The White House Is Full Of Cowards

(CNN) -- Shirley Sherrod, a former USDA employee who resigned after a controversial video surfaced, told CNN Tuesday that the administration, who pressured her to step down, "wasn't interested in hearing the truth."


Sherrod said she was asked to resign because "you're going to be on Glenn Beck tonight."

An NAACP statement applauding her resignation after the release of the video clip "hurts," former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod said Tuesday.

"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. They need to learn something about me. They need to know what I've contributed over the years."

The clip showed her talking about a white farmer said Tuesday her remarks were taken out of context.

Sherrod, the department's former state director of rural development for Georgia, told CNN on Tuesday the incident she discusses in the clip took place more than two decades ago, and she recounted it to an audience to make the point that people should move beyond race.

"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," Sherrod said on CNN's "American Morning" from her home in Albany, Georgia. The incident took place in 1986, while she worked for a nonprofit and before she joined the Agriculture Department, she said.

"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 resigned Monday after conservative media outlets aired the video, in which she says she did not give the white farmer "the full force of what I could do" to help him avoid foreclosure.

A Georgia woman who said she believes her husband is the white farmer referenced in the clip told CNN on Tuesday that Sherrod was helpful to her family and that the couple never felt she was being racist while trying to assist them in avoiding foreclosure.


"She treated us really good and got us all we could," said Eloise Spooner of Iron City, Georgia. Spooner said she remembered that Sherrod helped find an attorney to help her husband, Roger.


She said she doesn't believe Sherrod is being treated fairly.

Conservative website publisher Andrew Breitbart originally posted the video, which was quickly picked up by Fox News. The video claims Sherrod's remarks were delivered March 27 to an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet, but it is not clear that is the case, nor is it clear where the event was held or how many people were in attendance.

The poor-quality video shows Sherrod telling her audience that the farmer she was working with "took a long time ... trying to show me he was superior to me." As a result, she said, she "didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough."

To prove she had done her job, she said, she took him to 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.

Sherrod mentioned that the lawyer would help the farmer with a bankruptcy filing but did not say in the clip whether his farm was saved.

She told CNN that at the time, she was working with a nonprofit association aimed at assisting farmers in Georgia and the Southeast. In the end, she said, the lawyer did not help the farmer and she "had to frantically find a lawyer who would file a Chapter 11 to stop the foreclosure."

She said she, the farmer and his wife wound up being friends.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday he had accepted Sherrod's resignation.

"There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person," Vilsack said. "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."

Sherrod told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution there were white people, including a mayor, at the banquet where she spoke. "Why would I do something racist if they were there?"

The NAACP issued a statement late Monday backing Vilsack's decision.

"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," said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the civil rights group. "We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers."

"Her actions were shameful," Jealous continued. "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 Tuesday that it was "unfortunate that the NAACP would make a statement without even checking to see what happened. This was 24 years ago, and I'm telling a story to try to unite people."

CNN

Sheryl Cook for one and whomever put her up to the call to force Shirley Sherrod to resign are cowardly sacks of shit. Because the NAACP picked a pissing match with the Tea Party a woman who by all appearances has done the hell out of her job had to resign. And why? Because once again Andrew Breitbart gets away with doctoring a video because he knows Democrats and particularly those Democrats in the White House right now are pussies. Run from every fight. Scared of every debate. Constantly giving up their lunch money to the right wing bullies.

Oh and Ben Jealous you need to come out and apologize as well. Didn't even have the facts of the video correct but damn near tripped over yourself rushing to condemn somebody you made no effort to communicate with just to cover your ass because of that Tea Party resolution. And to think I actually took up for that effort. I should have known that because it made you vulnerable to the same racism charges by right wingers that you wouldn't hesitate to throw the first black person they went after under the damn bus.

Roland Martin is officially a joke now. This clown still won't even admit he was wrong. Fuck him too!

This shit is depressing enough to have me drinking before noon!