[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 175 (Monday, November 14, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1131-E1132]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
IN MEMORY OF REVEREND CHARLES MELVIN SHERROD
______
HON. SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR.
of georgia
in the house of representatives
Monday, November 14, 2022
Mr. BISHOP of Georgia. Madam Speaker, it is with a heavy heart and
solemn remembrance that I rise today to pay tribute to an outstanding
man of God, iconic civil rights pioneer, dedicated leader and friend of
longstanding, Rev. Charles Melvin Sherrod. Sadly, Rev. Sherrod
transitioned from labor to reward on Tuesday, October 11, 2022, at the
age of 85. He leaves in his wake many heavy hearts among his family,
friends, community and across the nation. A homegoing service
celebrating his life was held Saturday, October 15, 2022 at Mount Zion
Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia at 11:00 a.m.
Charles Sherrod was born on January 2, 1937 in rural Surry, Virginia
to the late Mr. Raymond Sherrod and Ms. Martha Mae Gibson. After moving
with his grandmother and siblings to nearby Petersburg, Charles would
go on to become president of his student body at the all-black Peabody
High School where he played sports, participated in theatre, and served
as school chaplain (Quiros, 2022). Having heard the call to God's
ministry at an early age, his strong Christian faith steeled his
resolve to challenge the stain of racial segregation in the Jim Crow
south and in 1954 at the age of 17, he participated in a kneel-in at a
segregated white church.
Following graduation from high school, Charles attended Virginia
Union University in Richmond where he earned a Bachelor's in Sociology
and a Master's in Theology. In February 1960, he and 33 other student
activists staged a sit-in at the lunch counter of Thalhimer's
Department Store in downtown Richmond, were arrested and became known
as the ``Richmond 34''. In April of that year, Sherrod and other
students attended a meeting at Shaw University in Raleigh, North
Carolina where the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was
founded. Sherrod volunteered to be placed anywhere and was sent by the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference to Albany in Southwest Georgia
as SNCC's first field secretary along with Cordell Reagon and Charles
Jones.
Working with others in Albany, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
he launched a full assault against racial violence and segregation
through nonviolent demonstrations and the registration of thousands of
disenfranchised Black Americans in the region. Unfortunately, Police
Chief Laurie Prichett, ``unlike so many other Southern lawmen, avoided
the spectacle of publicly attacking protesters'' and just jailed
successive waves of them in separate remote locations in surrounding
counties until there were no more protesters (Quiros, 2022). The
``Albany Movement,'' as it was called, ended and Dr. King left, but
Sherrod persevered with successful Black voter registration.
Ultimately, within months the Albany City Commission voted to repeal
all segregation laws from its books. Charles Sherrod continued his work
in Albany, Americus, Moultrie, and other cities, later changing the
focus to school integration.
In 1964, Sherrod left Albany and went to Union Theological Seminary
in New York to earn a Master's of Divinity. Meanwhile, he impacted the
greater American Civil Rights Movement by recruiting for the 1963 March
on Washington and marching for voting rights in Selma on Bloody Sunday.
He returned to Albany and brought with him white seminarians to create
a moral society where Black and white Americans could live and work
together in unity and peace (Quiros, 2022). By 1966 SNCC became more
militant, the Black Power Movement emerged and Sherrod broke with SNCC
and worked with the Georgia Freedom Project (Quiros, 2022). Also in
1966, Charles Sherrod married Shirley Miller of Baker County and they
founded a farming collective, New Communities, which was the largest
Black-owned plot in the United States where they worked the land and
helped people (Quiros, 2022).
Unfortunately, a severe drought occurred in 1980 and the Sherrods
were repeatedly denied help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and
the farm was taken by foreclosure (Quiros, 2022). Devastated by the
loss of the farm, Charles and Shirley nevertheless continued their work
in southwest Georgia. Charles was elected to the Albany City Commission
serving 14 years, was a prison chaplain and a professor at Albany State
University.
[[Page E1132]]
The Sherrod's sued USDA, alleging racial discrimination and were
awarded a settlement for wrongful dispossession of New Communities;
they used the money to purchase Cypress Pond Plantation, an antebellum
plantation now managed by descendants of slaves, to help rural Black
landowners profit from farming and to be a model for solving the
nation's affordable housing shortage (Quiros, 2022). ``From marching in
the Albany Movement, being beaten and jailed, registering rural folks
to vote, serving in local politics, and founding New Communities,''
wrote Professor Ansley L. Quiros in a piece published by the Washington
Post, ``Sherrod stayed with the course of freedom and the beloved
community until his death'' (2022).
Rev. Charles M. Sherrod accomplished much in his life, but none would
be possible without the grace of God and the love and support of his
wife, Shirley; his two children, Russia and Kenyatta; his 5
grandchildren, and other family and loved ones who will miss him
dearly.
Madam Speaker, I ask that my colleagues in the House of
Representatives join my wife, Vivian and me, along with the 730,000
people of the 2nd Congressional District of Georgia in honoring the
life and legacy of Rev. Charles Melvin Sherrod and in extending our
deepest condolences to his family, friends and all who mourn his loss.
May they be consoled and comforted by an abiding faith and the Holy
Spirit in the days, weeks and months ahead.
[From the Washington Post, Oct. 13, 2022]
A Vital Civil Rights Activist you Never Heard of Has Died
(By Ansley L. Quiros)
Charles Melvin Sherrod died on Tuesday at the age of 85 in
Albany, Ga., a place he went to in 1961 and never left. If
you are not from southwest Georgia, his name might not be
familiar. But Charles Sherrod is the most important civil
rights figure you've never heard of. Recovering his story
offers us a chance not only to honor a civil rights hero, but
also to better understand the struggle for freedom to which
he committed himself for so long.
