Shirley Sherrod is the co-founder and executive director of the Southwest Georgia Project for
Community Education, Inc. (1966) and the co-founder and Vice President for New
Communities, Inc. (1969), the first Community Land Trust in the United States. She works to
advance systemic equity and justice (namely in the food, agriculture, and rural development
sectors) through training and advocacy.
Shirley is no stranger to this work. In 2009, she was appointed by the Obama Administration as
the Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the Department of Agriculture. She became
the first African American to hold this position. Before this appointment, Shirley spent decades
with the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, where she helped Black farmers overcome the
obstacles of farming while black through outreach and cooperative development.
Shirley became active in the civil rights movement in 1965 after the murder of her father when
she was 17 years old. This has a profound impact on her life and led to her decision to stay in the
South and help build a more just system.
Shirley has a B.A. in sociology from Albany State University in Albany, Georgia, and an M.A.
in Community Development from Antioch University in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 2015, she was
awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Sojourner-Douglas College in Baltimore, Maryland. She is
the recipient of many awards including the James Beard Foundation Award, Estelle
Whitherspoon Lifetime Achievement Award, she has been inducted into the National Co-op Hall
of Fame. Shirley is also a Kellogg Foundation National Fellowship Program Fellow.