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The Senate on November 19th approved a funding bill to fulfill two settlements previously awarded in two separate class action discrimination suits brought against federal agencies. In total the Senate approved over $4 billion in settlements. Of that, $3.4 billion was approved for Native Americans represented under the settlement reached last year in Cobell v. Salazar. The suit was brought against the Department of the Interior in 1996 by Elouise Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Tribe from Browning, Montana. The Cobell suit argued that the Department of the Interior owed royalty payments for land use for oil, gas, and grazing rights to hundreds of thousands of Native Americans. Funding for Cobell must now be approved by the House. The Senate bill also authorized $1.15 billion to go toward Black farmers represented under what is known as the Pigford II case. The original Pigford suit was brought against the US Department of Agriculture in 1997 by Tim Pigford of North Carolina, and a group of Black farmers. Prior to the Pigford suit, a USDA investigation uncovered decades of systemic discrimination against generations of Black Farmers, leading to the denial of loans, or unfair loan terms. The original Pigford lawsuit included 22,000 farmers, and was settled for $2.3 billion. However the terms of the settlement were criticized, and a majority of farmers who applied for Pigford money were found ineligible on what they complained were bureaucratic technicalities. This year Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Attorney General Eric Holder approved a second settlement of 1.15 billion for additional claimants, known as the Pigford II. However approval for the funding had been held up in the Senate until last week.

GUEST: John Boyd, President of the National Black Farmers Association

Find out more at www.blackfarmers.org.