Archive for the ‘Al Sharpton’ Category

Rev. Al Sharpton Biography | MSNBC

Rev. Al Sharpton serves as the host of PoliticsNation, which airs from 6:00-7:00 p.m. ET on msnbc.

With over 40 years of experience as a community leader, politician, minister and advocate, the Rev. Al Sharpton is one of Americas most-renownedcivilrights leaders. Sharptons highly visible career began at the tender age of four when he preached his first sermon.

A successful civil rights career soon followed, helping Sharpton hold such notable positions as the Youth Director of New Yorks Operation Breadbasket, Director of Ministers for National Rainbow Push coalition, and founder of his own broad-based progressive civil rights organization, the National Action Network (NAN), one of the leading civil rights organizations in the world. Since its inception in 1991, NAN has expanded to encompass chapters throughout the United States and maintain important regional offices in Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, GA; Detroit, MI; Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX;LasVegas, NV; and Los Angeles, CA.

Rev. Sharpton also hosts a nationally syndicated radio show that broadcasts in 40 markets, five days a week.

He resides inNewYorkand has two daughters, Dominique and Ashley.

Get the latest news from PoliticsNation.

Follow Rev. Al Sharptons activity on msnbc.com.

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Rev. Al Sharpton Biography | MSNBC

Al Sharpton, Reconsidered – The New York Times

Mr. Sharpton is many things to many people a freedom fighter, a boogeyman, a racial opportunist, an aging man just hanging on. But he has used his entire career to tell America a story about itself that it does not want to hear: that racism exists today, and is pervasive outside of the Deep South. And he has worked ceaselessly toward two intertwined, impossible goals. First, the demand for equal rights for all. The second is about securing his legacy as the Martin Luther King of the North.

What I want it to be is I helped urbanize the King movement, Mr. Sharpton said. I was the one that could bring the King movement into the Northern, urban centers. But where Dr. Kings activism led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Mr. Sharptons efforts havent amounted to national reform.

Mr. Sharpton, 63, figured hed be retired by now. He thought hed keep his Sunday-morning MSNBC program, PoliticsNation, and his daily radio show, Keepin It Real. He said he was ready to name a successor to his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, and the marching, strategizing and agitating that came with it. All that was left to do was build a civil rights museum in Harlem. But riding off into a life of punditry isnt an option with Mr. Trump in office. Mr. Sharpton said he and his allies thought they were poised to help a President Hillary Clinton pass national police reform legislation. His mission is now different, and more modest.

Youve got to preserve what youve got done, he said. It will not matter if he revokes the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act of Dr. King. You need to preserve the racial profiling laws, and police reform like stop and frisk, he continued. Otherwise, itll be a bygone era.

Now 133 pounds, Mr. Sharpton is less than half the man he was for much of his life. A morning salad and banana serve as his only real sustenance for the day, and in my time with him, he drank nothing but green tea not even water. His flamboyant conk is now steely gray, slicked back over his thinning crown. Hes quick to joke, but he rarely laughs. He has long since replaced his sweats with bespoke suits.

But the new Al Sharpton is the same person he always was.

Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born in 1954 to a middle-class family who had a house in a nice neighborhood in Queens. At 4, before he even knew how to read, young Al began preaching, and often practiced at home in his mothers robe. When he was just a boy, his mother connected Al with two pastors, Bishop F.D. Washington and the Rev. Dr. Bill Jones. They called him Boy Wonder, and he toured the country preaching before he was even a teenager. In 1967, Dr. Jones introduced the young preacher to a 26-year-old civil-rights activist named Jesse Jackson. Mr. Jackson took him under his wing, and Al decided he wanted to spend his life like the men who looked after him, fighting for civil rights in the prophetic tradition of Dr. King, who was assassinated when Mr. Sharpton was 13.

In 1971, when he was 16, Mr. Sharpton founded his first civil rights organization, the National Youth Movement, with money from Bayard Rustin, the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. He met James Brown, who adopted him as his godson in 1973; for most of the next decade, Mr. Sharpton was always at the singers side. If Jesse Jackson taught Mr. Sharpton how to organize, it was James Brown who taught him how to perform.

