What happened to due process in the trashing of Shirley Sherrod?
by Ron Edwards
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 7/28/2010
Shirley Sherrod went from accused “racist” to recognized race healer and justice fighter in less than a week as condemnations gave way to profuse apologies, affecting journalism, race relations, and presidential understanding.
All this was due to a three-minute audio clip edited from a 33-minute speech that Shirley Sharrod, serving as U.S. Department of Agriculture director of rural programs for the State of Georgia, gave at the scholarship dinner of the Douglass County, Georgia, chapter of the NAACP. She delivered a simple message to the young recipients of the Excellent Achievement Award — move beyond race — using her motto “Let’s work together” to get beyond racial division, as the real issue is poverty, working yet poor.
She did so by giving testimony to her own journey to get beyond a Black-only race focus after her father’s murder by a White farmer when she was 17 (no charges were brought against the shooter), to involving all with the goal to work for change, recognizing the importance of working for a new South, a new direction, a new purpose, and new relationships for all.
Last week that humble and confessional inspirational speech was twisted by left and right media to make her a “racist,” callously abandoning due process and its inquiring search for truth. Shirley Sherrod was accused by Fox News and CNN, by conservative bloggers and Tea Partyers, as well as by the Department of Agriculture where she worked and by the White House, the NAACP, and the Congressional Black Caucus, of purposefully not fully helping a White farmer 24
years ago.
By the time the apologies came, the devil that defines others as “divisive” was again out of the bottle. The president was not served well by his staff. Even though the Fifth and 14th amendments of our Constitution guarantee “due process” and the “rule of law” to help guarantee the principles of “liberty” and “justice,” these were, at first, denied her.
They picked on a woman they did not know had spent 40 years fighting injustice. She joins the legacy circle of Mary McLeod Bethune, Marian Anderson, Rosa Parks, and Minnesota’s own beloved Nellie Stone Johnson.
Instead of offering her due process, U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Cook called her and ordered her to pull over to the side of the road (she was driving back to Albany, GA) and use her cell phone to text in her resignation.
All this due to a three-minute tape edited out of context from a 33-minute speech. No one called her or the farmers in the story to check.
Nor had they listened to the full speech, actually one of the most compelling and honest descriptions of the importance for Whites and Blacks coming together. In that speech the entire world hears Sherrod for who she really is, a tireless veteran of four decades fighting in the cause of civil rights.
In that March 2010 speech, she told her story of rising above the heartache of being made fatherless at 17 and of her mother left as a widow to raise five young girls and an infant baby boy. She told of the extraordinary strength of her beloved mother, who was later the first Black elected official in the history of Baker County, Georgia. She talked of the strength of her four sisters and her brother.
In that March 2010 speech she talked about her transformation after her father’s murder and of her experience in 1986 involving a White farmer named Roger Spooner and his wife. Her efforts helped save the Spooner’s 3,000-acre farm.
The TV interviewers finally showed up to ask questions of the White farmer’s widow and were surprised to find him very much alive, as both Mr. and Mrs. Spooner expressed their admiration and respect for and friendship with Shirley Sherrod. As the truth finally forced the “gotcha” journalists, left and right, to pull back, the world sees the real Shirley Sherrod: a 62-year-old African American woman who, for 40 years, has dedicated her life to the have nots, a woman committed to the working poor whether White or Black.
That poverty, she says, is the real issue — not race.
So first and foremost in this tragedy, Sherrod was denied due process. No one asked for and checked the facts. Secondly, her superiors denounced her and called for her termination. They sought to strip her of her job and, more tragically, sully her reputation, question her integrity, and dismiss her achievements just to score he-said-she-said political points.
Shirley Sherrod continues the legacy of women who neither bend nor break while defending civil rights. May her accusers show concern for today’s real problems: jobs, low wages, worker poverty, and sons and husbands dying in far-off wars as well as on our city streets.
May God bless Shirley Sherrod and her family, and may there be an honest examination of the rush-to-judgment denial of her due process.
Ron hosts “Black Focus” on Channel 17, MTN-TV, Sundays, 5-6 pm and co-hosts Blog Talk Radio’s “ON POINT!” Saturdays at 5 pm, providing coverage about Black Minnesota. Order his books at www.BeaconOn TheHill.com. Hear his readings and read his solution papers and “web log” at www.TheMinneap olisStory.com.
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