Sharpton, Al (1954–)

Civil rights and political activist, minister Sharpton was born in Brooklyn, New York, Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr., and was a fully ordained Pentacostal minister by the time he was 10 years old. Demonstrating strong organizational skills at an early age, by 14 he became youth director of the New York branch of the Chicago-based Operation Breadbasket, a project organized by Jesse Jackson to distribute food in poor black communities. In addition, while still a teenager he founded the National Youth Movement. An entertainer as well as activist, Sharpton also toured with the likes of the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown and gospel music icon Mahalia Jackson, as well as with boxing [Page 1280]promoter Don King, before coming to the national stage as a civil rights activist.

In the 1980s, Sharpton emerged on the national scene when he became involved in high-profile, racially charged court cases in New York. In 1985, he organized protests surrounding the Bernard Goetz court case, in which a white subway rider shot four black youths whom he alleged were going to rob him. In 1986, he organized protests surrounding the Howard Beach court case involving the death of a black man who, trying to escape from a white mob in Queens, New York, was killed after he was hit by a car.

Sharpton's reputation was tarnished in 1987 when he became the spokesperson for Tawana Brawley, a teenager who claimed that she was raped repeatedly by white men, including law enforcement officers, over the course of several days, smeared with human feces in which her attackers wrote racial epithets, and left bound in a plastic trash bag. Although the claims were found to be a hoax—for example, the feces matched samples from her pet dog—Sharpton was unrelenting in his attacks against those whom Brawley accused. One of those falsely accused of raping the young woman, a New York assistant district attorney, successfully sued Sharpton for defamation. Despite the evidence, Sharpton has refused to apologize to any of the falsely accused or even to admit that the case was a hoax. Notwithstanding his tarnished reputation, Sharpton continued to involve himself in other high-profile New York court cases—such as the Central Park jogger case in 1990, the Crown Heights case in 1991, and the Amadou Diallo case in 1999, to name a few—in which black youth were subjected to unwarranted claims, violence, and death at the hands of white accusers, attackers, and even law enforcement officials.

In 1991, Sharpton founded the National Action Network, a civil rights organization and a base for his political activism. He has made several runs for public office over the years, beginning with a bid for the New York state senate in 1978. Since then, Sharpton has run for U.S. senator in 1992 and 1994; for mayor of New York City in 1997; and for president in 2004. Though unsuccessful in these various bids, the incisive and eloquent Sharpton influenced the terms of the debate in each of his campaigns.