I would watch what moves and what songs excited people, and I would take notes, Mr. Sharpton told me. Because youve got to keep peoples attention.

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Al Sharpton, Reconsidered - The New York Times

Al Sharpton tears into South Carolina’s Catherine Templeton …

The Rev. Al Sharpton on Sunday slammed Republican South Carolina governor candidateCatherine Templeton for her comments on the campaign trail about her family's ties to the Confederacy.

During his weekly "Gotcha" segment on MSNBC's "Politics Nation,"Sharpton criticized Templeton for speaking fondly of the Confederacy.

He was referring to remarks she made last month at Bob Jones University, where she told a mostly student crowd that her relatives fought for the South in the Civil War because "the federal government was telling us how to live."

"I think it's important to note that my family didn't fight because we had slaves. My family fought because the federal government was telling us how to live," Templeton said.

The Greenville News reported Templeton's family owned 66 slaves.

Her campaign told the newspaper of the findings, "This campaign is about the future, not about the past."

Sharpton said those comments left Templeton with a "full carton of egg on her face."

"Past is prologue, and themorally convenient idea that resistance to government should trump the moral baseline of not defending slavery is one of the fixtures that's brought white nationalism back to the forefront. Well, that and this presidency," Sharpton said.

Templeton, a Mount Pleasant attorney and former state agency director, hasrepeatedly aligned herself with President Donald Trump. Upon learning that her family owned slaves, Templeton said she would embrace her family "warts and all."

"The warts are ugly and like racism, spread via contact with the infected. But as racists have been finding out for roughly the last 40 years, Rev. Sharpton's got a mean ointment to help with that. Try rubbing this one on your brain: I gotcha!" he said, pointing at the camera.

Mark Powell,Templeton's campaign spokesman, toldThe Post and Courier the MSNBC segment was a reflection that "liberals hate Catherine Templeton."

"We're not exactly shocked that Al Sharpton and the radicals at MSNBC are doing everything they can to distort and attack her. They're scared of her commitment to true conservative reform. And they should be,"Powell said in a statement.

Templeton is one of five GOP contenders vying for the governorship. Three Democrats are also running for the seat.

Reach Caitlin Byrd at 843-937-5590 and follow her on Twitter @MaryCaitlinByrd.

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Al Sharpton: Trump ‘Has Proposed Some of the Most Racist …

by Pam Key6 Feb 20180

Tuesday on MSNBCs The Beat, network host Al Sharpton discussed Donald Trump, Jr. saying his father isnt racist because all the rappers, all the this, all his African-American friends, from Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, have pictures with him.

Sharpton responded by ripping Trump and said he had become one who has proposed some of the most racist, bigoted policies.

Sharpton said, I met Donald Trump marching on him about Central Park. Later, he tried to turn Democrat and came to a few of our conventions. Then he went all the way back right with Birtherism.

He added, We havent changed. He changed. And what hes changed to become is one who has proposed some of the most racist, bigoted policies. When he was talking right, we took pictures with him and welcomed to him to our events. When he went left, we stood up for what was right. He is he promoting racism.

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Breitbart TV, Racism, Donald Trump, Rev. Al Sharpton

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Al Sharpton: Trump 'Has Proposed Some of the Most Racist ...

Rev. Al Sharpton: What Should The Agenda Be For 2018? | Black …

Its a new year and Rev. Al Sharpton is determined to get the year started right by reminding us why we need to keep fighting.

I would hope that one of the things that we do in the new year is take a look at where we are, explained Sharpton.

This year will be the 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sharpton asks, Where are we a half-century later?

Many of the things that he foughtand died for, explained Sharpton has been, is jeopardizedby this current climate.

Sharpton encourages us to, look at the legislation and the policies that are being threatened and rolled back.

You may have been drunk coming in but you need to be sober in the New Year, expressed Sharpton.

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