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Two black Kansas farmers have filed separate lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, seeking $40 million as compensation for alleged racial discrimination by the agency that threatens to force them from their land. The lawsuits - filed Monday in Washington, D.C., - are the latest in more than a dozen similar individual lawsuits filed since January by civil rights attorney James Myart Jr. on behalf of black farmers across the nation. "What has not changed is the Department of Agriculture. It is still the last plantation," Myart said. Rodney Bradshaw, a fifth-generation farmer who grows wheat and milo and raises cattle on 3,700 acres near Jetmore, is seeking $19.8 million in damages and a court order keeping the government from foreclosing on his land. "What needs to happen is that USDA simply needs to go back and honor their agreements," Bradshaw said. [more

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