Liz Bailey,  Co-Operative Development Foundation

Washington, D.C. - Shirley Sherrod, civil rights leader and cooperative developer, will be among five outstanding cooperative leaders receiving the cooperative community's highest honor on Wednesday, May 4^rd, 2011, when they are inducted into the Cooperative Hall of Fame.  In addition to Sherrod, the 2011 inductees include: agri-business leader, Noel Estenson; international cooperative developers, Gloria and Stanley Kuehn; and former Member of Congress and credit union leader, Daniel A. Mica.  The dinner and induction ceremony will be held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Sherrod, a native of Baker County, Georgia, is a veteran of the civil rights movement who found a way to achieve economic justice and rural land ownership for small and lower-income farmers through collective farming and cooperative development.  As co-founder of a 6,000 acre black-owned cooperative and land trust that was forced into foreclosure, she was a party to the recently- successful class action law suit against US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for discriminatory lending practices.  After the foreclosure, she joined the Georgia field staff of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/LAF, where she spent the next three decades helping small farmers, developing rural cooperatives and building economically viable rural communities.  In July 2009, she was appointed as the USDA Rural Development Georgia State Director by the Obama Administration, a position from which she was forced to resign a year later.

"The roster of the Cooperative Hall of Fame tells the story of the US cooperative community through the lives and accomplishments of extraordinary individuals.  Induction to the Cooperative Hall of Fame is reserved for those who have made genuinely heroic contributions to the cooperative community," said Gasper Kovach, Jr., Board Chair of the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF) which administers the Hall of Fame.  Kovach pointed out that only 147 individuals have been inducted since the Hall of Fame was established in 1974.  The complete roster and the life stories of its members are available at www.heroes.coop.

The Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF) is a 501 (c)(3) non profit organization with a rich history in the U.S. cooperative community and a mission to raise public awareness and stimulate the development of sustainable cooperatives that can contribute to all sectors of the U.S. economy.  For more information on CDF: www.cdf.coop

For Cooperative Hall of Fame dinner or sponsorship information, contact CDF at 703-302-8097 ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).