Bernard Bates News Today

The Caddo Parish Coroner's Office have released the names of 3 homicide victims.

The Caddo Parish Coroner's Office have released the names of 3 homicide victims.

For decades, Black farmers have been excluded from federal farm programs — a systematic pattern of discrimination that the U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledged decades ago. Yet proposals to compensate farmers for past wrongs have languished in controversy and red tape. Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro begins his report in northwest Kansas for our ongoing series, "Race Matters."

Black people own just 2 percent of farmland in the United States. A decades-long history of loan denials at the USDA is a major reason why.

Kansas News Service Bernard Bates holds a notebook of documents from the lawsuits hes been a part of while trying to get his farmland back. The federal government plans to send payments to Black farmers this summer to compensate for loans and aid they lost out on during generations of discrimination. In Nicodemus, Kansas, farmers say the help has come too late. NICODEMUS, Kansas — At his home in northwest Kansas, Bernard Bates thumbs through a stack of faded color photographs nearly 40 year...