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(Daily Press) Former U.S. Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday that a lack of diversity in the Obama administration might have led to her hasty dismissal after a doctored video of one of her speeches made her a target of conservative bloggers.

Sherrod said no African-Americans were involved in the direct discussions prior to her being forced to drive to the side of a Georgia highway and submit her resignation.

“There was no black person in his inner circle who could even talk about this, to say, ‘hey, you ought to look into this.’”

She said that the lack of the diversity ran from her bosses at U.S.D.A. all the way to the White House and that no person of color was among the dozen people who discussed her fate.

Instead, Sherrod said her dismissal came after a series of phone calls from U.S.D.A. deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development, Cheryl Cook, who eventually told her that the White House wanted her resignation.

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(The Hill) Shirley Sherrod’s firing at the Agriculture Department (USDA) has put the national spotlight on the agency’s troubled civil rights history.

And it reminded several black farmers’ advocates that the USDA has had to address charges of racism in the past.

Anger toward USDA by black farmers is not new. Thousands of civil rights complaints have been filed against the department after many black farmers were denied loans and other federal assistance over the years.

But Sherrod’s swift firing, based on edited video of a speech she gave — something Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has since apologized for — has reignited those feelings.

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(Atlanta Journal Constitution) Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today he is reconsidering his department’s decision to fire a Georgia official in wake of new details about her controversial speech to the NAACP.

Vilsack said in a statement early Wednesday morning that he will “conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts” about his decision to ask Shirley Sherrod to resign. Washington’s apparent reversal came hours after a video of Sherrod’s full speech was released, and the director of rural development in Georgia was defended by the white couple at the center of the controversy.

The full, uncut video of a federal agricultural official’s NAACP speech purporting racial scheming, told a different story than the barely-three-minute snippet that cost Sherrod her job.

Despite admitting in the edited version of the taping that she once withheld help to the couple on the basis of race, Sherrod was defended Tuesday by the wife of a white Georgia farmer.

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