Former Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday she will pursue a lawsuit against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart posted an edited video clip of Sherrod appearing to say she discriminated against a white farmer looking for assistance.
President Obama on Thursday urged Shirley Sherrod, the black Georgia Agriculture Department official whose firing and subsequent offer of rehiring this week renewed a conversation about politics and race, to continue "her hard work on behalf of those in need."
Shirley Sherrod, who was forced to resign from her government job in Georgia based on incomplete and misleading reports of a speech she gave, has been offered a new job by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. But, she said Thursday she is “not so sure.”
The wife of the white farmer allegedly discriminated against by the USDA’s rural development director for Georgia said Shirley Sherrod “kept us out of bankruptcy.” Eloise Spooner awoke Tuesday to discover that Sherrod had lost her job after videotaped comments she made at a local NAACP banquet surfaced on the web.
A black USDA official in Georgia has resigned after publicly admitting she didn’t help a white man trying to save his farm to the “full force” of her power and instead referred him to “one of his own.”
