Quannah Bill-O closed his dog-and-pony show last night saying “we haven’t heard the last of the Sherrod case.” A warning… or a veiled threat, however we want to take it, I guess.
There’s an important back-story to this that isn’t being widely reported about Ms. Sherrod.
She has strong links to the civil rights movement. Shirley Sherrod is married to one of the key leaders during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. His name is Charles Sherrod, and he was an early leader of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced “snick”).
From blackpast.org:
“In October 1961, Sherrod became the first field secretary and SNCC director of southwest Georgia. He and Cordell Reagon opened an SNCC office near the all-black Albany State College. On November 1, they launched a student sit-in at the bus terminal station to test the recently enacted law desegregating bus and train terminals. When local law enforcement officials blocked the demonstrators, the single protest became the two-year Albany campaign. It eventually led to multiple protests by thousands of students as well as the involvement of Dr. Martin Luther King, a public plea from President John F. Kennedy to city officials, and resolution of the issue by local black leaders to resolve the issue. Ultimately the civil rights activists organized by Charles Sherrod would prevail.
Developing local leadership was a strong point in Sherrod’s leadership and was an important element in SNCC’s organizational model. Rather than the SNCC or some other organization fighting for the “helpless” black community, the community organized itself with SNCC leaders facilitating that organization.
Sherrod also enlisted white workers to help with voter registration. Five of the 11 workers on SNCC’s local staff were white Northerners. By using interracial voter registration workers, Sherrod intended to show white Southerners that whites were equals, not superiors.”
It would be my best guess that Faux Noose is going to bring up Ms. Sherrod’s husband, and try to paint him as some wild-eyed black nationalist, or some other ridiculous nonsense. Despite the fact that it isn’t anywhere close to the truth.
But here’s the key piece of information that will serve as the lit match to blow this up again…
After Mr. Sherrod left SNCC, the direction of SNCC changed dramatically when they elected Stokely Carmichael as their chairman.
Yes. The same Stokely Carmichael who was later prominent in the Black Panther Party.
Can’t you picture exactly where this is going?
And, I believe, THAT is where they are going to tie this up in a nice little right-wing paranoid conspiracy package. It’s their bread and butter.
I can already hear the cries of “Black radicals! SNCC is another racist/socialist organization! They are the equivalent of the Black Panthers!”
That’s my prediction.
I really, really hope I’m wrong on this one. But my gut tells me otherwise. They aren’t about to let this “opportunity” pass.
