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Al Sharpton – Civil Rights Activist, Pastor – Biography.com

Civil Rights Activist, Pastor(1954)

Al Sharpton is an outspoken and sometimes controversial political activist working to lead the fight against racial prejudice and injustice.

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quotes

Sometimes you just have to live long enough for your message to catch up.

We are not in the business of revenge. We are in the business of justice.

Al Sharpton

Ordained in the Pentecostal church as a child, Al Sharpton is an outspoken and sometimes controversial political activist in the fight against racial prejudice and injustice. In 1971, he established the National Youth Movement. His many critics and supporters have watched him run for Senate, mayor of New York and candidate for president. His dramatic style brings popular and media attention to his causes, and he has hosted his own MSNBC show, PoliticsNation, since 2011.

Social/political activist and religious leader Al Sharpton was born Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. on October 3, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. Outspoken and sometimes controversial, Sharpton has become a leading figure in the fight against racial prejudice and injustice. He developed his commanding speaking style as a child. A frequent churchgoer, Sharpton became an ordained minister in the Pentecostal church at the age of 10. He often traveled to deliver sermons and once toured with Mahalia Jackson, the famed gospel singer.

Sharpton attended public schools in Queens and Brooklyn.In the late 1960s, he became active in the civil rights movement, joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The SCLC had a program called Operation Breadbasket, which sought to encourage diversity in the workplace by applying social and economic pressure on businesses. In 1969, Sharpton, then a high school student, became the youth director for the program. He later participated in protests against the A&P supermarket chain in the early 1970s.

In 1972, Sharpton graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School. He spent two years at Brooklyn College as a contemporary politics major before dropping out. During this time, Sharpton remained politically active and eventually established his own organization, the National Youth Movement.

During the 1980s, Sharpton got involved in many high-profile cases in the New York City area that affected the African-American community and led several protests against what he believed were injustices and incidents of racial discrimination. He helped keep media scrutiny on the racially-based murder of a black teenager named Michael Griffith in 1986.

The following year, Sharpton became embroiled in the Tawana Brawley casea case that would haunt him for years. Brawley, an African-American teenager, claimed that she was raped by a group of white mensome of whom were allegedly police officers. The case was later dismissed by a grand jury, which reportedly concluded that the teenager had made up the story. But this came after months of media frenzy around the case, largely encouraged by Sharpton. He was even sued by the district attorney working the case for making slanderous remarks. Sharpton was found guilty and fined for his comments.

His reputation damaged, Sharpton faced more charges in 1990. He was tried and acquitted of stealing from the NYM. No matter what problems he encountered, he remained dedicated to his activism, arranging protests and giving press conferences. During one such protest in Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighborhood in 1991, a man stabbed Sharpton in the chest. Rushed to the hospital, he had surgery to repair the damage and made a full recovery.

In April 2014, the Smoking Gun web site reported that Sharpton had been a paid FBI informant during the 1980s and had been a key player in taking down the Genovese crime family.In defending his work law enforcement, he said, Rats are usually people that were with other rats. I was not and am not a rat, because I wasnt with the rats. Im a cat. I chased rats.

Sharpton tried again to win public office in the 1990s. He had made one unsuccessful run for for the New York State Assembly in 1978. But this time, Sharpton had his sights on the national political arena, trying for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1992 and 1994. He also ran for mayor of New York in 1997. In 2004, Sharpton attracted national attention by throwing his hat into the ring to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, but he failed to garner enough support to become a contender for the nomination.

To this day, Sharpton remains a political and social activist, with many supporters and critics. He is known for his deft handling of the media, leading some to call him the master of the sound bite. Others are concerned that his flare for the dramatic overshadows the causes he represents or he uses the causes he champions to further his own agenda. Sharpton seems to be pay no heed to his critics and continues to throw his talents behind important causes, cases and events in the African-American community, including the rebuilding of New Orleans after the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In June 2009, the Reverend Al Sharpton led a memorial for Michael Jackson at Harlem's Apollo Theater. A lifelong friend of the Jackson family, Sharpton said Jackson was a "trailblazer" and a "historic figure" who loved the Apollo Theater.

