The Story Behind the Murder of Shirley Sherrod’s Father
The must-read for the day: The Story Behind the 1965 Killing of Sherrod’s Dad.
Her dad was named Hosie Miller, and he was a deacon at Thankful Baptist Church in Newton, Ga., toward the southwest corner of the state. He was also a farmer who, according to CNN, grew corn, peanuts, cotton and cucumbers and raised hogs, cows and goats. Forty-five years ago, Hosie Miller was shot to death — in the back, no less — by a white farmer in what his daughter now describes as ostensibly a dispute over a few cows, although the exact circumstances were murky.
A grand jury investigated the case, and no one was charged. All of the grand jurors were white, as was typically the case before the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s. From that incident, a movement was born. Indeed, according to this article, Shirley Sherrod’s mother — Grace Hall Miller — became the leader of the civil rights movement in Baker County after the killing, organizing marches and other protests from her home. The then 17-year-old Shirley Miller decided to stay in the South and become an activist; she soon married one of the leaders of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, a man by the name of Charles Sherrod. Shirley Sherrod told CNN that “”I decided to stay in the South and work for change.”
How unusual was it for a black man to be killed by a white man in the Deep South up through the mid-1960s with no one brought to justice? Way too common.
Frank says: