Championing justice: The legacy of the Black Farmers Association

Contributed

Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, Inc. (BFAA) is a Memphis, Tennessee based non-profit organization established in 1997 by Thomas Burrell, an avid and passionate farmer from Covington, Tennessee.  He was elected president of the association in 2001.

In 1981, Burrell ignited a movement with protests and sit-ins in his native home to address issues and concerns of Black famers in the United States and abroad who were deliberately discriminated against by the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  BFAA has an active membership of more than 20,000 African-American farmers, landowners and their heirs nationwide.

BFAA gained nationwide prominence after successfully launching a worldwide public and media awareness campaign in the historic (Pigford v. Glickman) 1999 class-action lawsuit against the USDA, alleging racial discrimination against Black farmers in its allocation of farm loans and assistance between 1981 and 1996.  The lawsuit was settled on April 14, 1999 for almost $1 billion.  BFAA’S continuous goal is to ensure that every Black farmer receives appropriate compensation, including advocating that the USDA discontinues its practices of blatant racial discrimination against Black farmers.

PRESIDENT THOMAS BURRELL

Thomas Burrell was born on a farm in Covington, Tennessee in May of 1949.   He fought for his country and served in the United States Army during the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1970.  After being granted an honorable discharge in 1972, he earned a Business of Administration degree from the School of Business at the University of Michigan in 1975.

Burrell was one of the first Black farmers to publicly engage in a civil war against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1981.  He gained overwhelming support from other Black farmers and staged weeks of protests, sit-ins and public rallies at a local USDA county office in his native home and other counties. The demonstrations sparked worldwide media attention and later evolved as the Black farmer’s class-action racial discrimination lawsuit in 1997; the lawsuits provided over $5 billion dollars in compensation to thousands of Black farmers and other minority farmers, including Native Americans, Hispanics, female farmers, and ranchers all over the country. 

In 2001, Mr. Burrell was elected became the president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, Inc. (BFAA) headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.  For the last four decades, he has been fighting for the rights of Black farmers, their heirs, administrators who are still being discriminated against by the USDA. He convinced his legal team in 2015 that the USDA’s contractor (Epiq Systems) was violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — by not allowing African- American male claimants participation in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Hispanic men and women and African-American women. After several years of opposition by the USDA’s attorneys, U. S. Department of Justice, and a panel of federal judges, the U. S. Court of Appeals in D. C., denied the government’s motion to have the $1.8 billion dollar case dismissed.

BISHOP DAVID A. HALL, SR.
FARMER  •  PASTOR  • AUTHOR

Bishop David A. Hall, Sr. is the chairman of the Ecumenical Action Committee, a local Memphis group of clergy supporting the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, Inc. (BFAA) while the farmers wage a civil war for a billion dollar settlement of an historic discrimination lawsuit with the United States Department of Agriculture. He is also the president and board chairman of the International Trustee Group (ITG), LLC., which focuses on assisting Black farmers into a more substantial agricultural position with growing crops, training, financing, sales and marketing, and equipment purchases.

Bishop Hall has served as pastor of the historic Temple Church Of God In Christ in Memphis, Tennessee since 1991.  The church was founded by COGIC Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the 6-million member Pentecostal denomination headquartered in Memphis.  He is also the jurisdictional prelate for the COGIC Tennessee Headquarters Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction. 

Bishop Hall is an author of a critically acclaimed book, Essays to the Next Generation. A skilled musician, critical thinker and lecturer, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Butler University; a Master of Divinity from C.H. Mason Theological Seminary of the Interdenominational Theological Center; and a Doctorate in Ministry from McCormick Theological Seminary . Married to Mary Portis Hall, MD, he has two sons in the ministry and three grandchildren.