Shirley Sherrod

Shirley Sherrod
Shirley Sherrod at a March 2010 regional USDA meeting.
Born	Shirley Miller c. 1948 Newton-Baker County, Georgia, United States
Residence	Albany, Georgia
Education	Fort Valley State University Albany State University Antioch University (M.A.), community development, 1989
Occupation	Political candidate
Spouse(s)	Charles Sherrod
Parent(s)	Grace and Hosie Miller

Shirley Sherrod (born 1948) is a former Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture. She became the subject of a controversy when edited remarks were used to force her to resign. 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 Sherrod was offered a new position.

Sherrod (née Miller) was born in 1948 in Baker County, Georgia, to Grace and Hosie Miller. In 1965, when she was 17 years old, her father, Hosie Miller, a deacon at the local Baptist Church, was shot to death by a white farmer, reportedly over a dispute about livestock. No charges were returned against the shooter by an all-white grand jury. This was a turning point in her life and led her to feel that she should stay in the South to bring about change. 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, and infant son, born after her husband's killing, still inside.

That same year, Sherrod was among the first black students to enroll in the previously all-white high school in Baker County. Eleven years later, Grace Miller became the first black woman elected to a county office, one she continued to hold, as of 2010^[update].

Sherrod attended Fort Valley State College and later studied sociology at Albany State University in Georgia while working for civil rights with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee where she met her future husband, minister Charles Sherrod. She went on to Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio where she earned her master's degree in community development. She returned to Georgia to work with the Department of Agriculture in Georgia "to help minority farmers keep their land."