Shirley Sherrod Part 2: Telling the Story

This was going to be an analysis of the politics, the decision trees, the steps that led to the present debacle, and the possible options going forward for the players in the Shirley Sherrod saga. Then, I realized that the internet will be filled with that tomorrow. How will it play in November? Can Obama afford to hire her back? Can he afford not to? The talking heads that charged headlong into a wrongheaded conclusion will continue to charge, unabated, without my help, and in spite of my protest. I may return to these thoughts, but not now.

There’s a story here that has to be told, and, I fear, won’t be, at least not broadly. I’ll do my best here, and hope that others notice it, too.


Having arrived later to it than others, I didn’t have a chance to condemn her comments before the context was challenged by the full video. But I’d like to think that, even with that truncated version, I would’ve seen her comments at the NAACP meeting to be, as it now clearly is, part of a conversion story.

This whole sordid affair made me realize this: If we’re not careful, we will lose one of the most powerful narratives from public discourse – the conversion story. At stake are the “come to Jesus” moments, the “only Nixon could go to China” moments, the “only a Southerner could pass Civil Rights legislation” moments. It includes the late Senator Byrd’s story, from racist Exalted Cyclops in the KKK to ally and admirer of the nation’s first African-American president.

Somehow, a conversion story is more compelling, more meaningful, than the story of someone who starts on the right track and stays that way. And it should mean more – with apologies to people who get things more or less right on the first try – precisely because decent human beings everywhere -- Americans or not, Christians, Muslims, and atheists -- know and love the story of redemption and conversion. It can bring out unimaginable greatness from ordinary people.

Clinton put it well at Byrd’s memorial service. On Byrd's racist past, he said this: “I'll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollers of West Virginia; he was trying to get elected. And maybe he did something he shouldn't have done, and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that's what a good person does.”

It’s the story of Milton Eisenhower, LBJ, and St. Paul.

It’s her story, too.

Look at Sherrod’s reaction, about 13 1/2 minutes into the CNN interview.

Her identity and value system are probably under the gravest attack she has known at any point since her father's murder. She is awaiting what Eloise Spooner has to say. There might have been a part of her that was bracing for the worst. We don’t know why, or how, they lost touch. Maybe they just drifted away. But people, and memories, can change over the years.

Then Eloise defends her, with a simplicity that surpasses anything that could have been scripted. Sherrod celebrates.

That’s the closest Sherrod gets to crying, at any point in the CNN interview or at the NAACP chapter meeting. It’s the look of someone whose tremendous faith in the fundamental decency of human beings has been tested, and ultimately vindicated, in the most wonderful way.

At that moment, she is someone who knows, without a doubt, that she made the right choice by embracing a more forgiving, inclusive path on race, despite, or because of, her background.

This story isn't just about faith in racial reconciliation. It's about faith that if you do a good job, if you work hard, that things can turn out alright. 

As a human being, she needed that faith confirmed, and fortunately for her, she got it at precisely the most important moment.

I want to know what she was thinking after her initial celebration, as she stared into space, listening to Eloise, yet looking like her mind was elsewhere. If I had to guess, she was thinking about her father, whose murder gave her life a singular purpose, and whose memory and legacy carried her through so much, to this moment of hope and triumph.

It is a story that transcends a specific faith; but this old Christian hymn seems to capture the feelings best.

I love to tell the story,
for those who know it best
seem hungering and thirsting
to hear it like the rest.
And when, in scenes of glory,
I sing the new, new song,
'twill be the old, old story
that I have loved so long.

It's not over. She still needs to get her job back. She's been through hell, and may continue to suffer. But before we start parsing Glenn Beck's words and implications for the midterm election, stop, and consider this: We got to see one sincere, beautiful moment of validation for a good and decent person, and it was captured on national television.

That, more than anything, is why my anger at this mess is tempered by gratitude, and why, I hope, that this story will be remembered for the good that could, and did, come from this one woman's faith in human decency.