Racism In The Fields

Spend an afternoon on Eddie Cotton's 80-acre Mississippi farm and you'll learn one thing very quickly. He could have been much more.

"Everything I've had is ruined," he told CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan.

Cotton fought in World War II and the Korean War, but it's his fight with the U.S. Department of Agriculture that's breaking him. Year after year, his farm loans were denied or held up until it was too late to plant. Meanwhile, his white neighbors, using USDA money, reaped their harvests.

"I was going to, well, raise whatever, do farming, raise cows," he says.

After 25 years of trying to work his land, he's reduced now to keeping the weeds back and fighting foreclosure.

Cotton thinks it's racism.

"Yeah, that's all it is," he says. "I've been around too long for that. What else is it?"

Cotton joined a historic class action suit against the USDA. The government admitted it had discriminated against black farmers for decades. And in a landmark 1999 settlement, promised compensation. Eddie Cotton is still waiting, and he's not alone.

According to the National Black Farmer's Association, close to 90 percent of the farmers who applied for what was supposed to be an automatic piece of that settlement, didn't get a dime. Critics charge it's because the government first bungled the settlement, and now continues to fight it, tooth and nail.

"The largest civil rights settlement in U.S. history turned out to be a national disgrace," said John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmer's Association.

Boyd staved off foreclosure, saved his 200-acre Virginia farm and is leading other farmers through a maze of government paperwork and legal maneuvers.

"They are definitely dragging their feet," he said.

Cowan asked, "And why would they do that?"

"Because these are black farmers and who cares? We're just going to wait 'em out and eventually they'll die off," Boyd replied.

The black farmers now charge the USDA is obstructing justice.

"How? I mean, (laughing) I just don't understand that argument," said Vernon Parker.

Parker, the USDA's Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, says the settlement ties his hands while a third party accepts or rejects each farmer's case.

Frustrated, the farmers have turned to Congress, asking it to alter the settlement and force the government to look at thousands of rejected cases. It's a strategy that's getting attention.

Still, Parker won't criticize the settlement.

Cowan wanted to know: "It is a bad settlement?"

Parker replied, "Well, I, ya know what, I, I can't… "

Yet, it's the USDA, not an independent observer, that's moved to dismiss Eddie Cotton's case -- on a technicality -- even though the USDA admits, in writing, that Cotton proved discrimination.

"Do you ever think you're going to get your money, even a fraction of it?" asked Cowan.

"You asked a question there only the Good Lord can answer," said Cotton.

The USDA promises it will put more African Americans in charge of farm loans. It's a promise that may have come too late for Eddie Cotton.