Come on, see the Illinoise!
Our national Pigford visualization showed how a huge number of Pigford II claims came from within an hour outside of Memphis, TN. One of my awesome readers took the massive Pigford II claims data that we released Sunday night and made visualizations of that data.
Recently 18,000 checks for $50,000 each went out to Pigford II claimants went from from the Obama administration; $1,200,000,000 worth. We have no way of knowing who got them.
Let’s drill down to one state to see where the claims come from.
Illinois. The Land of Lincoln. The state that elected Barack Obama Senator.
Illinois Sen. Obama introduced the Pigford II legislation. Pres. Obama signed it into law.
Illinois had 59 black farmers, down from 132 in 1997 according to this Chicago Tribune from 2005:
As farming has become a big business, it has become one of the least diverse businesses around. Whites operate more than 72,000 Illinois farms, Hispanics 488 and those of other ethnicity 219 combined. As senior government demographer Calvin Beale noted: “It has to be among the whitest of occupations.”
It wasn’t always. In 1920, Illinois had 892 black farmers…
So, at the boom in Illinois, there were 892 black farmers. Down to 132 in 1997 and 59 by 2005.
Illinois had 1,122 Pigford II claims.
That means 1,122 black Illinois residents claimed, under penalty of perjury, that they went to a USDA office and attempted to get farm loan services but were denied due to racism.
The Tribune article discusses where most black farmers in the state are located:
As it stands, Illinois’ few remaining black farmers cluster in three spots: Kankakee County, the far southern tip of the state and Madison County outside St. Louis-where Johnson’s great-grandfather first bought property in 1850.
Efforts to revive those communities have made no apparent headway.
All along, most of the state’s African-American farmers have tended to stay away from the networks of mainstream farmers. “You just don’t see them in our circles,” said Illinois Farm Bureau President Philip Nelson.
The county offices of the Agriculture Department were long viewed as hostile turf. “I saw few if any of them in the county office,” recalled Merrill Marxman, former head of the agency’s Kankakee branch and now a private consultant. “There was a real trust issue. They didn’t want the federal government to know their name and address.”
So, despite this distrust that kept black farmers away from USDA offices, 1,122 black residents claim that they went to the USDA offices.
And where do those farming hopefuls live? Look at the map…the map on right shows where all the farmland is the state of Illinois. The map of left shows where all the Pigford II claims are from.
Here’s how the numbers break down.
Of the 1,122 Illinois residents who filed Pigford II claims, 1099 of them were in the four Chicagoland counties: Cook, Dupage, Lake and Will.
A whopping 629 claims come from with the city of Chicago itself.
Maybe they attempted to farm but were turned down and in desperation moved to Chicago? Maybe?
Not according to black Illinois farmer Lloyd Johnson. The Chicago Tribune:
Illinois farmer Johnson chalks it up to the lure of better jobs off the farm. While he took over the family homestead, his four brothers moved to town and did “quite well,” he said with a rueful smile. “Farming’s tough. It is uncertain. They found a better way to make a living. Who’s the dummy?”
The Chicago Tribune article discusses the fierce determination to farm among Chicago’s black youth.
In Chicago, the public High School
for Agricultural Sciences might sound like a school for farmers, but its mission is training future agribusiness executives for Archer Daniels Midland and the like, explained principal David Gilligan. “I don’t think anybody has come to school with the desire to be a farmer,” he said.
Well, at least 1,000 people in Chicago swore under penalty of perjury that that they attempted to farm.
DEVELOPING…
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