(CNN) — A black former Agriculture Department official who resigned under pressure after a video clip surfaced of her discussing a white farmer said Wednesday the agency’s decision to review her case is “bittersweet,” but said she isn’t sure she would accept her job back if it is offered.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said early Wednesday that he will review the case of Shirley Sherrod, who resigned Monday after the video clip first appeared on a conservative website and later on Fox News.
In the video, Sherrod, the former USDA director of rural development for Georgia, seems to tell an audience at an NAACP function in March that she did not do her utmost to help a white farmer avoid foreclosure.
However, Sherrod later said the clip only shows part of her comments, and that she tells the story of her experience — from nearly a quarter century ago when she was not a federal employee — to illustrate the importance of moving beyond race.
“I am, of course, willing and will conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts to ensure to the American people we are providing services in a fair and equitable manner,” Vilsack said in a statement.
The USDA’s decision is “bittersweet,” Sherrod told CNN’s “American Morning” on Wednesday.
“If they had just taken the time to — even without looking at the tape — to look at me, to look at what I’ve stood for, to look at what I’ve done since I’ve actually been at the department, I don’t think they would have been so quick to do what they did and so insistent,” she said. “… To now come back and say, ‘Well, we’re willing to look at this,’ it definitely is a little bittersweet.”
Video: ‘I worked for fairness’
Video: Farmer on Sherrod criticism
Video: NAACP pres. explains reaction
Video: Who asked Sherrod to resign?
At the department, Sherrod said, “I didn’t make a lot of noise. … I worked for fairness for everyone.”
Asked whether she would accept her job back if the USDA offered it, she said, “You know, I’m just not so sure at this point. I really wonder, in light of how I was treated over the last two days, just what that relationship would be like for the future. Can they move beyond this?”
In the video, Sherrod can be heard telling an audience at a March 27, 2010, appearance before a local chapter of the NAACP that she had not given a white farmer “the full force of what I could do” to help him save the family farm.
But later in the tape, in the portion not originally posted, Sherrod says, “working with (the farmer) made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who have not. They could be black. They could be white. They could be Hispanic.”
The video initially brought condemnation from the NAACP, which later retracted its statement and apologized to Sherrod after the context of the clip became clear. Also, the farmer and his wife Sherrod was discussing, Roger and Eloise Spooner, came forward Tuesday, saying they credited Sherrod with helping them save their farm and that she did not discriminate against them.
The NAACP, which initially called Sherrod’s statements “shameful,” said in a statement Tuesday that it was “snookered by Fox News” and conservative website publisher Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart originally posted the video, which was quickly picked up by Fox News.
“Having reviewed the full tape by Shirley Sherrod, who is the woman who was fired by the Department of Agriculture, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe that the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans,” the statement from NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said.
The organization had also urged Vilsack to reconsider Sherrod’s resignation from her post.
Sherrod said Wednesday she accepted the NAACP apology and is “ready to move on.”
Conservative media outlets tied the video to the NAACP’s recent resolution calling on the Tea Party movement to repudiate racist elements within it that have displayed such items as images of President Barack Obama with a bone through his nose and the White House with a lawn full of watermelons. The controversy has led one Tea Party umbrella group to oust another because of a blog posting by the second group’s leader.
Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams posted on his blog a faux letter from Jealous to President Abraham Lincoln in which Williams ridicules the organization’s use of “colored” in its historic name and uses multiple stereotypes to bolster his point. The National Tea Party Foundation expelled Williams’ organization from its coalition as a result.
Breitbart told CNN’s “John King USA” on Tuesday that releasing the video was “not about Shirley Sherrod.”
“This was about the NAACP attacking the Tea Party, and this is showing racism at an NAACP event,” he said. “I did not ask for Shirley Sherrod to be fired.”
Sherrod said Tuesday that she “went all out” to help the Spooners keep their farm in the 1986 incident, which occurred before she started working for USDA and was at the nonprofit Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund. She said she resigned after receiving four phone calls Monday telling her the White House wanted her to step down.
“They asked me to resign, and in fact they harassed me as I was driving back to the state office from West Point, Georgia, yesterday,” she said. The last call “asked me to pull to the side of the road and do it [resign],” she said.
However, Vilsack told CNN on Tuesday that he “didn’t speak to anyone at the White House. … I made this decision, it’s my decision. Nobody from the White House contacted me about this at all.”
A White House official also told CNN that “the White House did not pressure her or the USDA over the resignation. It was the secretary’s decision, as he has said.”
