NACCP denounces wife of famed civil rights leader,
who says she was told to pull her car over and resign
By Kevin Hogencamp
Albany’s Shirley Sherrod woke up Monday as Georgia director of rural development of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a recent National Association of Colored Persons award winner.
She ended the day jobless because of discriminatory comments she made during her NAACP award acceptance speech in March.
“There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a written statement. “We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.”
The dramatic development was fueled by the investigative journalism of BigGovernment.com, which posted a video of Sherrod’s discriminatory remarks Monday morning. In the video, Sherrod shares with audience members how she deliberately withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy and instead directed him to get assistance from a white person because of the color of his skin. Sherrod is black.
The scenario played out days after NAACP lashed out at the Tea Party member, claiming many of its members are racist.
In the video, Sherrod, recounts “the first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm.” With some audience members laughing as she described how she determined his fate, Sherrod claimed the farmer took a long time trying to show he was “superior” to her.
“He had to come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him,” she said. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land — so I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.”
The Agriculture Department announced Monday that Sherrod had resigned. Late Monday, the NAACP condemned Sherrod’s admission of discrimination.
“We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers,” the statement said. “Her actions were shameful. While she went on to explain in the story that she ultimately realized her mistake, as well as the common predicament of working people of all races, she gave no indication she had attempted to right the wrong she had done to this man.”
Sherrod said in the video that she assumed the state or national Department of Agriculture had referred the white farmer to her. To ensure that the farmer could report back that she was indeed helpful, she said she took him to see “one of his own” — a white lawyer.
“I figured that if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him,” she said.
In a second clip from the same event posted on BigGovernment.com, Sherrod said black people should find work at the Department of Agriculture because of job security ensured by federal employment.
“There are jobs at USDA and many times there are no people of color to fill those jobs because we shy away from agriculture. We hear the word agriculture and think, why are we working in the fields?” she said. “You’ve heard of a lot of layoffs. Have you heard of anybody in the federal government losing their job? That’s all I need to say.”
On Tuesday, Sherrod told CNN that in her NAACP speech, she was recounting the story of a struggling white farmer who visited her in 1986, when Sherrod was working for a nonprofit group. She says she later developed a friendship with the farmer and his wife, who told CNN on Tuesday that Sherrod is being treated unfairly and should retain her position.
In the video clip, as Sherrod descibes denying aid to the white farmer, she explains that she ultimately realized her mistake. But the video clip does not include any indication that she rectified the situation.
“I was speaking to that group, like I’ve done many groups, and I tell them about a time when I thought the issue was race and race only,” she told CNN. “I was telling the story of how working with him helped me to see the issue is not about race. It’s about those who have versus those who do not have.”
Sherrod told CNN that the white lawyer did not help the farmer and she “had to frantically find a lawyer who would file a Chapter 11 to stop the foreclosure. But a woman who said she believes her husband is the farmer referenced in the video clip told CNN on Tuesday that Sherrod was helpful to her family and certainly not racist as she helped them try to avoid foreclosure.
“She treated us really good and got us all we could,” said Eloise Spooner of Iron City.
Sherrod also told CNN that Agriculture Department officials, including Cheryl Cook, the department’s undersecretary, admonished her to pull over to the side of the road and quit her post during a long car ride Monday. She says White Hosue officials wanted her to quit immediately because the flap was “going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”
“They asked me to resign, and, in fact, they harassed me as I was driving back to the state office from West Point, Ga., yesterday,” Sherrod told CNN. “I had at least three calls telling me the White House wanted me to resign … and the last one asked me to pull over to the side of the road and do it.”
Sherrod also told CNN that she is the NAACP reached its conclusions without fact-checking.
“That hurts, because if you look at my history … I’ve done more to advance the causes of civil rights in this area than some of them who are sitting in those positions now in the NAACP,” Sherrod said. “They need to learn something about me. They need to know what I’ve contributed over the years.”
In response to Sherrod’s claims, a senior administration official stold CNN that Sherrod had to resign not because of what she did in 1986, but for how she told her story in March.
The video clip was first posted by BigGovernment.com. The clip is dated March 27 from an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet. Last week, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement. The organization’s delegates called on Tea Party leaders to “repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.” Tea Party members and supporters saw the resolution as a condemnation of the group itself, which calls for fiscal responsibility and restrictions on governmental power, and backs political candidates who claim the same.
In its statement, the NAACP said, “We concur with US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack in accepting the resignation of Shirley Sherrod for her remarks at a local NAACP Freedom Fund banquet.”
“Since our founding in 1909, the NAACP has been a multi-racial, multi-faith organization that – while generally rooted in African American communities – fights to end racial discrimination against all Americans,” the organization said. “Racism is about the abuse of power. Sherrod had it in her position at USDA. According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race.”
“The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing,” the statement also said. “We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action. We thank those who brought this to our national office’s attention, as there are hundreds of local fundraising dinners each year.
“Sherrod’s behavior is even more intolerable in light of the US Department of Agriculture’s well documented history of denying opportunities to African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American farmers, as well as female farmers of all races. Currently, justice for many of these farmers is being held up by Congress. We would hope all who share our outrage at Sherrod’s statements would join us in pushing for these cases to be remedied. The NAACP will continue to advance the ideals of America and fight for freedom, justice and fairness for all Americans.”
BigGovernment.com’s Andrew Breitbart said after the NAACP resolution was passed that the racism controversy was ”absolutely manufactured for political gain,” in a summer “in which the economy is the number one issue affecting blacks and whites in this country.”
“This country can ill afford the schism of race to be exploited the way [he is] based upon the false premise of the Tea Party being racist.”
He also claimed at the time to possess recorded evidence of racism from the NAACP.
Sherrod was appointed state director for Rural Development by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on July 25, 2009. Days earlier, she learned that New Communities, a group she founded with her husband, Charles, and other families, won a $13 million settlement in the minority farmers lawsuit Pigford vs. Vilsack. The cash award acknowledged racial discrimination on the part of the Agriculture Department from 1981-85. In addition to the awards for black farmers, Shirley and Charles Sherrod each were awarded $150,000 for pain and suffering.
“We have wonderful news regarding the case of New Communities Inc., the land trust that Shirley and Charles Sherrod established, with other black farm families in the 1960s,” New Communities announced at the time. “At the time, with holdings of almost 6,000 acres, this was the largest tract of black-owned land in the country. Now with a cash award of historic proportions, the group will be able to begin again.
Charles Sherrod was a key civil rights leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) whose leadership led to the Albany movement. In October 1961, Charles Sherrod became the first field secretary and SNCC director of southwest Georgia. He and Cordell Reagon opened an SNCC office near the all-black Albany State College, now Albany State University, and on Nov. 1 they launched a student sit-in at the bus terminal station to test the recently enacted law desegregating bus and train terminals.
When local law enforcement officials blocked the demonstrators, the single protest became the two-year Albany campaign. It eventually led to multiple protests by thousands of students as well as the involvement of Dr. Martin Luther King, a public plea from President John F. Kennedy to city officials, and resolution of the issue by local black leaders to resolve the issue. Ultimately the civil rights activists organized by Sherrod would prevail.
