Ex-Ag Official Says White House Forced Her Out Without Hearing 'Truth' About Video
The Department of Agriculture official who resigned Monday over a YouTube clip said the White House forced her out without bothering to hear her side of the story. She said a deputy undersecretary "harassed" her with warnings about the attention she was going to receive after the video surfaced showing her telling a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer in trouble.
Shirley Sherrod, the department's ex-Georgia director of Rural Development, said the video omitted key context but that the administration got scared.
"They were not interested in hearing the truth. No one wanted to hear the truth," she said in an interview Tuesday morning with CNN.
The wife of the farmer who was the subject of Sherrod's story also told FoxNews.com on Tuesday that the administration should not have forced her out and that Sherrod actually helped the couple save their farm.
"She'll always be my friend," Eloise Spooner said. She said the incident Sherrod was referring to happened more than two decades ago and that she and her husband Roger worked together closely to keep the farm out of foreclosure.
"I don't think they gave her a chance to tell really what happened," Eloise Spooner said. "I don't think they'll find anybody that can fill the job any better than she did. That's my opinion."
Sherrod on Tuesday also blamed the NAACP, which put out a statement condemning her for her remarks overnight. Sherrod claimed the NAACP never contacted her and that the civil rights group's high-profile fight with the Tea Party over allegations of racism set the stage for her forced resignation.
"They are the reason why this happened," she said.
The NAACP on Tuesday morning stripped its statement about Sherrod from its website. A representative from DCTV, which shot the footage, said the NAACP is currently reviewing the tape "in full."
Sherrod told CNN that Cheryl Cook, deputy undersecretary for Rural Development, called her several times on Monday to eventually demand her resignation on behalf of the White House.
The ex-official first told her side of the story in an interview overnight with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She said that in the clip she was telling a story about events that happened 24 years ago when she was working for a local nonprofit group.
She said the whole video would reveal that she eventually came to work closely with the white farmer and that she was trying to impart a lesson about how important it is to get "beyond the issue of race."
"I went on to work with many more white farmers," she said. "The story helped me realize that race is not the issue."
The USDA did not have an immediate response when contacted by FoxNews.com. On Monday evening, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement announcing Sherrod's resignation.
"There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person," he said.
The original NAACP statement acknowledged that there was an apparent moral behind Sherrod's story, but said she gave "no indication" in the video that she tried to "right the wrong."
"We are appalled by her actions, just as we are with abuses of power against farmers of color and female farmers," the statement said. "Her actions were shameful."
However, Sherrod told the Journal-Constitution that she worked with the farmer for two years to help save his farm from foreclosure.
The video clip that launched the controversy is two-and-a-half minutes long. In it, she describes "the first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm." Sherrod, who is black, claimed the farmer took a long time trying to show he was "superior" to her. The audience laughed as she described how she handled the situation.
"He had to come to me for help. What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him," she said. "I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land -- so I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough."
Sherrod explained in the video that, at the time, she assumed the state or national Department of Agriculture had referred the white farmer to her. In order to ensure that the farmer could report back that she was indeed helpful, she said she took him to see "one of his own" -- 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.
The point of the story wasn't entirely clear from the clip.
"It was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have," she said toward the end, suggesting she had learned that race is less important.
Spooner told FoxNews.com that Sherrod's story did not "bother" her. She explained that Sherrod did not send them directly to the white lawyer, either -- she said she initially suggested a black lawyer and a white lawyer, and that the couple saw the black lawyer first. After that didn't work out, they visited the white lawyer, with Sherrod's help.
Spooner said Sherrod did not display discrimination. Asked about the claim that her husband was acting "superior" during that first conversation, Spooner said: "That's just his way."
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