Federal discrimination, not just terror, excluded black farmers from land and credit.

Evidence

While black land loss can be partially explained by lynching, it was also the result of plain old antiblack discrimination by the federal government, which denied black farmers access to the Homestead Act. Meanwhile the USDA failed to provide access to credit for black farmers on the same terms as their white peers, leading to the staggering statistic that black people make up less than 2 percent of all farmers. But it gets worse. Governmental discrimination against black farmers is not behind us. In 2021 the Government Accountability Office found that black and minority farmers have less access to credit than do white farmers. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 444

Categorization

• XREF: The 2021 GAO finding that discrimination persists connects to the saturated-system argument that past harm continues in present institutions.