This is a very revealing discussion between Lawrence O'Donnell standing in for Keith Olbermann, and Washington Post reporter Eugene Robinson, regarding the Shirley Sherrod incident and the many aspects of it.
Sherrod discusses what happened and what she's thinking about doing, including suing Breitbart for defamation. She surely has a case to do so. Sherrod also takes to task the white house and the democrats being afraid of Fox and the right wing to the extent that they are quick to throw their own under the bus for short term political gain, only to not even have that forthcoming at the end.
In Sherrod, Fox and the right wing may have bitten off more than they can chew when they chose to pick on her. She’s smart, educated and tough. She has first hand knowledge of the tactics of the far right when it comes to “race.” To wit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-ho... Her husband is Charles Sherrod, civil rights veteran:
“Charles Sherrod (born in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1937) was a key member and organizer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. He became the first SNCC field secretary and SNCC director of southwest Georgia. His leadership there led to the Albany Movement. He also participated in the Selma Voting Rights Movement and in many other arenas of the '60s movement era.”
“He went north, to New York City, where he received his master's degree in sacred theology from the Union Theological Seminary in 1967. He then returned home to direct the Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education. He served as an elected member of the Albany City Council from 1976 to 1990.”
“The civil rights heroism of Charles Sherrod”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_wal... “I asked Branch what he remembered best about Sherrod. He chuckled and read me a passage from the book about the jailing of hundreds of Freedom Riders in Mississippi in 1961, and a meeting that Sherrod, SNCC leader Diane Nash, and others had with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, to ask for his help. The two young activists were unaware that Kennedy had already cut a deal with Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett: If cops didn't beat up the protesters, the U.S. government would stay out of the way as they arrested them. As many as 600 Freedom Riders, most of them kids, were locked up in Parchman Penitentiary, Branch recalled, when Nash and Sherrod met with Kennedy and his assistant Burke Marshall.”
“Kennedy took the administration's line at the time: Why didn't the protesters drop their pesky Freedom Rides and get involved in voter registration — a constructive way to advance civil rights but also, of course, to register more Democrats. Sherrod exploded at Kennedy: "You are a public official, sir! It is not your job, before God or under the law, to tell us how to honor our constitutional rights. It's your job to protect us when we do." Branch laughed: "He does have a fiery side, but he was also, deeply, genuinely religious.”
“A former chaplain at the Georgia State Prison in Homerville, the Rev. Sherrod teaches at Albany State University. [4] He is married to Shirley Sherrod.”
The Sherrods are people who stood up and sacrificed for others all their lives. To just say "Vilsack jumped the gun because of the media culture" is not satisfactory. It’s too tame and doesn't deal with the heart of the issue, especially in light of the legacy that the Sherrods represent.
This is why I am STILL angry at how she was treated. This beautiful woman is a jewel in the crown and deserved a lot more deference than she got, and it just pains me to think that, no one knew who she was and, that they thought they could treat her any kind of way. The idea that Shirley Sherrod, wife of Charles Sherrod, who sacrificed so much for our people, could be hounded and forced to pull to the side of the road so that she could be thrown under the bus by someone who was ignorant of the legacy this woman represents, pains me to no end.
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Friday, July 23rd 2010 at 10:08AM
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