CHARLOTTE, N.C. - The head of the National Black Farmers Association is threatening to call for a boycott of the new Wachovia Corp, which would be formed next month by First Union Corp.'s purchase of Wachovia.
John W. Boyd, the president of the Heathsville, Va.-based group, said Monday that the two banking companies rejected his proposal to create a new loan fund for minority and low-income residents in the Southeast.
Last week Mr. Boyd wrote to the Federal Reserve Board asking that it reconsider its approval of the deal.
"We have 66,000 members across the country," he said in an interview Tuesday. "We're going to ask them if they have loans with these banks to start refinancing them, and to pull their funds out of the banks until they show us that they have a commitment to lending money to African-American farmers."
Mr. Boyd led a series of protests against the First Union-Wachovia deal this summer, including one outside the Aug. 3 Wachovia shareholder meeting where the merger was approved.
Community development executives from Wachovia and First Union met Monday with Mr. Boyd and two colleagues in Charlotte. A First Union spokeswoman said the companies have offered the group a grant that could be used to set up a special loan fund and have discussed increasing lending to minority farmer through existing funds.
