President Obama Expressed 'His Regret' To Shirley Sherrod

**UPDATE**

In a Thursday afternoon phone call the President took time out to express his feelings to Ms. Shirley Sherrod.

'The president told Ms. Sherrod that this misfortune can present an opportunity for her to continue her hard work on behalf of those in need,' the White House said in a statement about a phone call that Obama had with her at midday. 'He hopes that she will do so.'

Press secretary Robert Gibbs' office released a statement describing Obama's call at midday Thursday following her appearance on a host of nationally broadcast interviews. From network to network, she said she wanted to talk to Obama about her wretched week. But also said she felt there was no need for him to apologize to her, as Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had done earlier.

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Shirley Sherrod, the woman at the center of the racism storm that has consumed Washington the past few days, told me she doesn’t know if President Obama supports her, but she welcomes the opportunity to talk to him about it, and to offer a few lessons of her own.

“I can’t say that the president is fully behind me, I would hope that he is…I would love to talk to him,” Sherrod said on 'GMA.'

“He is not someone who has experienced what I have experienced through life, being a person of color. He might need to hear some of what I could say to him,” she told me. “I don’t know if that would guide him in a way that he deals with others like me, but I at least would like to have the opportunity to talk to him about it.”

No word yet from the White House on whether the President will call Sherrod.

Yesterday both the White House and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack offered a public apology to Sherrod for their rush to judgment after a viral video clip of her speaking at an NAACP event emerged. Last night Vilsack also visited with the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss Sherrod’s ouster.

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