Worldwide Moment of Prayer for Black Farmers and Land Theft Victims

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Eddie Slaughter
Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association
229-649-2243


(Owensboro, KY) 3/13/10
Rev. Michael Chilton, senior Pastor, New Hope Worship Center, Owensboro Kentucky and Eddie Slaughter, the national vice-president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturists Association invite your church to participate in a National Prayer Moment for Black Farmers and Disadvantaged Landowners. We ask that churches spread the word about this national event. Your church is asked to participate in this simultaneous prayer moment Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 6 PM your local time.

Rev. Chilton’s church stands on land donated in the late 1880s by Charlie Madison Wilhite, a black farmer who cleared 100 acres of land in the 1870s. Wilhite purchased land in 1874 and paid off in 1876. He died March 16, 1889 in Boonville, IN and his heirs were cheated out of part of the land by land-grabbing whites. The family never received a dime for the stolen land.

Eddie Slaughter, national vice-president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturists has been active in land rights for decades. He has participated in several protests and sit downs. In 2000, Slaughter was arrested after he and a group of farmers tried to enter the USDA building in Washington, DC, following a protest.

Slaughter told reporters, “I’m sitting here in the Washington, D.C. jail and I’m trying to really comprehend what is going on. But all America means to me is jail, because as a black farmer when people do me an injustice they don’t go to jail but when I try to get justice I wind up in jail.”

A decade later, disadvantaged farmers are still seeking justice. Prayer moves mountains. Please spread the word. Around the nation, black and disadvantaged landowners are being cheated out of their land, abused in the nation’s court system.