Which Shirley Sherrod Story Should We Believe?

What a tangled web for such a simple story.

There are three distinct versions of the ‘redemption story’ that Shirley Sherrod gave in her infamous speech to the NAACP in Douglas, Georgia in 2010.

Story #1: In her 2010 NAACP speech:

• At their first meeting Spooner is acting superior to her; the implication is that this is racial
• Sherrod, unhappy to be helping a white farmer given the plight of black farmers, considers how much help to give him.
• Sherrod decides not to give him the ‘full force’ of her help.
• Sherrod does ‘enough’ so that he will tell whoever sent him that she helped.
• She decides to take him to ‘a white lawyer’ that she describes as ‘one of his own kind.’
• Later, she thinls he’s ‘being taken care of by the white lawyer’
• She doesn’t like how the ‘white lawyer’ treats Spooner.
• At this later point, ‘it’s revealed’ to her that ‘it’s not about black and white, it’s about rich and poor.’

Story #2: In Shirley Sherrod’s 2012 book The Courage To Hope:

1) Spooner isn’t trying to act superior; Sherrod admits in two different sections of the book that she incorrectly intererpated the way he was speaking.

2) At their very first meeting, Sherrod has ‘a revelation.’

3) She immediately tells Spooner she can help him and springs into action.

4) She sends Spooner to a lawyer; she doesn’t mention their race in the book but does include her NAACP speech where she makes references to lawyer’s race at least three times.

5) Sherrod is shocked at how the nameless lawyer (who we assume is white based on her NAACP speech) treats the Spooners

6) Sherrod wracks her brain trying to think of someone who could help them, then comes up with Ben Easterlin

Story #3: The Spooner’s Version

• Roger isn’t ‘acting superior’; he’s hard of hearing.
• Sherrod gives the Spooners the choice of a black lawyer who is local or a white lawyer who is further away.
• The Spooner chose the black lawyer over the white lawyer, Ben Easterlin
• The black lawyer takes their money and doesn’t help them
• Sherrod sees how the black lawyer treats them and is upset
• They call Sherrod and she asks if they want to see the other lawyer.

Here are a few major differences.

• Despite what Sherrod told the NAACP, the Spooners themselves and Sherrod’s book agree that Roger Spooner was not “acting superior” or racist.
• In the book, Sherrod helps immediately; no mention of not giving the ‘full force’ of her help.
• The lawyer they go see initially isn’t white, as Sherrod claims. He’s black.
• It’s the black lawyer who doesn’t help the Spooners.
• A white lawyer, who Sherrod recommends immediately, helps them.

Here are the stories.

Story 1: NAACP Speech

The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he — he took a long time talking, but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing. But he had 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.

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 so that when he — I — I assumed the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me, either that or the — or the Georgia Department of Agriculture. And he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him.

So I took him to a white lawyer that we had — that had…attended some of the training that we had provided, ’cause Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farmer. So I figured if I take him to one of them that his own kind would take care of him.

That’s when it was revealed to me that, ya’ll, it’s about poor versus those who have, and not so much about white — it is about white and black, but it’s not — you know, it opened my eyes, ’cause I took him to one of his own and I put him in his hand, and felt okay, I’ve done my job. But, during that time we would have these injunctions against the Department of Agriculture and — so, they couldn’t foreclose on him. And I want you to know that the county supervisor had done something to him that I have not seen yet that they’ve done to any other farmer, black or white. And what they did to him caused him to not be able to file Chapter 12 bankruptcy.

So, everything was going along fine — I’m thinking he’s being taken care of by the white lawyer and then they lifted the injunction against USDA in May of ’87 for two weeks and he was one of 13 farmers in Georgia who received a foreclosure notice. He called me. I said, “Well, go on and make an appointment at the lawyer. Let me know when it is and I’ll meet you there.”

