By The Editors

Black farmers’ years of litigation and political lobbying to try to right an egregious wrong endured another frustrating setback Thursday when the Senate once again refused to appropriate the funds necessary to settle their long-decided discrimination lawsuit against the federal government.

The Senate’s rejection of a Democratic-sponsored tax and spending bill, led by a unanimous Republican opposition, meant the postphonement of of $4.6 billion that was to be distributed among tens of thousands of black farmers who had endured years of discrimination practiced against them by the federal Department of Agriculture; and then years of struggle in the courts and the Congress.

The provision in the Senate bill also included funds for American Indians to settle a lawsuit prompted the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs mismanagement of more than 300,000 trust accounts.

For the farmers, the Senate action was all the more bitter because a compromise agreement reached in February with the Obama administration over the amount the farmers would receive seemed to have broken a lengthening stalemate of the matter.

Friday morning, a clearly dismayed Gary Grant, president of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, rhetorically asked on the NPR morning program, ‘The Takeaway,’ “what is it that black people in this country have to do in order to have fairness. We’ve been to the streets, to the legislature and to the courts; what is it that we can do?”

Then, he answered his question by saying, “We won’t give up. It will not be put to rest – that’s for sure.”