Pigford v. Glickman

Timothy Pigford was a North Carolina farmer whose 1997 lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture became the named case in one of the largest civil rights settlements in American history, Pigford v. Glickman. He died on August 23, 2026, at the age of 74, according to reports of his death; no cause of death has been made public.

Pigford farmed in Cumberland County, North Carolina, growing soybeans and corn, before he took on the federal government. <cite index="5-1">In 1997, Timothy Pigford, a soybean and corn producer from North Carolina, sued the United States Department of Agriculture</cite>, alleging that USDA county committees had systematically denied Black farmers loans, disaster payments and other assistance that white farmers routinely received, or delayed and undercut that assistance until it was too late to matter. <cite index="1-1">The class action he filed accused federal farm programs of systematically discriminating against Black farmers by denying loans, loan-servicing and benefits, or by setting unfair terms on Black farmers' loans</cite>. Dan Glickman, then the Secretary of Agriculture, was named as the defendant in his official capacity, giving the case its title.

What began as one man's complaint grew into a class of hundreds and eventually tens of thousands of Black farmers who had endured decades of discriminatory treatment by USDA county offices across the South. The case was settled by consent decree on April 14, 1999, approved by Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and led to close to a billion dollars being paid or credited to farmers under a two track claims process. It was, at the time, reported to be the largest civil rights settlement the federal government had ever agreed to, though the process was later criticized for excluding tens of thousands of farmers whose claims were filed late because of what courts found were inadequate notice and mismanagement, a problem Congress tried to remedy in 2010 with a second settlement, Pigford II.

Pigford's own path through the case he started was not smooth. <cite index="4-1">He fired his attorney at one point but retained his claim</cite>, and years after the settlement he continued to face financial hardship. <cite index="3-1">He was later described as a struggling Black tenant farmer who had won the largest civil rights settlement in history but remained out of work and nearly broke</cite>, a situation he attributed in part to a prolonged dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over the settlement money.

News of his death drew tributes from farm justice advocates and civil rights organizations who credited him with forcing the federal government to publicly acknowledge decades of racial discrimination against Black farmers, even as many noted that the settlement he won never fully repaired the land loss and generational wealth that discrimination had cost Black farming families. Details of his death, including the specific cause, place, and funeral arrangements, had not been made public as of this writing.