Our Land, Our Lives Film Screening

Join the Bed-Stuy Community Eco-Mapping Project for a screening of the film Our Land, Our Lives.

Pigford v. Glickman (1999) was a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging racial discrimination in its allocation of farm loans and assistance between 1983 and 1997. The lawsuit ended with a settlement on April 14, 1999, by Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia. To date, almost US$1 billion has been paid or credited to more than 13,300 farmers under the settlement's consent decree, under what is reportedly the largest civil rights settlement to date. 

As another 70,000 farmers had filed late and not had their claims heard, the 2008 Farm Bill provided for additional claims to be heard; and in December 2010, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion for what is called Pigford II, the second part of the case. Many black farms are lost to families through inadequate estate planning, lack of access to legal counsel and racially discriminatory lending practices. But sister Dania Davy is leading the effort to assist rural Black Farmers in this area and has documented this important issue in a film she created called "Our Land, Our Lives".