Groundsite Image Gallery
That's Not Right
Artist: Jost, Lora
Date: 1999
Medium: mixed-media with dirt
Height: 0.000"
Width: 0.000"
Keywords: justice
I spent several hours with Ken at his home in Effingham, Kansas. Ken is an African-American farmer, and he is now part of a class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for discrimination because he—like many black farmers—was denied farm loans from the government when their white counterparts received them. I tried to represent this discrimination as a subtle form of violence, where the white hands are squeezing the wrists of the black farmer’s hands. The quote in this piece is taken directly from an incident that Ken told me about where his eighty-four year old father was denied a bank loan for five thousand dollars from a bank he’d been going to for fifty years. Complete quote (within artwork) by Ken Wallingford, Farmer, Effingham, KS 12/6/99: “Dad had been to that bank fifty years, he had a hundred and sixty acres paid for. He wasn’t in debt any other than this—it probably would have been five thousand dollars. But they wouldn’t—he had already had two borrowed, he wanted to borrow another three to take care of this chemical bill, and stop the eighteen percent interest. They wouldn’t loan him the money. They said, well, we think maybe your dad probably isn’t aware of what’s going on. Well, dad was old, he was eighty-four, or so, but he knew what was going on... And they wouldn’t loan him the five thousand. So—at that year at harvest time, when we get harvest, well, we paid the bank off. That very day dad cried right there at the bank in front of me. Well, see, that’s—that’s—that’s not right... That’s not right. You know he didn’t owe no money. Five thousand dollars that he was trying to get? He actually owed two and was trying to get another three? And—and a hundred-sixty acres of land paid for? And some machinery paid for? I mean, what could they lose?”