More recently, Sharpton became involved in the Trayvon Martin case. He held rallies in Florida to fight for justice in the Trayvon Martin case. Martin, an unarmed African-American teen, was shot to death in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman, a member of a neighborhood watch group, in February 2012. Zimmerman has claimed self-defense, but others feel that Martin was a victim of racial profiling. Initially the local police did not file any charges, but Zimmerman was eventually tried for second degree murder, though he was found not guilty.

Some had worried that Sharpton's presence in Florida would turn already tense race relations into riots. But Sharpton called for a peaceful approach. "We are not in the business of revenge. We are in the business of justice," he told the press.

A well-known public figure, Sharpton continues to share his views and to tackle today's issues through his television and radio programs. He has been the host of PoliticsNation since 2011 on MSNBC. He also has his own syndicated radio show, Keepin' It Real.

Sharpton has continued to be involved in direct activist interventions, taking a lead role in organizing protests against the police-related deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York. Sharpton worked with Garner's family to request his death be investigated as a civil rights violation on a federal level. Sharpton has also been an ally of New York mayor Bill de Blasio, with President Barack Obama also speaking at the National Action Network's annual convention in the spring of 2014.

Nonetheless, Sharpton also continued to deal with controversy, contending with a New York Times story about owing a large sum of taxes (which he declared to be untrue) and distancing himself from NAN litigator Sanford Rubenstein after the attorney was accused of rape.

Sharpton has two daughters, Dominique and Ashley, from his marriage to Kathy Jordan, with the couple having separated. As of reports surfacing in 2013, he has been seeing stylist Aisha McShaw.

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Al Sharpton - Civil Rights Activist, Pastor - Biography.com

Al Sharpton Lauds Arrest of NYPD Sergeant Who Shot Disturbed Bronx Woman – Observer


Observer
Al Sharpton Lauds Arrest of NYPD Sergeant Who Shot Disturbed Bronx Woman
Observer
The Rev. Al Sharpton applauded today's indictment of Sergeant Hugh Barry for the fatal shooting of Deborah Danner, a 66-year-old schizophrenic Bronx resident, last fallbut asserted his National Action Network would follow the legal proceedings ...
Furious SBA Head Says Cop Charged In Bronx Woman's Death 'Did Everything Right'CBS New York
NYPD sergeant indicted for fatally shooting mentally ill Bronx womanABC News
NY officer pleads not guilty in mentally ill woman's deathCharlotte Observer
WCBI -WNYC -WABC-TV -New York Times
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Al Sharpton Lauds Arrest of NYPD Sergeant Who Shot Disturbed Bronx Woman - Observer

Sharpton: African-Americans Who ‘Don’t Trust’ Trump to Protect Them From White Supremacists Increasingly Buying … – Breitbart News

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Sunday on MSNBCs PoliticsNation, host Al Sharpton said African-Americans diverse in age and gender are now increasingly taking up legal arms because They dont trust the Trump administration to protect them from the rise of white supremacists aggression that we have seen in the past year.

Sharpton said The story of legal gun ownership among black Americans is as combustible as it is complex. Some have contended that modern gun control begins not with school shootings but with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Who in May of 1967 legally entered the California state house, brandishing shotguns and pistols to protest a bill proposed specifically to restrict their gun rights. The visual of legally armed black revolutionaries promised then-Governor Ronald Reagan to sign the bill into law forbidding public carrying of loaded firearms. That and other incidents of the era prompted lawmakers to pass the first national gun control legislation of the postwar era, launching the gun debate as we know it.

A debate that dogged the Obama administration where sales exploded under the right wings assumption that ownership would be restricted. But NBC News has found that its African-Americans that are now increasingly taking up legal arms in the Trump era, he continued. While the buyers are diverse in age and gender, the reasoning is singular. They dont trust the Trump administration to protect them from the rise of white supremacists aggression that we have seen in the past year.

