Shirley Sherrod Popular Books

Shirley Sherrod Biography & Facts

On July 19, 2010, Shirley Sherrod was fired from her appointed position as Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture. Her firing was an administration reaction to media reports on video excerpts from her address to an event of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in March 2010 and commentary posted by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart on his website. Based on these excerpts, the NAACP condemned Sherrod's remarks as racist and US government officials called on the official to resign. However, review of her full speech showed that the excerpts had been selectively edited, and that her remarks – understood in context – were about the importance of overcoming personal prejudices. The NAACP and White House officials then apologized for their earlier criticisms, and United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack apologized for the firing and offered Sherrod a new position. Extensive media coverage of the excerpted videos, various parties' comments, and later corrections after the full story was discovered, exacerbated the affair. The event brought to the forefront current debates regarding racism in the United States, cable news reporting, ideological websites on the internet, and decisions made by President Barack Obama's administration. The Obama administration apologized to Sherrod, and offered her a full-time, high-level internal advocacy position with the Department of Agriculture, which she ultimately declined. In 2011, Sherrod filed suit against Breitbart and co-defendant Larry O'Connor for defamation. In 2015, following lengthy pretrial proceedings, Breitbart's death, and efforts by Breitbart's estate to have the suit dismissed which were rejected, the parties settled the suit on undisclosed terms. Before media coverage of videos Shirley Sherrod aware of videos on July 14 When Shirley Sherrod addressed the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund on August 21, 2010, she said she had been aware of the videos on July 14, 2010, five days before they were posted on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment website. Sherrod says that she immediately notified the USDA about the videos, saying that they did not convey the entire or accurate story. She heard nothing from the USDA until Monday, July 19, 2010, when she was put on administrative leave and then asked to resign. Released White House emails show the Obama administration was aware of the situation, but there was no evidence that the dismissal of Sherrod was under orders of the White House. Excerpted video On July 19, 2010, two different video clips were posted by the conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart to his BigGovernment website, along with a nearly 1,000-word blog post in which he accused the mainstream media and the NAACP of falsely labeling the Tea Party as racist. The first video showed Sherrod describing an experience of working with a white man seeking help to save his farm. She struggled with helping him at a time when many black people were losing their land. In the excerpt, she says "So, I didn't give him the full force of what I could do." She took him to a white lawyer, telling the audience that —"his own kind would take care of him." Subsequently, the posted video was shown to be a selected excerpt of broader comments that conveyed a very different meaning, in which Sherrod learned from her experience, and realized it was about the “haves and have nots” and not white versus black. She then worked diligently to help the man save his farm. The excerpts posted by Breitbart ran for 2 minutes, 38 seconds in total, while the full video was 43 minutes 15 seconds long. Breitbart said he did not edit the video excerpt which he released and did not have a copy of the entire speech. The full video was produced by a Douglas, Georgia, company that filmed the banquet for the local Georgia chapter of the NAACP. The owner of the video company, Johnny Wilkerson, said on July 20 that he was sending the full video to the national NAACP and would post it in full once he got permission to do so. Breitbart's source for the excerpt remained confidential as of July 2010. Controversy timeline Much of the controversy related to the incident involved which parties took which actions and when. Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog organization, compiled an extensive timeline of the affair. Greg Pollowitz of National Review Online, a conservative publication, said that the Media Matters timeline was "as good as any I’ve seen." Initial media reports The first news outlet to report on the Breitbart video was FoxNews.com, which posted an article about the story on its website. The New York City affiliate for CBS posted a report on its website later that afternoon. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website soon picked up the story. In addition, the story was picked up and reported widely in the blogosphere. Resignation of Sherrod Sherrod later said that on the afternoon of July 19, she received numerous demands from government officials to submit her resignation, demands which she characterized as harassment. In response to a call from USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook, Sherrod submitted her resignation via email that same day. Sherrod said that Cook told her White House officials wanted her to quit immediately because the controversy was "going to be on Glenn Beck tonight", which was disputed by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Official comments about Sherrod That same evening, the President of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, posted a tweet saying that his organization was "appalled" by Sherrod's comments. The following day, the USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement explaining his agency's actions and suggested that Sherrod's statements as shown damaged her effectiveness at a time when USDA was working to improve its previous civil rights abuses. Initial broadcast of Breitbart video The Breitbart video was first broadcast that evening on The O'Reilly Factor, a talk show on the Fox News Channel; host Bill O'Reilly said Sherrod should resign. At the time of the taping of the show, news of Sherrod's resignation had not yet been reported, nor had the NAACP yet released the full video. But, the program was not broadcast until after Sherrod resigned and O'Reilly's staff had confirmed that fact with the USDA. Dana Loesch, an organizer for the Tea Party in Saint Louis, Missouri, mentioned the video in an appearance on Larry King Live; it was also shown on Anderson Cooper 360 (both on CNN). It was discussed on Hannity and On The Record with Greta Van Susteren (both on Fox) as well, but notably not on Glenn Beck. Sherrod's account In the full video, Sherrod related her experience in 1986 with the first white farmer to come to her for help. (On July 20 CNN received a telephone call from the farmer's wife and learned his name was Roger Spooner.) Sherrod said that his land was being sold, and "had in f.... Discover the Shirley Sherrod popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Shirley Sherrod books.