Article: Press Release: Black farmer getting runaround on protest permission

Harry Young, an 80 year old black farmer from Owensboro, Kentucky lost his land in an allegedly illegal farm auction by the Farm Services Agency in 2005. The land has coal reserves valued as high as $750,000,000 and was sold for less than a million dollars. Young is waging a legal campaign to reclaim his land, and is organizing an informational picket to coincide with a farm conference November 15, 2007 on the Kentucky State University campus in Frankfort, Kentucky.

Mr. Young is attempting to publicize his plight by exercising his free speech and assembly rights, but he is getting the runaround from various state and university officials. After contacting the governor's office and being referred to various functionaries, including the campus police at KSU, Young claims authorities are trying to shut him up and shut him out.

Campus cops told him he could only protest in the football field which negates his Constitutional Right to Free Speech and Assembly because it is quite a distance away from the conference site. Farmers and civil rights supporters from around the nation are outraged and many have voiced support.

Mr. Young's rented fields have reportedly been the scene of racist meetings by white supremacists, who allegedly cut a lock and yanked a steel gatepost out of the ground after Young secured the gate with a lock and chain.
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Young has filed several actions in federal court including: a class action lawsuit, an appeal with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, and a complaint against the federal judge in Owensboro.