Obama was briefed on the situation after Vilsack decided to seek Sherrod’s resignation, according to a White House official, who said the president fully supports the decision.
“I don’t know what brought up the racist mess,” Roger Spooner told CNN’s “Rick’s List” on Tuesday. “They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me in my opinion.”
Spooner says Sherrod accompanied him and his wife to a lawyer in Americus, Georgia, who was able to help them file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which ultimately saved their farm.
“If it hadn’t been for her, we would’ve never known who to see or what to do,” he said. “She led us right to our success.”
Eloise Spooner remembered Sherrod as “nice-mannered, thoughtful, friendly; a good person.”
She said that when she saw the story of the tape and Sherrod’s resignation on television, “I said, ‘That ain’t right. They have not treated her right.’ “
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.
But that lawyer failed to help, she said Tuesday. “I did not discriminate against [the farmer]. And, in fact, I went all out to frantically look for a lawyer at the last minute because the first lawyer we went to was not doing anything to really help him. In fact, that (first) lawyer suggested they should just let the farm go.”
Sherrod, who was appointed to the USDA position in 2009, said she first heard of the possible controversy when someone e-mailed her Thursday to taunt her about her comments. She immediately forwarded the e-mail to the USDA so the agency would be aware. She was told that someone would look into it.
She said it wasn’t until Monday that she heard back, and by then, she was being asked for her resignation.
Asked if she felt she had an opportunity to explain, Sherrod said, “No, I didn’t. The administration, they were not interested in hearing the truth. No one wanted to hear the truth.”
Vilsack said Tuesday that the controversy, regardless of the context of her comments, “compromises the director’s ability to do her job.”
“This isn’t a situation where we are necessarily judgmental about the content of the statement, that’s not the issue here. I don’t believe this woman is a racist at all,” he said. “She’s a political appointee, and her job is basically to focus on job growth in Georgia, and I have deep concern about her ability to do her job without her judgments being second-guessed.”
Ralph Paige, executive director of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives Land Assistance Fund, told CNN on Tuesday that Sherrod had garnered only praise during her time there and there were never any claims of discrimination against her.
“I can’t praise Shirley enough,” he said. “She holds no malice in her heart.”
Vilsack said in a statement Monday he had accepted Sherrod’s resignation, noting a “zero tolerance” policy for discrimination at the USDA. “I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” he said.
The first statement that the NAACP issued late Monday backed 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,” Jealous said. “We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers.”
But Tuesday evening, the NAACP said in another statement, “(Sherrod) was sharing this account as part of a story of transformation and redemption. In the full video, Ms. Sherrod says she realized that the dislocation of farmers is about ‘haves and have nots.’ ‘It’s not just about black people, it’s about poor people,’ says Sherrod in the speech. ‘We have to get to the point where race exists but it doesn’t matter.’ “
Earlier Tuesday, Sherrod called the NAACP “the reason why this happened. They got into a fight with the Tea Party, and all of this came out as a result of that.”
“When you spend your life helping others and see people try to turn that around to try to make it look like you’re a racist when that’s not been what your life has been about — that doesn’t feel good,” she said.
Sherrod and her family were part of a lawsuit filed in 1997 against the Agriculture Department that charged it discriminated against black farmers by denying them timely loans or debt restructuring. Complaints of discrimination began piling up after the Reagan administration shut down the department’s civil rights division in 1983, and the lawsuit covered the years between 1983 and 1997.
A district court judge eventually combined two such lawsuits into a class action, and the two sides reached a settlement in 1999. The agreement gave each plaintiff $50,000 plus loan forgiveness and tax offsets, provided the plaintiff met certain criteria (Track A), or the possibility of a larger amount by showing evidence of greater damages (Track B).
More than 22,000 farmers applied — far more than the 2,000 expected — and more than 13,000 were approved for the $50,000 award. Fewer than 200 farmers opted for the Track B process.
Sherrod and her husband were part of the lawsuit because of the land trust they started in the 1960s along with several other black families. Ultimately, their land trust — New Communities — was awarded $13 million, mostly for loss of land and loss of income and including $300,000 for the Sherrods, according to the Rural Development Leadership Network.
Vilsack, who is now the defendant in the lawsuit — Pigford vs. Vilsack — as final details are worked out, referred to the discrimination lawsuit and other similar suits in a statement announcing that he had accepted Sherrod’s resignation.
“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,” Vilsack said.
Vilsack to review ouster of USDA official
