For land's sake.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: Class action case against federal lending policies discriminating against African-American farmers - Cover Story

Timothy Pigford has been in the foreground of a fight against a federal bureaucracy.

Timothy Pigford sips water from a pint Mason jar, his elbows propped on the table. It wobbles when he leans forward. A leak in the roof has stained the ceiling tile, and duct tape holds the kitchen counter together. It wasn't always like this.

"Janice and I got married in 1975 and built this house the year after. We were going to have a family and farm. We were pretty proud. Our first son was born right after we moved in." Their second was born six years later and was still a toddler when Hurricane Diana hit in 1984. "Soybeans were this high," Pigford says, forearm level with his chest. "It blew them flat as your hand."

The family gathered at the table to talk it out, the way it did the day the power company cut off the lights. "We'd have family meetings. We called ourselves 'Pigford, Pigford, Pigford & Pigford.' My family had been farming for four generations, and my boys were going to be the next generation, so we wanted them to learn."

In this rundown brick house on a back road in Bladen County, Pigford, 47, has become the focal point of a national movement to save black farmers. He has been at it 22 years, since 1976, when he was first denied a federal loan to buy a farm. It was a defeat that would turn into a crusade to force the government to make amends for discrimination. In the process, Pigford has been cited on the floor of Congress as the epitome of the plight of black farmers and has tongue-lashed President Bill Clinton over government foot-dragging in correcting the situation. A college dropout, he drafted a lawsuit in his living room in 1992 that has become the heart of a $3 billion class action.

"You won't find a more compelling example of what has happened to black farmers," says Washington lawyer Alexander Pires, who is handling the class action. "Tim has lost everything, but he's not going to give in, even if he goes down in the process. He believes he's right, and he's become a symbol to a lot of other black farmers."

In many respects, Pigford has won, forcing the government to admit civil-rights violations and discrimination in lending to hundreds of black farmers. The last hurdle to the massive lawsuit was removed in July when the Senate waived the statute of limitations that kept the farmers from pressing their claims. That will allow the suit to go to trial or pressure the government to settle.

But two decades of struggle have taken a heavy toll. Even Pigford concedes it has been a consuming, almost self-destructive crusade. It has left him with a rundown house and $17 in his bank account. He still considers himself a farmer, though he has no land and hasn't turned a furrow for years. In winning, he has lost what he wanted most.

"We sat here around the table here the other night," he says, nodding to an empty chair. "My young boy hasn't ever been interested in farming. But Junior - he's 22 now - sat there and said he was sick of this whole mess and didn't ever want no part of farming, either. He got up and walked out, and we haven't heard from him since." Pigford swallows hard. "His mama's just worried sick."

It won't be unusual if Timothy Pigford becomes the last generation of his family to make a living from the dirt of Eastern North Carolina. By last official count, there were 1,866 black farmers in the state. Fewer than a third earn as much as $10,000 a year.

"Make sure you say that's gross, not net," points out Ron Wimberly, a rural sociologist at N.C. State. "Most black farmers," adds U.S. Rep. Eva Clayton, a North Carolina Democrat, "are farming out of tradition now, not to make a living." Nearly all farm part time, supplementing their income with outside jobs. Even so, the numbers, now 6 years old, are high. They show 79 black farmers in Bladen County. "I'll guarantee you can't find 10 today," Pigford says.

Most small farmers struggle. Small black farmers, who faced the same weather, pests and low prices as others but also lending discrimination that kept them from becoming big farmers, struggled worse. Since 1950, Wimberly adds, black farmers in North Carolina have vanished at twice the rate of comparable white farmers.

That equation grates on Pigford, and he admits he was brooding over it last December, more than two decades after he was denied his first federal loan to buy a farm. Dressed in his Sunday suit, he sat in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, with several dozen other minority farmers. They stood when President Clinton walked in.

Clinton conceded that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had discriminated, but he angered the farmers when he refused to call off Justice Department lawyers who at that moment were in court arguing that the claims were too old to be valid. Clinton blamed the Reagan administration, which eliminated the USDA civil-rights office in 1983. That, according to a report by the USDA inspector general, had plunged hundreds of complaints into a bureaucratic black hole.

The meeting was closed, but several who were there say the mood grew sullen. One was Clayton, the congresswoman, who had helped set it up. "It got pretty raw," she admits. "The farmers shared their pain. Tim didn't...