? You know, what about me? What about my rights, my interests? I'm going to talk to the county committee about that. The story of Pickford and these claimants is that at the time, when they tried to get a loan, they would go to a USDA local county committee and apply.

The system is very simple. There's USDA local county committee and apply. The system is very simple. There's a local county committee. The county committee decides who gets the funds. And it was completely white controlled. These committees are overwhelmingly white. Even in southern states that had lots of black farmers. And what happened is that ultimately the people making the decision about giving the loan were discriminating because in many instances they knew the farm landowner from whom this person was breaking away. Five people are there in line. The first four are white. The last one is black. I'll tell you what's going to happen 98 percent of the time. The person who's voting from the county committee, he knows the first four. They fish together, they hunt together. They're never going to vote against them. Person number five is a black man from the black

community for which there is no relationship usually. And it's a wild card as to whether he's going to get that loan. So these farmers are claiming that they're being discriminated against because they're Black. And the mechanism of that discrimination are these farm loans. That's right. Through the size of the loan and the release of the funds. It started out with a simple complaint in which everybody was saying the same thing, that there was this treatment by whites. And then the second common element was when they

complained about it to the Office of Civil Rights, which is how the system works, their complaint never got processed. In fact, Alex tells us that when he started doing his own research into this, he found that going back to the 1980s, the Reagan administration closed the USDA's Office of Civil Rights. And so complaints were pouring in, going back that far, but there was no office to process them. And I had heard a rumor from a couple of Black farmers that there's a room, you know, where they just stuff them all. They're afraid to destroy them. So we were interviewing one of the deputy secretaries. And I said, you know, did you guys take all those complaints, you know, when you close the civil rights office? Aren't they all sitting somewhere? Where are they? You didn't destroy them, did you?

Where are they? Where is it all? And very nicely, he said, you know, don't get me in trouble. You know, this is where I make a living, you know. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The offices are all locked up and they're filled. And I said, I don't need to go down there and I don't need to get you in trouble. I'm not one of those people. I believe you. Is it in this building? And basically, I got a nod from him. And then

it was a hearing or two later in which I said, you know, Your Honor, I want to pursue this because I believe that they've got boxes and boxes that they never processed, which would be great to present to you at the beginning of trial or however you want to do it. And they never denied it, ever. But I don't think they needed to go that far. I think they knew that we knew that they knew we knew. And I think that made the difference. So given that you did not see the files, how were you able to build this into an argument with Judge Friedman that this was the smoking gun, essentially, of the Black Farmers case. It was one of the smoking guns. Yeah, I think he believed that if they didn't have an Office of Civil Rights, did it really matter what they did

with the files? They certainly weren't processing them, right? That's what made the case unique. It's really two forms of bias and prejudice. First of all, you're discriminated against. And then when you complain, your complaint is not processed. That's another form of discrimination. It's really double. The judge very early on got it. He understood the pattern. And what we would do is we would tell the black community when the hearings were,

and they would all come to Washington. And I don't mean 20 or 30 or 50 of them. I mean hundreds and hundreds of them would come. So we would have three, four, 500 black farmers in the courtroom. We had them in the aisles and in front. And then there's side seats and we had them in the jury box. And I think it bothered Judge Friedman that it had come down to this, that our judicial system was not working well and he was going to do something about it. And so two years after Timothy Pickford and that group of farmers first came into his office, Alex gets a call. One day I got a phone call from a senior associate attorney general. The Department of Justice ready to negotiate. And my requirement was that they actually give real money, not credit, not maybes, not promises.

So the deal they basically hammer out is that each farmer who meets the requirements of the complaint is able to receive $50,000. I asked for $50,000 per Black farmer tax-free. And have their debt forgiven. I'll tell you, the government in the initial discussions were having a heart attack over it. You would think I was raiding the treasury, it was the closest I could get to the government to say, I'm sorry, with something meaningful. But it's not a perfect world. I felt like $50,000 was respectful. Was it perfect? No. No. I mean, when I think of $50,000, I mean, when I think of $50,000, it doesn't seem to repair much, right? Like that's not going to buy back the land that you lost.

