Shirley Sherrod interview: Fired USDA official describes her ordeal, blames Fox News

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SHIRLEY SHERROD (AP Photo/United States Department of Agriculture) As a black woman who is no stranger to racism, Shirley Sherrod became a civil rights activist after her father was murdered by a white farmer. Plus, she is married to Charles Sherrod, cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Ms. Sherrod was forced to resign as the Georgia Director of Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture after a heavily edited video of one of her speeches was posted on BigGovernment.com, the website of conservative blogger Andrew Bretibart. At a March 2010 NAACP function in Georgia, Sherrod described her experiences with a white farmer when she worked for a nonprofit rural farm aid group in 1986. Sherrod said the farmer, Roger Spooner, acted “superior,” and she debated about how much to help to give to him. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land,” she said. “I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do,” Sherrod added, initially providing him with only the minimum assistance necessary. But eventually, Sherrod said, Mr. Spooner’s situation made her realize that whites and blacks are struggling alike, and helping farmers was more “about the poor versus those who have” rather than about race. However, in the highly edited version that of the speech that went viral, Sherrod apparently admits that she racially discriminated against the white farmer. Her statement was taken out of context. And the administration was scared that Sherrod would appear on Glenn Beck. According to Sherrod, USDA Under Secretary Cheryl Cook harassed her, and demanded that she pull her car over and write her resignation on her blackberry. Now, that’s throwing someone under the bus. The Obama administration has since apologized to Sherrod for the incident, and offered her another job at the USDA, but the damage has been done.

From: The Huffington Post

Despite being fired by the Obama administration, condemned by the media and targeted with abusive phone calls, Shirley Sherrod still believes in America and the promise of a multiracial society living in harmony.

In an interview with Huffington Post, the former Agriculture Department official described her shock at landing in the middle of a media firestorm when her misconstrued remarks from an edited video clip led millions of Americans to believe that she had once discriminated against a white farmer. She also gave her thoughts on the new job offered her by USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, her phone call with President Obama, her refusal to appear on Fox News or to speak to Andrew Breitbart and her doubts that whites are the victims of black racism.

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