Biography rev al sharpton

He rallied politicians, entertainers, and members of the wider black community to pursue the police officer responsible for the arrest and sodomy of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant. In another case of police brutality, Sharpton helped to press the justice system to prosecute the officers responsible for shooting Amadou Diallo, a Guinean immigrant.

Sharpton vied for the Democratic nomination for U. While his August announcement was initially received with indifference by some, it was received with welcomed excitement by others. Arguing that the Democrats and Republicans had become too similar on issues such as war, health care, business deregulation and taxes, Sharpton insisted that he was running a broad-based campaign.

Using the line, "Keep the Dream Alive: Don't Waste Your Vote," Sharpton's point platform emphasized four goals: the right to vote, the right to public education of equally high quality, the right to healthcare of equally high quality and women's equal rights. One of ten candidates vying for the Democratic nomination, Sharpton did not have the financial backing that his competitors enjoyed.

However, monetary restraints were not Sharpton's only challenges. Even so, Sharpton's public showing helped to keep the issues of the underserved in the forefront of the race well beyond his March concession of defeat to Senator John Kerry. Married to former James Brown back-up singer Kathy Jordan since the mids, the couple has two daughters Dominique and Ashley.

Brennan, Carol. Shirelle Phelps. Detroit: Gale Research, Formicola, Jo Renee. Jo Renee Formicola and Hubert Morken. Klein, Michael. Al Sharpton. New York: Castillo International, Taylor, Clarence. New York: Routledge, Chappell, Kevin. Sherman, Scott. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

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Biography rev al sharpton

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About this article Sharpton Al Updated About encyclopedia. Sharpsburg, Battle of. In , he established the National Youth Movement. His many critics and supporters have watched him run for Senate, mayor of New York and as a candidate for president. His dramatic style brings popular and media attention to his causes, and he has hosted his own MSNBC show, PoliticsNation , since Sharpton was born Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr.

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 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 s, 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 , Sharpton, then a high school student, became the youth director for the program. In , 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 NYM.

During the s, 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 The following year, Sharpton became embroiled in the Tawana Brawley case — a case that would haunt him for years.

Brawley, an African American teenager, claimed that she was raped by a group of white men — some 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. December 20, Archived from the original on December 25, Retrieved December 28, BBC News.

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London, England: Psychology Press. February 25, Boston Globe. Archived from the original on June 21, Retrieved February 24, November 27, Archived from the original on July 7, August 5, September 27, Retrieved January 20, A seven-month New York State grand jury inquiry has compiled overwhelming evidence that Tawana Brawley fabricated her story of abduction and sexual abuse by a gang of racist white men last year, according to investigators, witnesses and official summaries of evidence presented to the panel.

July 22, Retrieved July 25, New York Times. Hardy, Esq". January 21, February 24, Retrieved March 12, The Smoking Gun. April 7, April 8, Al Sharpton and his bugged briefcase". Daily News. Retrieved December 12, Archived from the original on June 23, Retrieved June 20, Archived from the original on October 5, Retrieved October 2, January 17, November 7, Retrieved July 10, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.

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Archived from the original on November 18, Pittsburgh Press. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: E. Scripts Company. Retrieved February 17, Sharpton, who lives with his wife and two daughters in Englewood, N. Washington, D. December 16, Al Sharpton, Sharpton and Non-profit Corporation". April 30, Archived from the original on August 13, Retrieved September 5, The Seattle Times.

Archived from the original on July 14, Al is Bowing Out". April 2, Retrieved April 7, Senate Democratic primary election results New York, ". Our Campaigns. September 15, Archived from the original on August 30, Retrieved February 7, September 13, September 9, Archived from the original on November 26, The Green Papers. July 29, Archived from the original on February 28, Retrieved June 12, August 10, Retrieved January 31, Archived from the original on May 1, The Boston Globe.

Business Insider. Archived from the original on July 1, Retrieved November 8, Demeritt, Jennifer June Archived from the original on June 29, Salomon, Sheryl Huggins August 27, The Root. Archived from the original on August 31, Saslow, Eli February 7, Stewart, Nikita; Horowitz, Jason August 24, Thompson, Krissah April 16, Wikimedia Commons has media related to Al Sharpton.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Al Sharpton. Black Lives Matter. Louis protests. Breonna Taylor protests George Floyd protests changes made name changes removal of monuments and memorials reactions trial of Derek Chauvin violence and controversies Donald Trump photo op at St. In Jackson, then a young Chicago minister, named the year-old Sharpton as youth director of his group, Operation Breadbasket.

Around the same time, Sharpton grew close to Brown, whose son, a friend of Sharpton's, had been killed in a car accident. Before he even finished high school, Sharpton was working in the concert promotion business. Brown introduced Sharpton to two other people who would figure prominently in his life. One was backup singer Kathy Jordan, whom Sharpton met in and married in l Together they have two daughters, and Jordan now works for the U.