It's not going to put you in a position to be in a place that you would have been if you had been treated the same as white farmers. I mean, it's clearly better than nothing, but it doesn't repair the damage. No, it's true. I mean, a lot of these people had been experiencing generations of discrimination by these local USDA committees. But maybe the loudest criticisms came from people who thought the entire thing was a big shakedown of the federal government, that this was all a reparation scam and white people in the federal government didn't know these folks anything, that the complainants were frauds,

that they were making this up, that they were terrible, horrible farmers who were masking these complaints of racism to hide their own incompetence as farmers. And my answer to that always was, they've been doing the farming in the South for years. Who do you think picks cotton? White people? What a coincidence that the black farmer is qualified to farm millions of acres in America and make white America rich.

But when he wants to do it on his own, he's not competent. Black farmers were doing the farming. They were doing the actual work. So even though the government did not publicly admit wrongdoing, it ended up paying out nearly a billion dollars to nearly 16,000 farmers. The largest amount of money the government has ever paid to settle a discrimination case. But it's still an unresolved issue. More Black farmers came forward who met the conditions of the original complaint and formed Pickford 2. And ultimately, the underlying problem of discrimination remains. Now, there are people who are going to listen to this,

and they're going to say, I don't believe that story. And my instance of that is, well, you don't live in the South, and you're that is, well, you don't live in the South and you're not a farmer and you don't understand how the system works. Where you live, you're probably listening to this and you're probably in the suburbs of Philadelphia or you live in Brooklyn or something and your life is totally different, but that's how it worked. That's how it worked for decades. And the black farmer was abused in a way that was unheard of. And the preliminary culprit was his own government, her own government. So for example, you all sent me a case involving a sugar matter down south. The case of June and Angie Provost. matter down south. And the case of June and Angie Provost. Yeah. I mean, I read it. I think it's the same story. It involves a bank and most of ours, you know, didn't, but the point's the same.

What's the difference between that story and thousands of Pickford stories? What's the difference? The fact pattern is very similar. You know, a very qualified farmer who understands everything there is to know about sugar can't get a loan. So Khalil, I know you've been reporting on June and Angie Provost as well. And their story is so similar to the stories of the farmers in the Pigford lawsuit, which was settled almost 20 years ago. So how much has actually changed for Black farmers in this country? Well, the one thing we know about American history is that two steps forward are often met with one step back or sometimes two or three steps back. If we just look at Black sugarcane farmers in Louisiana,

they once numbered in the thousands, and now the number is most likely in the single digits. And that doesn't even include June and Angie, because after the experience that June had with the bank, he lost his leases. And even though there's a lawsuit and the facts will be determined, I know from my reporting that there's a white farmer in Louisiana right now who has some of June and Angie's land. I talked to him while working on this story. You were featured in a news story.

His name is Ryan Dory. Success as a newcomer to the industry. That's correct. And I wanted to know what he thought about the allegations that June was making about losing the land. So if the accusation was made that I took the land, no, the landowner took the land, and then they came and found a farmer, and they gave it to me. took the land and then they came and found a farmer and they gave it to me okay now one aspect of your story uh and i appreciate uh your strong and all i'm gonna ask you is make damn sure you write what i'm putting and don't put it in your own words and change the story okay great so the OK, great. So the question that I wanted to follow up with you on... Essentially, he says that in terms of the provost and other Black farmers down there in particular that he named, that they lost their farms not because of any kind of racism.

They're trying to make it a Black-white situation, but it doesn't have anything to do with Black-white, OK? They simply lost their acreage for one reason and one reason only. He flat out says they boat, I guess. I don't know. Okay. Is there anything else you'd want me to know that I didn't ask with regard to these allegations and your role as a farmer in the New Iberia region? I'm just a successful farmer in the Iberia Paragraph. That's all I can tell you. Okay. You know, and it's just, you know, you got to put on a uniform every day and get out and turn the wrench and go look at the land, you know, and then want to get mad at the white man for taking the black man's land. That don't work around here. Okay.