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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Sharpton: African-Americans Who 'Don't Trust' Trump to Protect Them From White Supremacists Increasingly Buying ... - Breitbart News

Bill Cosby ‘Stung’ Even Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson Won’t Play Race Card for Him: Report – Breitbart News

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Bill Cosby is reportedly stung that even Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are refusing to play the race card for him.

Cosby, who has been accused of sexual assault by nearly 60 women, has reportedly been charged with drugging and assaulting former Temple University athlete Andrea Constand, then 31, in his home in 2004. His legal team plans to play the race card when Cosbys trial is set to start on June 5. Cosby has denied all of the charges and reportedly faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

A source from Cosbys camp told the New York Post over the weekend that, Jesse [Jackson] claims to have forgotten Bills number and Al Sharpton wont even return his phone calls.

Both of them were vocal in their support of Michael Jackson and the charges against Mike involved kids, the source reportedly added. So, is this really that toxic when you compare the two? Any other time theyd at least rally to say something about innocent until otherwise proven.

As the Associated Press noted, when the prosecution struck two black jurors during the jury selection process, Cosbys lawyers attacked what they claimed was the prosecutions systemic exclusion of African-Americans.

Two black jurors were ultimately selected for the 12-person jury and two more were among the six people chosen as alternates.

Cosby reportedly spoke to a black media outlet last month about the racist history of the United States and his daughters reportedly have claimed that the racist mainstream media have been lynching their father.

Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson told the Associated Press that Cosby may be signaling to jurors that you have a mission on this jury, to make sure hes not treated as a black man whos come on aggressively to white women.

She also pointed out that Cosby is not the average black defendant because he is the African-American celebrity who crossed the race divide. He had enormous appeal to white households.

James Braxton Peterson, the director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University, told the Associated Press that it isstriking and ironic that Cosby is playing the race card given that hes demonized poor black people in the past.

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Bill Cosby 'Stung' Even Al Sharpton & Jesse Jackson Won't Play Race Card for Him: Report - Breitbart News

Al Sharpton to Dems: No Point Appealing to ‘Archie Bunker’ Trump Voters – Breitbart News

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Reverend Al Sharpton thinks that in order to win elections, Democrats must stop trying to get the Archie Bunker vote and instead focus on maximizing the partys minority vote.

During a Friday afternoon MSNBC appearance, Sharpton railed against elected officials and consultants who want Democrats to try and become elephants with donkey skin on, emphasizing that it was pointless to appeal to Archie Bunker voters who support President Donald Trump. Sharpton insisted that these Archie Bunker voters will never cast their ballots for Democrats. He made his remarks a day after Republican Greg Gianforte won his special election for Montanas open House seat by six points even after he allegedly body-slammed a reporter the day before the election.

In a recent interview with BuzzFeed, Sharpton said Hillary Clintons biggest mistake in 2016 was that she did not mobilize in the black community.

You lost Michigan, by what, 15,000, 20,000 votes? You couldve got that if you mobilized two housing projects or three churches, he told the left-wing outlet. Never touched them. So in many ways I think that the whole question of, Oh we gotta reach out to the Appalachian and the blue collar workers and stop the identity politics well, thats one strategy. But what Im saying is that you never worked your own base. You took your base for granted, so its not that you need to go another way, you didnt identify with those in identity politics, thats why you had the lowest turnout you had around blacks in a long time.

Sharpton said though Clinton came to his National Action Network convention, her campaign never engaged us in the campaign.

And I think thats where they did the wrong math in the Clinton campaign. They assumed that well go get all of this because everybody will stay here: young voters, black voters, Latino voters, like Obama, and it didnt happen, he said.

As Democrats plot their electoral strategies for 2018 and 2020, the party is split between those who want to double down on identity politics and those who think Democratsneed to appeal more to working-class white voters.

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Al Sharpton to Dems: No Point Appealing to 'Archie Bunker' Trump Voters - Breitbart News