By R. Darren Price
The Item of Sumter
MANNING, S.C. (AP) -- As Henry King Jr.'s truck pulls into a secluded pasture, his cattle perk up from their normal standstill. They've got hopeful looks in their eyes.
"I've got this sweet grain mix," Henry said as he tugs at the steering wheel. "Every time they see the truck, they come."
Twelve Angus cows crowd his truck looking for food. He fed them the stuff less than an hour ago, but they want more. A mostly untouched, days-old stack of hay sits about 50 feet from the truck.
King, 65, a former Clarendon County sheriff's deputy, said he never really planned to be a cattle farmer. But after his father died in 1988 he felt obligated to take over his family business.
But there was a catch.
When he died, his dad left about $93,000 in debt on the then-1,800 acre farm. So, he tried to get a loan from the U.S. Agriculture Department to cover the debt. He got one and was denied a couple others, but he probably didn't expect the near-20-year odyssey that would follow.
King was one of the original plaintiffs in the mammoth 1999 class-action lawsuit Pigford v. Glickman. He and about 400 other black farmers sued the U.S. government after they were unfairly denied loans on the basis of their skin color. They argued that they had been unfairly rejected from small farm loans from USDA farming agencies and that their farming businesses suffered as a result. About 13,000 farmers eventually received $50,000 settlements from the case, including King.
King remembers vividly when he was rejected from a loan. He had received a loan from the Farmers Home Administration to cover the cost of the debt. He went back to get an operational loan to cover the day-to-day workings at the tobacco farm, but USDA workers acted like he should have never even heard about the program.
"They asked 'How do you know about this?" he said. "I had it from the newspaper, so I showed it to them."
King was denied the loan, and couldn't afford to keep the large tobacco crop alive.
"It rotted right there in the field," he said. "I didn't even have the money to harvest it."
He lost the crop and any profit for the season, he thought, because of his skin color. So, King joined the National Black Farmers Association, and national president John Boyd asked him to be South Carolina's chapter president. He went to Washington to protest with the group, though he didn't ride his tractor like Boyd did.
"I flew," he joked. "I'm smarter than that."
King got his settlement money, but thousands others didn't. They filed their settlement claims too late and weren't given their money. He thought his role with the case would be over after he got his money, but after President Obama signed the Claims Resolution Act on Dec. 8, he said people have been calling him, asking how to get their piece of the pie.
"People like to think I'm a politician here," he said. "I guess that's why they call."
King, however, didn't want to say too much about the new settlement funds, dubbed "Pigford II." Part of the reason is he hasn't heard a lot about it from Boyd. Part of it is he is too busy to get too deep into it. But another part of it is what he sees as the downright difficulty of getting the money.
"I can't say too much about it," he said. "But it's gonna be really hard."
King said in the last Pigford, he felt like real farmers such as himself had a hard time separating from "attempted farmers," people who got money from the settlement for saying they were trying to get into farming but couldn't because of the discrimination. When the bill was debated on Capitol Hill earlier this year, some congressmen, such as Steve King, R-Iowa, no relation, told The Associated Press that old Pigford claims were rife with fraud and likened the new pay-outs to "modern-day reparations." The new bill includes measures to prevent fraud, but Henry King worries there might continue to be too large a margin of error.
"Attempted to farm?" he asked. "That leaves a lot of wiggle room."
But, despite being involved with a settlement that was two decades in the making, King said he doesn't regret taking up his father's business, though he misses being a police officer and still wears dark-tinted, square sunglasses that policemen often wear. He's run for sheriff a couple of times, too, but has never won. Even if he won, though, he said he wouldn't give up on his father's farm and the cows.
"If I sold the farm, he would just roll over in the grave," he said.
His cows wouldn't get their sweet grain either.
Published: Tue, Jan 18, 2011
