Editorial: Struggling Black farmers finally getting the financial relief they deserve

In their heyday, nearly 1 million Black farmers in America tended crops and raised livestock with ownership of total farmland peaking at 14% a century ago. The story is vastly different today, and farming as a strong livelihood for African Americans is now a distant memory. The same land enslaved people from Africa were forced to work to the benefit of a generation of wealthy white landowners is now out of reach for most Black families, thanks to decades of systemic racism and discriminatory practices by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and others.