His case gained new life during the Clinton years. Rosalind Gray, the USDA's civil rights chief for part of the Clinton administration, says she found clear evidence that Haynie had been discriminated against when he was denied loans. Gray, now a legal consultant who still works on farm issues, recommended a settlement for Haynie. But the USDA general counsel's office refused. "They didn't think it was discrimination," says Gray, who still doesn't understand why. She helped win approval for a $340,000 settlement for P.J. Haynie after he complained about the same kind of loan discrimination as his father in a separate lawsuit.
Because there was no new government loan money, the Haynie family fortunes took a severe downturn in the 1980s. Ricky started his trucking business to earn extra money.
Ricky Haynie's home overlooks the fields where his ancestors once worked as slaves.
(Roland L. Freeman)
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"We were managing, with my salary," recalls Judith, a high school science teacher. "We basically lived off of my salary. All of our resources went into farming."
She felt increasingly torn between her husband's land dreams and the racial animosity that seemed to be aimed at them. She wondered at what price her husband was continuing to farm. "I can't say I really knew and understood his love of farming," Judith says.
Her anxieties grew worse after the sudden death of their fourth child. On September 16, 1983, Judith had given birth to a son, Harvey, named after Ricky's grandfather. The farmer in Ricky had been hoping for another boy. Then, in the middle of the night on November 24, Ricky went to check on the baby. "I picked him up, and he wasn't responding," Haynie says. A doctor was quickly summoned, but the baby, just 2 months old, was dead.
The farmer shooed the undertaker away and drove his dead son to Richmond himself for the autopsy. The cause of death: sudden infant death syndrome.
Judith never really got over losing Harvey. Then the phone calls started coming. She would be sitting at home, in the quiet of an evening, her husband in the fields. The phone would ring. She'd pick it up and say hello, but the person on the other end of the line wouldn't speak. She was unnerved by the calls but didn't want to bother Ricky.
In 1986, pregnant for the sixth time, a feeling of desperation began to set in, she says. She feared losing another child. She feared staying on the farm.
One day that summer, Ricky was coming home, up the gravel road to his plantation. Had it on his mind he was going to buy himself a granary. Things would change, fortunes would get better, he just knew. He was determined to ignore all the gossip -- coming from whites and some blacks, he imagined as well -- that Ricky Haynie was uppity, was suffering a downfall because he had tried to lease up the whole damn county. He got halfway up the driveway that day and saw a U-Haul truck pulled up to the door. "I remember thinking: 'Awww, no, what has Judith bought now! She knows money is tight.' "
His three girls, clutching doll babies, and P.J were sobbing. Judith and the kids were leaving Ricky. She had never forgotten the bullet holes, the fires and, finally, the strange phone calls. Worries about her pregnancy overwhelmed her. The whole farm had simply started to spook her.
Ricky raised his arms to hug her, hold her back, but he couldn't stop her -- she was going. Land was land -- dirt and history; children were flesh and bone -- life.
"Judy said to me, 'I'm not going to risk losing another child behind this farm.' " He watched the U-Haul pull away, his children twisting in their seats to look back at him.
"When I went into the house that night," he says, "it felt like I went into a tomb -- with the door closing behind me."
RICKY HAYNIE'S CELL PHONE RINGS. It disappears into his big farmer's hands like a hurt bird. "Going to see Reverend Jones tomorrow," he says, clicking shut the phone. "A great man. You should come. Lives over in Gloucester. 'Bout to lose his farm, though."
The next morning he's up, as always, before the sun. Gulping down breakfast, shirttail hanging out, hat on at a raffish angle. He checks in on his workers. One didn't show, so a six-man field crew has to get by with five workers today.
"You know that song by Beyonce, 'I'm a Survivor'? Well, that's what I am," Haynie says, "a survivor." Then he's off, riding down two-lane roads to Gloucester, 50 miles away, to visit Nathaniel Jones, an elderly black farmer.
There are newspapers three months old in his pickup. Never enough time to read, always another field to check. Ricky Haynie will ride through Virginia and scan fields the way parents scan crowds looking for their children.
"I used to farm up here," he says, passing through Kilmarnock. He'll say the same thing later, while passing through Irvington. He farmed in five counties at the height of his career.
Jones lives at the end of Arkansas Farm Road, which Haynie's pickup is creeping down. "You know how you look at people and have your heroes?" he asks, before reaching the farmhouse. "Well, this guy is my hero. He's a survivor. He didn't just say, 'Take my property, and I'm gonna lay down and die.' "
Jones is seated at the dining room table. He is wearing suspenders, and they hitch his pants up chest-high. His watch is wrapped around the cuff of his shirt.
"My daddy was born a slave," the old farmer says, his voice a deep rasp.
"I'm 96," he says.
"No you're not!" comes a voice from a backroom. "You're 98."
It's his wife, Geneva.
"That's right, 98," he agrees.
She's coming into view, holding onto walls, guiding herself with her hands and by her husband's voice. Geneva Jones is blind.
"This is my second wife," he says. "The other wife passed 20 years ago. Can't get along without a woman." Jones also has a son and goes to visit him when he can. The son lives in a nursing home.
He has been farming most of his life. "Sometimes," Jones says, "I feel sorry I didn't take another course in life other than farming. Maybe I should have taught school. But I had land, and I had tractors. And you know something, sometimes it's just a pleasure listening to the tractor run down the field."
Even at 98, he still wants to farm. "Got some weeds out there I need to burn," Jones says. "I'm afraid of fire, though. I do plan to plant some sweet potatoes. I had some collard greens last year. I plan to put a few in this fall." But these are words from a man's heart and not his head. It has been years since Jones has been able to make decent money from farming.
He is among the 94,000 black farmers who sought compensation from the USDA after the class-action lawsuit was settled in 1999. Under the terms of the settlement, many black farmers were entitled to at least $50,000. So far, however, the USDA has rejected almost 90 percent of their claims, according to the Environmental Working Group study. Most farmers were turned away because they were misinformed about the filing deadline. Others were denied damages because they lacked enough documentation of their loan history , according to the group's report.
The Joneses say they still haven't heard whether they will receive a settlement that can help them pay off their farm-incurred debts. Until then, they eke by on Social Security.
"They're supposed to give me $50,000," Nathaniel Jones says. "That's what I'm looking for. If I can get that, I can keep going. Actually, I'm going to keep going anyhow. But I tell you, it's rough going."
