SAN DIEGO – Fired U.S. Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod, speaking Thursday at a convention of black journalists, said that she hopes her story will be a catalyst for racial dialogue.

Sherrod also said she intends to sue the conservative activist whose blog post of an out-of-context video led to her ouster.

“I definitely will” sue Andrew Breitbart, Sherrod said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego. “What do I have to be afraid of?”

In the small portion of the video posted on Breitbart’s website, Sherrod, who is black, said she had been reluctant to help a white farmer who sought her aid 24 years ago. In the complete speech, she used the episode to describe how she subsequently recognized that her prejudice was wrong, and ultimately helped the farmer.

Sherrod was initially forced to resign her agency job, but when the context of the remarks became known, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized to her and offered her a new position at the department in the outreach division.

Breitbart could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.

Sherrod’s remarks to the convention came the same day President Obama made his most extensive comments to date on Sherrod’s firing, calling it an overreaction and saying that she “deserves better than what happened last week.”

In a speech to the National Urban League in Washington, Obama accepted some blame for the overreaction on behalf of his administration. But he criticized the initial release of the video of Sherrod’s speech, saying it was “based on selected and deceiving excerpts.”

The president said the story Sherrod told in that speech was “exactly what we need to hear,” and he urged the country to have an extended conversation about the biases that everyone holds.

“Rather than jump to conclusions,” he said, “we should all look inward and try to examine what’s in our own hearts.”

In San Diego, Sherrod talked about the personal toll her firing last week had taken.

“I felt like a failure after July 19,” Sherrod said. She said she was still considering a job offer from the Obama administration, but would take a position only if it would allow a serious look at economic and racial inequities in rural development.