Accusations of racism have cost federal employee Shirley Sherrod her job at the U.S. Agriculture Department.

The charges stem from remarks she made 24 years ago at a meeting for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She talked about purposely not doing enough to help a white farmer in Georgia.

"The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm he took a long time talking, but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing, but he had come to me for help," she said at that meeting.

"But what he didn't know was that while he was talking, all that time trying to show me that he was superior to me, I was trying to decide how much help I was going to give him," she continued.

"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land," Sherrod said. "So, I didn't give him the full force of what I could do."

Sherrod went on to say that she took the farmer to a white lawyer so that, "his own kind would take care of him."

Sherrod said her comments, which were posted on Monday in a video online, are being misconstrued.

The NAACP said it welcomes her resignation and that it opposes racism of all kinds.