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Weve been waiting for the issues of race and social justice to reach a boiling point in America, and that time is finally here, Sharpton said, and his audience clapped.

Weve been waiting for an opportunity to lead, and now Im in that position, he said, and they applauded again.

The group was composed of 25 pastors, organizers and community leaders from across the country, all of whom were members of Sharptons National Action Network, and all of whom had traveled to New York in early January at Sharptons request and expense. A summit to discuss and determine our next move, the invitation had read, and they all understood that would mostly mean listening to Sharpton discuss and determine their next move, and they were fine with that. He had always needed an audience had built one on the streets of New York and grown it over four decades, until finally he had become a fixture of the American news cycle. He had a national radio program, a nightly TV show, a nonprofit social justice organization with active chapters in 38 states and a dozen visits each year to the White House. Now he believed the country was facing a racial crisis of unjust policing, and once again the leader of the civil rights movement had called upon himself to respond. The audience had assembled as his muse. Sharpton alone would decide. The next move was his.

We are going to be judged by how we respond in this moment, he told them. What happened in the era of I cant breathe? What happened with Trayvon Martin? I aint getting any more famous. Im in the history books now. Question is, when my moment came, could I get real change? Is my chapter good or bad?

He stood and spoke for an hour until hotel workers arrived with trays of breakfast, and then he waved them out and kept going. His posture was certain and his feet were rooted to the floor. His socks matched his pocket square, which matched his glasses. He felt most himself at the front of the room and always had, ever since his mother built pews in his playroom so he could learn to talk at age 2 to an audience of his sisters dolls. A traveling boy preacher by age 6. Ordained by 9. Organizing voter drives by 12. He had never written out a speech, because he had learned to speak in public before he could read or write. He did his best thinking in front of a crowd, piecing together his thoughts on the fly. It was only when the audience disappeared that he started talking to himself, sometimes second-guessing his effectiveness, asking the same questions during his morning meditations at age 60 that he had begun asking at 25. Am I good enough? Am I more than just a showman? he sometimes wondered.

But now the audience was with him, hanging on his famous, gritty baritone, and he could turn the room dizzy with a joke or hold it still with a long stare. Breakfast turned cold on the buffet table. A scheduled break came and went. He told stories about running for president, meeting Nelson Mandela, befriending Muhammad Ali, getting stabbed by a white supremacist during a march and sitting on stage during President Obamas second inauguration. Sharpton had spent most of his career railing against the American power establishment, but now he was a linchpin of it, expected not only to stir a civil rights movement but also to harness its fracturing parts, not only to accentuate the countrys racial problems but also to solve some of them.

He quoted from his own speeches, eulogies he delivered when Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., and when Eric Garner died after being placed in a chokehold by a police officer in New Yorks Staten Island. Enough! he said. We demand lasting change. Body cameras for all police officers, federal oversight of police violence, the demilitarization of local police these were the changes Sharpton wanted in the next months, and these were the goals by which he now expected to be judged.

They say I want publicity? he said. Thats exactly what I want. I want publicity on the issues.

Yes, Rev. Preach.

You think anybody has ever called in Al Sharpton to keep a secret? We come in to shine the light.

See the article here:
The public life and private doubts of Al Sharpton