Secretary of Agriculture Vows to Make Civil Rights a Priority

Tom Vilsack, secretary of Agriculture, said Saturday that he will make civil rights a primary focus at the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Vilsack said that he wants to ensure that department’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (OASCR) is getting as much attention as other offices and plans to employ consultants to handle farmers’ claims that USDA employees are discriminating against them. The OASCR is responsible for ensuring the department is complying with all federal civil rights and equal opportunity laws.

A number of reports have investigated the USDA’s treatment of Black farmers.  In 1982, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report that found “systemic racism” in the department.  A 1997 USDA report found that the department frequently denied or delayed loans and federal support to Black farmers, causing many of them to lose their land and may have contributed to the dramatic decline in the number of minority farmers over several decades. In 1920, there were 925,000 Black farmers in the United States; by 1992, there were fewer than 18,000.