Our History

The Sherrod Institute is the parent entity to four organizations:

The Southwest Georgia Project for Community Education, The Charles Sherrod Community

Development Corporation, New Communities, Inc. and Resora.

The roots of the Institute began in the summer of '61 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) dispatched our founder, Rev. Charles Sherrod to Southwest Georgia to register disenfranchised area Blacks to vote. His organizing kickstarted a civil rights campaign that would become nationally prominent. The Albany Movement mobilized thousands locally and drew activists across the country, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The campaign spread throughout Southwest Georgia, including to neighboring Baker County, where Sherrod would meet a farmer's daughter and his future wife, Shirley Miller. As they organized, the couple broke with SNCC over philosophical differences, starting their own civil rights initiative known as the Southwest Georgia Project. As they put their lives on the line empowering Blacks, the Sherrods also witnessed people losing their jobs and homes due to their civil rights activism. It inspired them and others to create an independent community, where Black families could collectively own the land, grow their food and raise their families in peace. New Communities, as it was called, became the Country's first Community Land Trust and the largest single landholding owned by Blacks in U.S. However, several years of drought and discriminatory government loan practices would lead to the seizure of the farm and community. For decades, the Sherrods were forced to accept their unfair loss. That is, until they joined a class action lawsuit, where they, and other Black farmers, won a settlement. It allowed the Sherrods to recover, purchase and gain title to what was formerly the largest plantation in Georgia. That former plantation is now known as New Communities at Cypress Pond. Just south of Albany, it's where the Sherrods have resumed their mission and work, helping move underserved Black farmers toward education, access and independence.