Catfish Dream: Ed Scott's Fight for His Family Farm and Racial Justice in the Mississippi Delta (Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People, and Place Ser.) by Julian Rankin

Catfish Dream: Ed Scott's Fight for His Family Farm and Racial Justice in the Mississippi Delta (Southern Foodways Alliance Studies in Culture, People, and Place Ser.) by Julian Rankin

Author:Julian Rankin [Rankin, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2018-07-09T23:00:00+00:00


30 NEW CHEVROLET

FmHA funded Scott for the first time in January 1978. Vance Nimrod, a white man who worked with Delta Foundation, helped walk Scott through the process. (Delta Foundation aimed to revitalize rural economies and build human capital in disenfranchised minority communities.) On a Thursday morning, Scott met Nimrod by his truck in the parking lot of the FmHA office building in Greenwood. It was a nondescript structure, four brick walls and a roof and little else. It could have housed a small-town dentist’s office.

A man greeted Scott and Nimrod inside the door, led them to a table, and left. Another man arrived and sat down across the table. His name was Delbert Edwards, and he was the Leflore County FmHA supervisor. Scott and Nimrod took turns talking, going over the numbers in the loan application. Scott had figured the expenses he’d need for a profitable year of rice and soybeans. Edwards made notes. When he spoke, he talked to Nimrod. In the end, the three men stood up and shook hands. Scott walked out of the office with every penny he’d asked for. That man didn’t even make us sign anything, Scott thought. The other farmers were right. It is easier to get your money from the government.

Scott returned to FmHA the next year. This time he came to the office without Nimrod. Instead, he brought Isaac. Father and son sat down with Edwards at the very same table. Edwards pulled the file from the previous year. He opened it up and laid it out. But Edwards didn’t say anything right away. He sat still, waiting. A few long seconds passed as the men looked at each other. As Scott remembered it, Edwards finally asked them, “Where’s that other person?”

“What other person you talking about?” said Scott.

“I’m talking about that white man. Where’s he?”

“He wasn’t part of us,” said Scott. “He was just with us to help us get our money.”

Edwards looked surprised. His dropped his pen and it bounced on the table. “He wasn’t part of y’all,” Scott heard Edwards say softly.

Edwards picked up his pen. With it, he began marking through the figures on Scott’s loan application.

During the middle of the meeting, the office broke for lunch. Out in the parking lot, the Scotts got into the truck to go grab a bite to eat. As Scott climbed inside the family Chevrolet—always a Chevy—Edwards spoke to him from a few parking spots away. Isaac recalled him saying, “Ed, that a new truck?”

“Yeah,” said Scott, leaning his head out of the window.

“Who told you to buy a new truck? Nobody told you to buy no new truck.”

“You don’t have to tell me to buy a new truck,” Scott said, driving off. “I know how to spend my own money.”

FmHA officers were not micromanagers by rule. In general, a farmer had the leeway to purchase equipment, feed, irrigation pipes, batteries, work gloves, or groceries as he saw fit. If the farmer was white, it seemed, the agency trusted his financial judgment.



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