More madness in Kentucky: Black farmer's foreclosed land used for Klan meetings

Harry Young continues his legal battle to regain his land, and will talk to anyone about the injustice that he has faced. His home property is ringed with signs detailing the injustice and tourists visiting the area from as far away as Australia view the signs and ask: “How can this happen in America?”

And, they’ve only seen part of the ugliness, which surrounds Mr. Young.

So far, the farmer has filed several court actions, including a request for the US Circuit Court of Appeals to censor the federal district judge in Owensboro. Young believes the district court has not done its job, has not paid attention to numerous requests from his lawyers for documents from the government’s attorneys.

Those documents have never been handed over, despite numerous requests in open court. This action should have generated contempt citations from the judge, according to several legal experts, but no citation has ever been issued.

Young believes he has no chance in Owensboro District Court, and he has tried in vain to appeal and have the case moved into a higher court. In addition to the lower court actions, he has filed at least two class action lawsuits in federal district court, but his lawsuit, like his appeals, languish in court.

Now, if that isn’t enough, there’s another fly in the ointment. It appears that the Klan, that’s the Klu Klux Klan, is allegedly meeting on his former property, property which is adjacent to land he currently rents.

He has locked the gate which adjoins the two properties, but to no avail. It seems that someone, cut the chain and continues to meet on the property. As of this writing, he has filed a report with the county sheriff, and hopes that someone will look into the civil rights and human rights issues in the case.

The presence of the Klan in the county is nothing new. Over the past several months a group of Klansmen from Michigan have upped the ante in the racial politics of southern Indiana and western Kentucky.

Several months ago, they papered an Owensboro neighborhood with “calling cards”. The neighborhood they chose to “visit” is home to a black state legislator. Not long after that, the Klan moved their action across the river to Indiana, and left their calling cards in Newburgh.

Although thousands of white farmers have lost their land in dubious dealings with the federal farm loan agency, tens of thousands of black farmers have also lost their land, in what remains a race-based theft of property—what some civil rights activists call low tech lynchings.

Despite the so-called Black Farmer Settlement generated by the Pigford case, black farmers continue to lose land at a rate much higher than the white family farmer who is also besieged by crooked land loan officers in and out of the federal government.

While the white family farm is besieged by federal farm loan bureaucrats, the system’s institutional racism retains a special pleasure for driving black farmers out of business. Black farmers face several delaying and financial sabotage tactics, including supervised loans which cause them to waste time running back and forth to FSA offices for signatures, delayed loans which arrive too late to finance planting, collusion between local FSA officials, bankers and realtors.

Both black and white farmers have been victimized by loan officers, who receive bonuses for literally driving them out of business. The same loan officer who “services” their loans is the same person who receives a bonus for fast tracking them into bankruptcy.

Farm activists, attorneys and civil rights protestors have said the practice is a major conflict of interest, but to no avail. FSA loan officials are still receiving bonuses and farmers are still being run out of business.

The Young family farm loan is one of the worse cases of loan abuse in the nation, according to several farm rights activists. Young has proof of payment, yet the government continues to assert that he made no payment on the loan in over 20 years.

At issue are loan records, conversations with FSA officials, and corruption in the agency—that is if you believe the hundreds of anecdotal records provided by farm activists and farmers from around the nation,

While the Klan meetings on the Young family’s ancestral farm are outrageous, even more outrageous are the actions, which continue to be business as usual in FSA offices around the nation. Collusion, criminal acts, fraud, even racketeering—farm activists say the list of illegal actions on part of federal farm loan agencies is legion.

Journalists around the country have been documenting the illegal actions of the agency for decades. A 1984 article in the Oklahoma Digest claims that the predecessor of FSA—Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) violated a court order and sold land despite being under a court order not to do so. According to the Digest, “[A] nation-wide (sic) class action suit filed in North Dakota followed class-action suits in a half-dozen other states and individual damage suits brought against FmHA in federal courts. Information released under the Freedom of Information Act shows since August 1981, 56 suits have been filed against FmHA by individuals for failing to carry out the law regarding moritoriums on farms.”

In another circa 1984 case, a farm woman was unable to run her family’s dairy farm after her husband allegedly disappeared. The Digest reports that “Sheila Surface could no longer run her dairy farm with her husband gone. He disappeared after turning information over to the FBI about suspected forgery and embezzlement by FmHA against borrowers…)”

FSA has been accused of illegally charging too much interest on farm loans in cases going back to 1984. The agency has also been accused of forging and altering loan documents in cases in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma and other states as well. Yet, despite more than 20 years worth of anecdotal and documented evidence, little or no action has been taken against the agency or its employees.

According to the 22 year old article from the Digest, FSA has illegally retained payments for milk, forcing farmers to sell cattle which were mortgaged to FSA. Then, in violation of credulity, the agency went after the farmers for “illegally selling mortgaged assets”.

And, if that wasn’t enough to add insult to injury, the agency’s employees allegedly have made illegal changes to loan agreements, long after the farmers signed those agreements. The Digest reporter notes that, “Attorneys and out-of-state FmHA officials who have examined the documents say the unauthorized changes constitute forgery to illegally foreclose on the [Surface family.]”

In a case which parallels the Young case in Kentucky, this 20 year old case seems to have all the earmarks of forgery, collusion, and even racketeering, all in living color. The reporter found numerous cases of fraud inside FmHA, including cases where federal farm loan employees refused to give borrowers print outs of their loan accounts, instances where federal employees illegally (against Fair Credit laws) provided information about borrowers to other creditors which, according to Sheila Surface’s 20 year old statement: “caused some suppliers not to extend us any more credit for fear that we were being foreclosed on and wouldn’t be able to pay future debts.”

Harry Young in Kentucky is one of hundreds of farmers who say they have been charged with loans they never applied for. They also say they have been denied access to their own loan records, and, even when some of their records “surfaced”, those records do not reflect the true status of their loan accounts.

Nationwide, these agencies have been operating without supervision, with little oversight and even less checks and balance from periodic audits. Even now, with more than 20 years of history of corruption in the system, many of FmHA’s successor offices in FSA have NEVER been audited.
While Mr. Young is outraged that the Klan is meeting on his ancestral land, he and others are more outraged at the fact that the land was sold over a bogus loan, and even when he tried to pay the phony loan and retain his land, he was not allowed to do so.

Why? Well, one reason could be the coal reserves on the land which are valued at as much as $750,000,000.

Now, how could the federal government foreclose on $750,000,000 worth of assets and sell those assets for a measly half a million dollars? That’s what Harry Young is still trying to find out. As of this writing, FSA refuses to provide documentation as to whether Young’s mineral rights were severed from foreclosure action.

So far, no one will answer his question.