1. Shirley Sherrod was born on November 20,1947 and is the executive director for the Southwest Georgia Project and Vice President of Development for New Communities at Cypress pond.
11 Facts About Shirley Sherrod
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Shirley Sherrod has been the recipient of various praises such as; The Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Sojourner-Douglas College, being inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame, and awarded the James Beard Leadership Award.
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Shirley Sherrod was born in 1948 in Baker County, Georgia, to Grace and Hosie Miller.
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Several months after Miller's murder, a cross was burned at night in front of the Miller family's residence with Grace Miller and her four daughters, including Shirley Sherrod, and infant son, born after her husband's killing, inside.
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That same year, Shirley Sherrod was among the first black students to enroll in the previously all-white high school in Baker County.
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Shirley Sherrod attended Fort Valley State College and later studied sociology at Albany State University in Georgia while working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the Civil Rights Movement where she met her future husband, minister Charles Shirley Sherrod.
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Shirley Sherrod went on to Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio where she earned her master's degree in community development.
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Shirley Sherrod was hired by the USDA in August 2009 as the Georgia director of rural development, the first black person to hold that position.
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On July 19,2010, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign from her USDA position after blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a selectively-edited video of Sherrod's address to a March 2010 NAACP event onto his website.
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However, upon review of the complete, unedited video in full context, the NAACP, White House officials, and Tom Vilsack, the United States secretary of agriculture, apologized for the firing, and Shirley Sherrod was offered a new position with the USDA.
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In February 2011, Shirley Sherrod filed a lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart and co-defendant Larry O'Connor in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia; in her complaint, Shirley Sherrod accused Breitbart of defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress.