The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod By RON WILKINS
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The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod
By RON WILKINS
http://www.counterpunch.org/wilkins08022010.html
Imagine farm workers doing back breaking labor in the sweltering sun, sprayed with pesticides and paid less than minimum wage. Imagine the United Farm Workers called in to defend these laborers against such exploitation by management. Now imagine that the farm workers are black children and adults and that the managers are Shirley Sherrod, her husband Rev. Charles Sherrod, and a host of others. But it’s no illusion; this is fact.
The swirling controversy over the racist dismissal of Shirley Sherrod from her USDA post has obscured her profoundly oppositional behavior toward black agricultural workers in the 1970s. What most of Mrs. Sherrod’s supporters are not aware of is the elitist and anti-black-labor role that she and fellow managers of New Communities Inc. (NCI) played. These individuals under-paid, mistreated and fired black laborers–many of them less than 16 years of age–in the same fields of southwest Georgia where their ancestors suffered under chattel slavery.
When I first noticed the story of her firing and the association of Shirley Sherrod’s name with the rural black poor and concern for “black land-loss”, I wondered if the person being praised was the same Shirley Sherrod whom I knew. One piece posted on the July 23rd Alternet and captioned “Shirley Sherrod and the black Land Struggle” even claimed that she “devoted her entire life to economic justice”. The mistreatment of black workers at NCI under the Sherrods is a matter of record that contradicts this claim.
If confession is good for the soul, then Mrs. Sherrod took a first step toward her redemption by admitting the error of her ways in her earlier attitudes toward poor white farmers. Mrs. Sherrod says she began to see poverty as more central than race. So, should indigent black child farm laborers warrant less reflection by Mrs. Sherrod? What lessons does she have to share from her tenure as management when she had power over her own people working under deplorable conditions at the same New Communities, Inc.(NCI) identified in the current issue? Shirley Sherrod could have included this chapter of her history in the same confession speech. Justice and integrity require at least as much accountability from Mrs. Sherrod to the poor black farm workers of NCI as to the white farmers she came to befriend. This lack of full disclosure of the whole truth is a “sin of omission” that trivializes the suffering of poor black farm workers and exacerbates the offenses of NCI.
Shirley Sherrod was New Communities Inc. store manager during the 1970s. As such, Mrs. Sherrod was a key member of the NCI administrative team, which exploited and abused the workforce in the field. The 6,000 acre New Communities Inc. in Lee County promoted itself during the latter part of the 1960s and throughout the 70s as a land trust committed to improving the lives of the rural black poor. Underneath this facade, the young and old worked long hours with few breaks, the pay averaged sixty-seven cents an hour, fieldwork behind equipment spraying pesticides was commonplace and workers expressing dissatisfaction were fired without recourse.
The unfortunate story of Mrs. Annie Hawkins and her family in particular is instructive. Persuaded by NCI that their lot would be improved, the Hawkins family stole away from the Georgia plantation that they had called home. After suffering abuse meted out to them and others at NCI, Mrs. Hawkins sadly stated that, “We stole away from one plantation, but just ended up on another.” For her courageous role in demonstrations against the Sherrods and NCI management, Annie Hawkins and her family were fired and kicked out of the house that they were promised. My last encounter with an ailing Mrs. Hawkins took place several years ago in a nursing home where she resided.
Worker protest at New Communities eventually garnered some assistance from the United Farm Workers Union in nearby Florida in the person of one of its most formidable organizers, black State Director, the late Mack Lyons. The September 28, 1974 UFW newspaper El Malcriado, page two, reported on the worker’s strike (“Children Farm Workers Strike Black Co-op” http://www.farmworkermovement.org/ufwarchives) and the UFW stepped in to protect black farm workers from exploitation by NCI. Fearful of both UFW efforts to unionize NCI’s labor force and scrutiny by the Georgia State Wage and Hour Division, the Sherrods and NCI management hastily issued checks in varying amounts to strikers to makeup ostensibly for minimum wage differentials. It is bitter irony that the Sherrods have succeeded in being awarded $300,000 following a discrimination lawsuit, while Mrs. Hawkins and other impoverished NCI black laborers whom NCI exploited were never adequately compensated for their “pain and suffering”.
While it is true that loan discrimination and relentless creditors can be cited for the eventual demise of New Communities Inc. in 1985, NCI’s unfair labor practices and poor leadership, were equally, if not more, to blame. Ask Shirley Sherrod about this part of her history. I know this story well, for I was one of those workers at NCI.
Ron Wilkins is a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1974, under an assumed name, he hired-on at New Communities Inc. The Emergency Land Fund, an Atlanta-based black land retention organization, which shared oversight responsibility for NCI’s progress, wanted to know the basis for NCI’s continued poor performance. The author’s secondary purpose was to develop agricultural skills. For his role in organizing NCI’s workers, management eventually fired him from his $40 per week position, evicted him from the rent-free shack on NCI property and orchestrated his arrest, on bogus charges, by FBI agents and Lee County, Georgia Sheriff’s deputies in the midst of an NCI labor protest. The charges were later dropped. Presently he is an Africana Studies professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He can be reached at: <!-- e --><a href="mailto:rwilkins@csudh.edu">rwilkins@csudh.edu</a><!-- e -->
As the great Paul Harvey used to say"Now you know the rest of the storry"
By RON WILKINS
http://www.counterpunch.org/wilkins08022010.html
Imagine farm workers doing back breaking labor in the sweltering sun, sprayed with pesticides and paid less than minimum wage. Imagine the United Farm Workers called in to defend these laborers against such exploitation by management. Now imagine that the farm workers are black children and adults and that the managers are Shirley Sherrod, her husband Rev. Charles Sherrod, and a host of others. But it’s no illusion; this is fact.
The swirling controversy over the racist dismissal of Shirley Sherrod from her USDA post has obscured her profoundly oppositional behavior toward black agricultural workers in the 1970s. What most of Mrs. Sherrod’s supporters are not aware of is the elitist and anti-black-labor role that she and fellow managers of New Communities Inc. (NCI) played. These individuals under-paid, mistreated and fired black laborers–many of them less than 16 years of age–in the same fields of southwest Georgia where their ancestors suffered under chattel slavery.
When I first noticed the story of her firing and the association of Shirley Sherrod’s name with the rural black poor and concern for “black land-loss”, I wondered if the person being praised was the same Shirley Sherrod whom I knew. One piece posted on the July 23rd Alternet and captioned “Shirley Sherrod and the black Land Struggle” even claimed that she “devoted her entire life to economic justice”. The mistreatment of black workers at NCI under the Sherrods is a matter of record that contradicts this claim.
If confession is good for the soul, then Mrs. Sherrod took a first step toward her redemption by admitting the error of her ways in her earlier attitudes toward poor white farmers. Mrs. Sherrod says she began to see poverty as more central than race. So, should indigent black child farm laborers warrant less reflection by Mrs. Sherrod? What lessons does she have to share from her tenure as management when she had power over her own people working under deplorable conditions at the same New Communities, Inc.(NCI) identified in the current issue? Shirley Sherrod could have included this chapter of her history in the same confession speech. Justice and integrity require at least as much accountability from Mrs. Sherrod to the poor black farm workers of NCI as to the white farmers she came to befriend. This lack of full disclosure of the whole truth is a “sin of omission” that trivializes the suffering of poor black farm workers and exacerbates the offenses of NCI.
Shirley Sherrod was New Communities Inc. store manager during the 1970s. As such, Mrs. Sherrod was a key member of the NCI administrative team, which exploited and abused the workforce in the field. The 6,000 acre New Communities Inc. in Lee County promoted itself during the latter part of the 1960s and throughout the 70s as a land trust committed to improving the lives of the rural black poor. Underneath this facade, the young and old worked long hours with few breaks, the pay averaged sixty-seven cents an hour, fieldwork behind equipment spraying pesticides was commonplace and workers expressing dissatisfaction were fired without recourse.
The unfortunate story of Mrs. Annie Hawkins and her family in particular is instructive. Persuaded by NCI that their lot would be improved, the Hawkins family stole away from the Georgia plantation that they had called home. After suffering abuse meted out to them and others at NCI, Mrs. Hawkins sadly stated that, “We stole away from one plantation, but just ended up on another.” For her courageous role in demonstrations against the Sherrods and NCI management, Annie Hawkins and her family were fired and kicked out of the house that they were promised. My last encounter with an ailing Mrs. Hawkins took place several years ago in a nursing home where she resided.
Worker protest at New Communities eventually garnered some assistance from the United Farm Workers Union in nearby Florida in the person of one of its most formidable organizers, black State Director, the late Mack Lyons. The September 28, 1974 UFW newspaper El Malcriado, page two, reported on the worker’s strike (“Children Farm Workers Strike Black Co-op” http://www.farmworkermovement.org/ufwarchives) and the UFW stepped in to protect black farm workers from exploitation by NCI. Fearful of both UFW efforts to unionize NCI’s labor force and scrutiny by the Georgia State Wage and Hour Division, the Sherrods and NCI management hastily issued checks in varying amounts to strikers to makeup ostensibly for minimum wage differentials. It is bitter irony that the Sherrods have succeeded in being awarded $300,000 following a discrimination lawsuit, while Mrs. Hawkins and other impoverished NCI black laborers whom NCI exploited were never adequately compensated for their “pain and suffering”.
While it is true that loan discrimination and relentless creditors can be cited for the eventual demise of New Communities Inc. in 1985, NCI’s unfair labor practices and poor leadership, were equally, if not more, to blame. Ask Shirley Sherrod about this part of her history. I know this story well, for I was one of those workers at NCI.
Ron Wilkins is a former organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1974, under an assumed name, he hired-on at New Communities Inc. The Emergency Land Fund, an Atlanta-based black land retention organization, which shared oversight responsibility for NCI’s progress, wanted to know the basis for NCI’s continued poor performance. The author’s secondary purpose was to develop agricultural skills. For his role in organizing NCI’s workers, management eventually fired him from his $40 per week position, evicted him from the rent-free shack on NCI property and orchestrated his arrest, on bogus charges, by FBI agents and Lee County, Georgia Sheriff’s deputies in the midst of an NCI labor protest. The charges were later dropped. Presently he is an Africana Studies professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He can be reached at: <!-- e --><a href="mailto:rwilkins@csudh.edu">rwilkins@csudh.edu</a><!-- e -->
As the great Paul Harvey used to say"Now you know the rest of the storry"
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
so she was a store manager... and people working for that company in the fields were treated inhumainly..... these two statements are true but what in this article signifys shes to blame for the problems... the way it was written you would think she was the one holding the whip
if he had any decency, he would've apologized for the edit and then proceed to lick the egg off his face before it dripped everwhere.
that would be too much to ask for though. i mean hell, he's got people foaming at the mouth wanting this to be true. they don't care about edited videos!
so what's a man to do? giddy on up and go searching for something else to try and legitimize their original smear.
who's the more foolish? the fool, or the fool who follows him?
"When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging."
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln
sorry ... a bit disrespectful but this is sooo pot calling the kettle black ...
really don't care who the guy is...he's being used as a tool to justify bretfart and his actions...
See that's your problem right there.Your mind is like a parachute. It only opreates when it's open.
Ron Wilkins has nothing to with A. Brietbart. There is no evidence of that what so ever.
It's pretty Obvious to me that you don't even know the facts surrounding the story anyways.
You would rather sit there and launch wise ass cracks and make accusatons without even doing any digging.
Oh and here's the link to the article.. Not that you would care
..http://www.counterpunch.org/wilkins08022010.html
so tell me, what was your point in posting this article...?
in other words you're attempting to smear her, just as bretfart did...
stay classy... :thumbup:
The people on here only care about white on black crime not black on black not black on white. This way they can keep crying about the so-called “white privileged” that someone made up. If they acknowledge this whom will they be able to call “Racist” there defense when they do not know what there talking about...
More than likely they don’t even know about black on black crime....like the NAACP....
She deserves to be smeared!
How am I trying to smear her ?? Let's reverse the situation.. What if Mrs Sherod was a white Male who happen to be a republican who belonged to The NRA and had acted like she did.
Would you still feel the same way ?
why...because she's not a teabagger...?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Why aerial?
this oughta be good......
Then she would be a racist, a rigthwing nut or stupid. Because she is Black she gets a pass..... Those that cry most about hypocrisy are the hypocrites.
But the mind is supposed to sort through the data and reject those entries that fail to pass the logics filters. Sure, an open mind welcomes in all thoughts and ideas... but, those ideas have to be processed by your logic.
...
Think about it... is the store manager of a Wal-Mart responsible if the clothing in his store is made in Guatemalean sweat shops?
You logic tell you that since Sherrod was a store manager of a company that was involved with sub-standard and illegal practices... she is to blame. So, employing that same logic would also lead to think the Wal-Mart manager should be held responsible for the lead laced toys sold at his store and any unsafe working conditions in the manufacturing plants... and NOT the Wal-Mart Corporation.
...
Bottom line... you know what is in a parachute?
Air. Just because air works in a parachute, doesn't mean it works in your head.
Hail, Hail!!!
I am trying to figure out what logical steps do you use to reach your conclusions...
A store manager... that works for a company that is involved with criminal activity... is responsible for the actions of that company. That's what you use, right?
So, you... as an employee... are responsible for actions made by your company's executives???
You don't really believe that.. do you?
...
With that... do you now understand why the term, 'Right Wing Nut' was invented?
Hail, Hail!!!
Sorry, but you force me to play my 'I smell bullshit' card... because, how do you know that? How do you know what a company's executives are deciding?
I work in a global corporation with tens of thousands of workers. The pay is great... well, fucking great. Full medical/dental... 401K with company matching of 75% on the dollar up to 8% of savings (try getting that at your bank)... fully vested pension... and I have no fucking clue what goes on behind closed doors in the board of directors meetings... upper mangement meetings. Sure, they give us the whole world is great news... but, I have no idea what deals the milti-millionaire exec are deciding.
...
But... you do? How? Because, I really want to know... what decisions are they making up there?
Hail, Hail!!!
hmmmmmm...
Shall we look through your posts and your thoughts on immigrants? the war? torture? muslims?
I am sure you have great compassion and treat them all as human.