Like I told you. Like I told you. Because I told you, because I got your phone number now and I got your name. Make damn sure whatever you publish is what I just said. Don't spin it on me because this could go the opposite way. Them boys live around here. So don't be changing my shit up. Okay. Well, Mr. Dory, I absolutely appreciate you calling me back. so thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. Okay, have a good evening.

Yeah. I'm sorry. This is our home, and it's been almost a year since the sheriff's sale, since the foreclosure. And when we actually lost the home, I mean, I literally didn't want to go outside. I mean, I stayed in the house. The blinds were closed. I mean, and I went months, months. I remember Angie fussing and said, June, that's enough. She started opening up the blinds and putting some light in the house because I wanted it dark as could be.

I wasn't answering the phone for anybody. I was just depressed I mean it's just until recently probably maybe beginning of this year that I really started going out and just making a garden which was like the best time for me to make a garden like that I mean I never thought I would say that a garden you, I used to farm close to 5,000 acres, but just to get my hands dirty and just back into the dirt is just, is unbelievable. And these, this is my baby here.

That's what I call it. Because, you know, like in the fields, we would always call sugarcane. I always said that's my kids because you have to take care of it. I mean, but here's eggplants. And look, cantaloupe. Watch this little big one here. Look how big. Like that one right there is sweet potatoes.

And the watermelon and cantaloupe, i mean yeah they're just growing like wow it is a beautiful evening now I'm sorry. Yeah, you see all those minnows down there? Swimming. Today the water is like a blue-green. The sun shimmering off of it. It's beautiful so when you came here um the first time what were you expecting or hoping for i can't say i had a any expectation. I just felt it was important to

actually look out into the spot where those first Africans came. I definitely tried to think of what it must have felt like for them. I mean, by the time they would have gotten here, it would have been weeks since they saw any land whatsoever. And just think about that, like to be kidnapped and crossed across this ocean. And then when you see land, the land looks nothing like anything you had ever seen before. And the people on that land look nothing like anything you had ever seen before. So I'm thinking about all of that now when I see this water and it's just water, but feels very sad right now.

I think the one thing I didn't realize when I started this project was how raw when I started this project was how raw, how raw everything still is when you're black in this country. And people always, white people always want to tell you to get over it and to move on, but you've never really, there's never been a reckoning for what was done. And it's hard to move on. And just spending so much time thinking about it constantly, I just realized that the wounds are still very raw. They're still there.

So that's what I feel. I'm sorry. 1619 was produced by Annie Brown, Kelly Prime, Andy Mills, and me, Adiza Egan. It was edited by The technical director is Brad Fisher. The managing producer is Larissa Anderson. Mixed by Brad Fisher and Dan Powell. Music by Dawoud Anthony. Additional music by Brad Fisher and Dan Powell. Thanks to Michelle Harris, Graham Heysha,

Alex Karp, Julia Simon, Stella Tan, Claire Tenesketter, Austin Mitchell, and Jasmine Aguilera. Special thanks to Jake Silverstein and Elena Silverman. Okay.

Shall we? Shall we? Before my neck turns into bacon out here. Make sure you don't want to catch a crab before we go. I'm good. Okay. out here. Make sure you don't want to catch a crab before we go. I'm good. Okay. To Kill a Mockingbird has not played to a single empty seat, reports 60 Minutes. It's the most successful American play in Broadway history. Rolling Stone gives it five stars, calling it

unmissable and unforgettable. All rise for the miracle that is Mockingbird on Broadway. It's a New York Times critic's pick. Jesse Green calls it a mockingbird for our moment. Beautiful. Elegiac. Satisfying. Even exhilarating. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. A new play by Aaron Sorkin. A New York Times Critics' Pick. Tickets at telecharge.com.