Modern-Day Lynching of Former Black USDA Official Shirley Sherrod, Comparable to Tom Robinson's Trial in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Modern-day lynching of Shirley Sherrod by Andrew Breitbart comparable to accusations leveled against Tom Robinson, black man, in Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" by white woman.

It is ironic that the modern-day lynching of former USDA official Shirley Sherrod occurred during the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," in which an innocent black man was charged with a crime he did not commit. The presumption made by many in the media about Shirley Sherrod was that she was guilty of racism before she was even given due process. Sounds a lot like what happened  to Tom Robinson, who was accused of rape by a white woman, Mayella Ewell. Many of the citizens of the fictional town of Maycomb, Ala. disapproved of Atticus Finch representing a black man. His children Jem and Scout were taunted by other children because their father took a stand against racism by representing a black man, who was later killed under after trying to escape from prison because he knew he would never get the justice he was due. During the trial of Tom Robinson, it was painfully obvious that Mayella Ewell and her father Bob were lying, but they were believed and the black man was denied the justice he was due. That sounds a lot like the Deep South Shirley Sherrod knew and experienced on a daily basis during the 1960s, that even included the murder of her father by a white man, who was never tried for his unspeakable act of racism.

I will echo Frank Rich's op-ed article in the New York Times. Mark Williams, former leader of the Tea Party Express, had hurled racial insults for months, leading to the NAACP passing a resolution condemning the racist elements of the Tea Party movement. A move I disagreed with in principle, because the organization chose to ignore the racist venom being spewed by the New Black Panther movement.  Mark Williams appealed to the fringe elements of a movement that is in a position to effect great change in America. I will not condemn the entire Tea Party movement and I applaud the Tea Party Federation for removing Mark Williams from his leadership role. The greater issue that comes from the Tea Party movement is that conservative blogger, Andrew Breitbart, who has had a history of engaging in smear campaigns against those who don't share his political views, took it upon himself to try to show the world the "racism" in the NAACP. He made this move immediately after Mark Williams were forced out of the Tea Party movement.

Once Williams was disowned by other Tea Partiers, Breitbart posted the bogus Sherrod video as revenge under the headline “Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism.” To portray whites as the victims of racist blacks has been a weapon of the right from the moment desegregation started to empower previously subjugated minorities in the 1960s. But its deployment has accelerated with the ascent of a black president. The pace is set by right-wing stars like Glenn Beck, who on Fox branded Barack Obama a racist with “a deep-seated hatred for white people,” and the ever-opportunistic Newt Gingrich, who on Twitter maligned Sonia Sotomayor as a “Latina woman racist.”

Even the civil rights hero John Lewis has been slimed by these vigilantes. Lewis was nearly beaten to death by state troopers bearing nightsticks and whips in Selma, Ala., just three weeks before Sherrod’s father was murdered 200 miles away in 1965. This year, as a member of Congress, he was pelted with racial epithets while walking past protesters on the Capitol grounds during the final weekend of the health care debate. Breitbart charged Lewis with lying — never mind that the melee had hundreds of eyewitnesses — and tried to prove it with a video so manifestly bogus that even Fox didn’t push it. But he wasn’t deterred then, and he and others like him won’t be deterred by the Sherrod saga’s “happy ending” as long as the McConnells of the conservative establishment look the other way and Fox pumps racial rage into the media bloodstream 24/7. Source: New York Times

I have gotten into a Twitter fight with Andrew Breitbart a few months ago over the issue of John Lewis and his bare-faced twisting of the facts that John Lewis was, in fact, called a n**ger. Once again, he tried to smear the reputation of a man, who gave his life to fighting for civil rights of others because of his own experiences and journey in the United States. Had it not been for the white farmer, Roger Spooner and his wife Eloise, coming forward to defend Shirley Sherrod, the accusations may have stuck and she would have been the Tom Robinson of 2010. We need to confront race issues head-on so that hustlers like Andrew Breitbart won't be in a position to hijack the news with lies and smear tactics. What happened to the country that elected its first black president in 2008? It is also ironic that the black farmers, along with Shirley Sherrod, who prevailed in a lawsuit against the USDA, have yet to see a penny from that $1.25 billion settlement. The Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are pointing fingers as to when the money will be paid. Once again, blacks are being victimized by the system that comes to them during campaigns leading up to elections for their votes.