Sherrod was born on Jan. 2, 1937, in Surry, Va., a place he
described as a ``speck.'' He never knew his father and was
raised primarily by his grandmother within a broad community
of friends and cousins. Even as a young child, Sherrod
possessed a deep faith in God and a precocious theological
imagination. Probably inspired by the sermons he heard at
Mount Olive Baptist Church, he would often play church,
preaching to other children and soon sensing a real call to
the ministry. ``I was preaching when I was about 6 years
old,'' Sherrod told me, adding, ``I was born a preacher.'' He
would carry that preacher's zeal and deep moral vision with
him for the rest of his life.
Despite the racism and suffocating poverty he experienced
in childhood, Sherrod excelled in school. He attended the
all-Black Peabody High School where he played sports, acted
in plays and served as student body president and school
chaplain. Sherrod then attended Virginia Union University
where he earned his undergraduate degree in sociology, and
then an M.A. in theology, fulfilling his ambition to become a
minister.
During this time, Sherrod's Christian commitments first led
him to challenge the dehumanization of Jim Crow. He
participated in a ``kneel-in'' at a segregated church in 1954
and later joined a picket in front of Thalhimer's department
store. ``I saw the [lynching] rope in my mind,'' he
confessed, but he also felt a sense of responsibility since
people were ``coming to me, asking me for leadership.''
Shenod was a natural leader: smart and calm with a ready,
broad smile.
In April 1960, his civil rights activities took Sherrod to
a meeting at Shaw University, where the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded. SNCC's vision--
nonviolence, collective action and the pursuit of a beloved
community in which all people are afforded dignity, respect
and care--appealed to Sherrod's calling, both to Christianity
and racial justice. After the meeting, Sherrod told Ella
Baker, the veteran activist who was then the executive
secretary for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
who convened the students, that ``I'd be willing to be placed
anywhere.'' She sent him to southwest Georgia, a place W.E.B.
Du Bois had once called the ``Egypt of the Confederacy,''
where he would spend the next six decades working for
freedom.
Sherrod arrived in Albany as SNCC's first field secretary,
``full of zeal and empty of almost everything else.'' But
soon, he and the men and women of Albany launched a full-
scale assault on Jim Crow unlike anything that had been seen
before. The Albany Movement, as it became known, was a
dramatic mobilization of people against racial violence and
segregation.
In traditional accounts of the civil rights movement,
Albany is depicted as a failure, a place where the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr. was outmaneuvered by Police Chief
Laurie Pritchett, who unlike so many other Southern lawmen,
avoided the spectacle of publicly attacking protesters, and
simply locked them up. This is why Sherrod's story is
crucial. The Albany Movement was only a failure when
considered from the perspective of King. The movement
continued after King left, making important, if slow, gains.
``Nothing could stop the people,'' Sherrod said, ``certainly
not jail or the threat of jail, not [even] death.''
Sherrod stayed, organizing in the rural counties, though he
did take a ``Movement sabbatical'' in 1964, heading to Union
Theological Seminary in New York. He earned a Master's of
Divinity and then returned to southwest Georgia, bringing
White seminarians with him as part of an exchange program
called the Student Interracial Ministry. For Sherrod, this
was a continuation of his civil rights work. He insisted,
always, that the end was not simply political but moral: a
society where Black and White Americans, all created in the
image of God, could live and work together in unity and
peace.
In 1966, this philosophy led to a breach with SNCC, which
was moving away from interracialism and Christian nonviolence
and toward a more militant stance of Black Power. As Sherrod
put it: ``I didn't leave SNCC, SNCC left me.'' But he stayed
with the work of racial justice--voter registration and
community organizing--under the auspices of the Southwest
Georgia Freedom Project.
In the late 1960s, Sherrod, along with his wife, Shirley
Miller Sherrod, a Baker County native whom he married in
1966, helped found New Communities, a farming collective that
was, at one point, the largest Black-owned plot of land in
the United States. For decades, New Communities was the
fulfillment of a dream for the Sherrods, a place where they
could work the land and care for others.
But in the 1980s, when a devastating drought afflicted
southwest Georgia, they were repeatedly denied relief and the
farm was foreclosed on. In asking for a loan, Sherrod heard
from White loan officials the same message he'd heard from
segregationists decades earlier when trying to vote: ``Over
my dead body.''
Though devastated by the loss of New Communities, the
Sherrods kept working faithfully in southwest Georgia.
Charles Sherrod had been elected to the Albany City Council
in 1976, a post he held until 1990, and also served as a
prison chaplain, while Shirley worked for the Federation of
Southern Cooperatives before being named the U.S. Department
of Agriculture Georgia Director of Rural Development in 2009.
Shirley was fired after conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart
posted selectively edited, misleading video clips from a
speech she gave. The White House and Agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack apologized to Sherrod two days after her firing.
After seeing her name dragged through the mud, Shirley got
better news. She heard about a class-action lawsuit, Pigford
v. Glickman II, alleging systemic racial discrimination
toward Black farmers by the USDA. The Sherrods filed a claim
and were awarded a settlement for the wrongful dispossession
of New Communities. They used the money to purchase a new
farm. It was a bittersweet moment.
And one that reveals how long the Black freedom struggle
has been. Charles Sherrod embodied this enduring struggle
over the long haul, in all of its breadth and character. From
marching in the Albany Movement, being beaten and jailed in
Americus, Ga., registering rural folks to vote, founding New
Communities, to serving in local politics, Sherrod stayed
with the cause of freedom and beloved community until his
death.
His story reminds us that the work of racial justice is
ongoing, that it occurs in rural spaces as well as urban ones
and that it can look like political organizing, preaching,
farming or just the ordinary miracle of Black love in
America.
____________________