So we met at the lawyer’s office on — on the day they had given him. And this lawyer sat there — he had been paying this lawyer, y’all. That’s what got me. He had been paying the lawyer since November, and this was May. And the lawyer sat there and looked at him and said, “Well, y’all are getting old. Why don’t you just let the farm go?” I could not believe he said that, so I said to the lawyer — I told him, “I can’t believe you said that.” I said, “It’s obvious to me if he cannot file a Chapter 12 bankruptcy to — to stop this foreclose, you have to file an 11. And the lawyer said to me, “I’ll do whatever you say” — “whatever you think” — that’s the way he put it. But he’s paying him. He wasn’t paying me any money, you know. So he said — the lawyer said he would work on it.

And then, about seven days before that man would have been sold at the courthouse steps, the farmer called me and said the lawyer wasn’t doing anything. And that’s when I spent time there in my office calling everybody I could think of to try to see — help me find the lawyer who would handle this. And finally, I remembered that I had gone to see one just 40 miles away in Americus with the black farmers. So, I –

Well, working with him made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t, you know. And they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic. And it made me realize then that I needed to work to help poor people — those who don’t have access the way others have.

Story 2The following is from Sherrod’s book The Courage To Hope.

I offered Mr. Spooner a seat. I could see he was trying hard to maintain his pride, and I figured he must have felt uncomfortable to be talking to me about his problems. Relations between blacks and whites were still fragile in 1980s Georgia. There was a common attitude of “We’ll take care of our kind, and you take care of your kind.” Mr. Spooner began by speaking loudly, and at first I thought he was acting superior to me, but I later found out he was hard of hearing and he always talked like that. We stared uneasily at each other across the desk, and then, haltingly, he began to tell me his story. He and his wife, Eloise, had a family farm they were on the brink of losing. I learned that the Spooners were two weeks away from their farm being sold at the courthouse, and someone had suggested they come to see me as a last-ditch effort.

I looked at the worried man sitting across from me, and my heart just opened up wide. I had a revelation. I said, “I can help you.” And I did. It took plenty of maneuvering, but my efforts succeeded, and the Spooners and I ended up being solid friends.

I told that story to the NAACP audience, describing it as an emotional breakthrough for me, because my work had always been with black farmers, but, as I told the audience, “God helped me to see that it’s not just about black people—it’s about poor people. And I’ve come a long way. I knew that I couldn’t live with hate, you know. As my mother has said so many times, ‘If we had tried to live with hate in our hearts, we’d probably be dead now.’

Story 3: Spooner Account From WaPo

We get this little paper from Atlanta, the Market Bulletin, and it had a little note in there and said if you were having and about to lose your fame … they had a toll-free number. So I decided to call and he told us to go to this lawyer in Cairo and we did and he knew the woman who was in charge of the FHA.

So he said you might as well go ahead and do what Diane suggested (the FHA supervisor). I was so mad when we were driving home. Then in about a few weeks, a man called to see what you guys have done. He didn’t do one thing for us. He said I’m gonna give you one more number for someone who could help you. That number was Shirley Sherrod. So we talked to her and we went up there to Albany, Ga. She said we’ve got two lawyers: one is a black lawyer and his name was Black and the other was Dan Easterlin in Americus, Ga.

We said we’d just try this one in Albany. So we went to see him and we had to scrape up some money and see him. We went to him for six months. But he wasn’t getting anything accomplished.

After about six months, he said he couldn’t help us on our case. I have another client. I called Shirley and told her and she asked me if she wanted us to call the other one. She asked us if she wanted her to go with us and we told her yes. She went up there two or three times.

We told Mr. Easterlin that we had some rough nights and couldn’t sleep because we were worried and Mr. Easterlin told us to go home and get a good night’s sleep and he’d take care of that. He managed to get us a Chapter 11 and we got that all settled. Then it began to level off, everything got better.

That was just about two weeks before they were gonna sell our farm up at the courthouse. He got the Chapter 11 to stop it and Shirley Sherrod arranged it all and got it going. We would have lost everyting if it hadn’t been for Shirley.