The other was boxing promoter Don King , whom Sharpton met in while promoting a Brown concert that coincided with the Muhammad Ali- George Foreman heavyweight title fight. Soon, Sharpton was seen at the ringside of major prize fights. In the early s Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement, an organization with the stated purpose of fighting drugs and raising money for ghetto youth.

As the l6-year-old director of the organization, Sharpton made his first newspaper headlines in by urging black children in Harlem to participate in the African celebration of Kwanza instead of traditional Christmas events. The organization was later renamed the United African Movement, which Sharpton touted as a charitable anti-drug group with 30, members in 16 cities.

But Victor Genecin, a New York state prosecutor, told the Washington Post that the group was "never anything more than a one-room office in Brooklyn with a telephone and an ever-changing handful of staffers who took Al Sharpton's messages and ran his errands. In Sharpton again made headlines when he led a group of older black leaders into a meeting with New York City's deputy mayor to protest the police shooting and death of a year-old black youth.

The meeting was prompted by a Sharpton-led demonstration of people at City Hall. Later in the decade Sharpton began experimenting with protest tactics of disorderly conduct. He was arrested for the first time in after a sit-in at New York City Hall to demand more summer jobs for teenagers. Later, he was ejected from a Board of Education meeting after sitting in front of the board president during a protest.

Another time, he led a group along Wall Street , painting red X marks on office buildings he claimed were fronts for drug dealing. By marching, by putting people in the streets. Tell me when in the history of the civil rights movement the goal wasn't to stir things up. By and large, however, Sharpton was not known beyond his Brooklyn neighborhood.

That changed in , when he led the demands for a murder indictment for white subway gunman Bernhard Goetz, who shot four unarmed black teenagers he said were trying to rob him. Goetz was indicted on a murder charge but acquitted on all but minor gun charges. As Goetz's trial unfolded, Sharpton led daily protests on the courthouse steps, often finding his way onto the nightly news.

Sharpton gained national prominence with his tactics in the Howard Beach racial killing. In that case, three black men leaving a pizza parlor in the community were assaulted by a group of bat-wielding white youths. One black man died when he was chased into traffic and run over by a car. Sharpton led a "Days of Outrage" protest that shut down traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and halted subway service in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

A year later, he became closely involved with the case of year-old Tawana Brawley, an upstate New York girl who claimed she was raped by five or six white men, one of whom had a police officer's badge. Sharpton, as one of Brawley's three "advisers," publicly accused several officers of the crime and persuaded Brawley not to cooperate with the state investigation.

Eventually, several inquiries strongly indicated that Brawley had fabricated the entire incident. Sharpton "seemed utterly out of control, likening the state attorney general to Adolf Hitler and demanding the arrest of Duchess County officials without a shred of proof," wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer's Claude Lewis. They thought that by merely being mysterious they could bamboozle us.

They refused to speak specifics about the case and employed mysticism to enhance charges of racism to put the authorities in a defensive position. Both proved to be virtuosos at distorting reality. They are brazen people with no scruples. To the amazement of many, Sharpton survived his curious role in the Brawley affair, as well as revelations in that he was an informant for the FBI.

Sharpton confirmed that for five years he secretly supplied federal law enforcement agencies with information on Don King , reputed organized crime figures, black leaders, and elected officials. In and Sharpton again beat the odds, prompting Newsday columnist Murray Kempton to compare him to "a cat who has nine lives. He just keeps surviving. At the beginning of the case, Sharpton wrote to the grand jury : "Since I was a young child, I was a minister.

I know no other life than serving others and allowing God to take care of me. I never owned a car, house, jewelry, etc. My intent is my causes, not wealth. Sharpton's most recent cause was Yusef Hawkins, a black year-old who was killed by a bat-wielding mob in Bensonhurst in August The murder stunned New York, which was already beset by spiraling racial tensions.

To many New Yorkers it symbolized a breakdown in racial civility that had no quick explanation or readily available cure. Hawkins's father, Moses Stewart, called Sharpton for help the day after the murder. I wanted the world to know that my son was murdered because he was black. This is what Sharpton does. He brings it to the forefront. Sharpton led protest marches through Bensonhurst and led a group standing a noisy vigil outside the courtroom where two white teens were being tried for Hawkins's murder.

Not-guilty verdicts, Sharpton told Timemagazine, would be "telling us to burn down the city. On January 12, , while preparing to lead a march in that same Bensonhurst neighborhood to protest the light sentence given to Hawkins's killer, Sharpton was attacked by a man who stabbed him in the chest. The attack occurred in front of more than 15 supporters and police officers.

Sharpton was hospitalized, but officials said his wound was not serious. Michael Riccardi, 27, of Bensonhurst, was immediately arrested and charged with the stabbing. Shortly following this incident, Sharpton visited London in the Spring of in an attempt to call attention to the killing of Rolan Adams, a black London teenager who had been allegedly stabbed to death by a gang of whites.

However, Sharpton was less then credible with his facts— he did not know Adam's correct name or age and showed marked confusion over police attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice.