Al Sharpton Biography
Al Sharpton born Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. is an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, television/radio talk show host and a former White House adviser for President Barack Obama.
He was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election in the year 2004. Sharpton hosts his own radio talk show called Keepin’ It Real, and he makes regular guest appearances cable news television.
In 2011, he was named the host of MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, a nightly talk show which was shifted to Sunday mornings in early 2015.
President Barack Obama said that Sharpton is “the voice of the voiceless and a champion for the downtrodden.” A 2013 Zogby Analytics poll found that one quarter of African Americans said that Sharpton speaks for them.
Al Sharpton Age | Birthday
Sharpton was born in October 3, 1954 in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City and is 68 years old as of 2022.
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Parents
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born , to Alfred Charles Sharpton Sr. and mother Ada Sharpton. The family has some Cherokee roots..
Sharpton’s father left his wife to have a relationship with Sharpton’s half-sister in 1963. Sharpton’s mother Mrs. Ada took a job as a maid, but her income was so low that the family qualified for welfare and had to move from middle class Hollis, Queens, to the public housing projects in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Al Sharpton Activism Activities
Al Sharpton sees much of his activism criticism as a sign of his effectiveness. “In many ways, what they consider criticism is complimenting my job,” he said. “An activist’s job is to make public civil rights issues until there can be a climate for change”.
In 1969, while at the age of 14, Sharpton was appointed by Jesse Jackson to serve as youth director of the New York City branch of Operation Breadbasket, a group that focused on the promotion of new and better jobs for African Americans.
In 1971 at the age of 16, Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth in a bid to empower them and reduce cases of juvenile deliquency.
Al Sharpton & Subway Shooting by Bernhard Goetz
Sharpton and other civil rights leaders said Goetz’s actions were racist and requested a federal civil rights investigation.A federal investigation concluded however that the shooting was due to an attempted robbery and not racial profiling.
Al Sharpton Howard Beach Demonstration March
A week later, on December 27, Sharpton led 1,200 demonstrators on a march through the streets of Howard Beach. Residents of the neighborhood, who were overwhelmingly white, screamed racial insults at the protesters, who were largely black.
A special prosecutor was appointed by New York Governor Mario Cuomo after the two surviving victims refused to co-operate with the Queens district attorney.
Al Sharpton Bensonhurst Protest March| Yusuf Hawkin’s Death
On August 23, 1989, four African-American teenagers were beaten by a group of 10 to 30 white Italian-American youths in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. One caucasian armed with a handgun, shot and killed Yusef Hawkins who was 16 years old at the time of his death.
Sharpton led several marches through Bensonhurst the following weeks in response to the killing of the youth. The first protest, just days after the incident, was greeted by neighborhood residents shouting “Niggers go home” and holding watermelons to mock the demonstrators.
Sharpton also threatened that Hawkins’s three companions would not cooperate with prosecutor Elizabeth Holtzman unless her office agreed to hire more black attorneys.The prosecutor agreed to the request.
National Action Network
In 1991, Sharpton founded an organization whose mandate was to increase voter education, to provide services to those in poverty, and to support small community businesses that was called the National Action Network. The organization prompted several youths to register as voters to make their voices count.
Al Sharpton March at Crown Heights |Gavin Cato Death
The Crown Heights protest began on August 19, 1991, when a car that was driven by a Jewish man, and part of a procession led by an unmarked police car, went through an intersection and was struck by another vehicle causing it to veer onto the sidewalk where it accidentally struck and killed a seven-year-old Guyanese boy named Gavin Cato and severely injured his cousin Angela.
One of the factors that sparked the riot was the arrival of a private ambulance, which only attended to the Jewish driver;removing him from the scene while Cato lay pinned under his car.
After being removed from under the car, Cato and his cousin were treated soon after by a city ambulance . Caribbean-American and African-American residents of the neighborhood rioted for four consecutive days fueled by rumors that the private ambulance had refused to treat Cato.
During the riot black youths looted stores, beat Jews in the street, and clashed with groups of Jews, hurling rocks and bottles at one another after Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, was stabbed and killed by a member of a mob while some chanted “Kill the Jew”, and “get the Jews out”.
Sharpton marched through Crown Heights and in front of the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, shortly after the riot, with about 400 protesters (who chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “No justice, no peace!”), in spite of Mayor David Dinkins’s attempts to keep the march from happening.)
Some commentators felt Sharpton inflamed tensions by making remarks that included “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”
Al Sharpton Freddie’s Fashion Mart
In 1995 a black Pentecostal Church, the United House of Prayer, which owned a retail property on 125th Street, asked Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant who operated Freddie’s Fashion Mart, to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store called The Record Shack.
Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction of The Record Shack. Sharpton told the protesters, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.”
Al Sharpton Activism protest on Amadou Diallo’s Killing
In 1999, Sharpton led a protest to raise awareness about the death of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea who was shot to death by NYPD officers.
Sharpton claimed that Diallo’s death was the result of police brutality and racial profiling. Diallo’s family won their case and were later awarded $3 million in a wrongful death suit filed against the city.
Al Sharpton & Protests of Tyisha Miller Fatal shootout
In May 1999, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and other activists protested the December 1998 fatal police shooting of Tyisha Miller in central Riverside, California.
Tyisha Miller, a 19-year-old African-American woman, had sat unconscious in a locked car with a flat tire and the engine left running, parked at a local gas station.
After her relatives had called 9-1-1, Riverside Police Department officers who responded to the scene observed a gun in the young woman’s lap, and according to their accounts, she was shaking and foaming at the mouth, and in need of medical attention.
When officers decided to break her window to reach her, as one officer reached for the weapon, she allegedly awoke and clutched her firearm, prompting several officers to open fire, hitting her 23 times and killing her.
When the Riverside County district attorney stated that the officers involved had erred in judgement but committed no crime, declining to file criminal charges against them, Sharpton participated in protests which reached their zenith when protestors spilled onto the busy SR 91, completely stopping traffic. Sharpton was arrested for his participation and leadership in these protests.
Al Sharpton Arrested
Al Sharpton Ousmane Zongo
Sharpton was involved in protests following the death of West African immigrant Ousmane Zongo in 2002. Zongo, who was unarmed, was shot by an undercover police officer during a raid on a warehouse in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Sharpton met with the family and also provided some legal services for their court case.
Press Conference at Dunbar Village
On March 11, 2008, Sharpton held a press conference to highlight what he said was unequal treatment of four suspected rapists in a high-profile crime in the Dunbar Village Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The suspects, who were young black men, were arrested for allegedly raping and beating a black Haitian woman at gunpoint. The crime also involved forcing the woman to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son.
At his press conference Sharpton said that any violent act toward a woman is inexcusable but he felt that the accused youths were being treated unfairly because they were black.
Sharpton contrasted the treatment of the suspects, who remain in jail, with white suspects involved in a gang rape—which he claimed was equivalent to the Dunbar Village attack—who were released immediately after posting bond.
Al Sharpton Peaceful Protest of Eric Garner|Staten Island
Al Sharpton Broadcast hosting| Airtime
Sharpton signed a contract with Matrix Media in June 2005 to produce and host a live two-hour daily talk program, but it never aired. In November 2005, Sharpton signed with Radio One to host a daily national talk radio program, which began airing on January 30, 2006, titled ‘Keepin It Real with Al Sharpton’.
On August 29, 2011, Sharpton became the host of PoliticsNation, the MSNBC show which originally aired weeknights during the 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time hour.
In October 2015 the program was moved to Sunday mornings, one hour per week. He continues to be a regular contributor to the Morning show titled Morning Joe.
Al Sharpton Equal Rights for Gays & Lesbians
Sharpton is a supporter of equal rights for gays and lesbians, including same-sex marriage. During his 2004 presidential campaign, Sharpton said he thought it was insulting to be asked to discuss the issue of gay marriage.
“It’s like asking do I support black marriage or white marriage…. The inference of the question is that gays are not like other human beings.” Sharpton is leading a grassroots movement to eliminate homophobia within the Black church.
Animal Cruelty
Sharpton has spoken out against cruelty to animals in a video recorded for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
Al Sharpton Ministers March for Justice to D. C
On August 28, 2017, the fifty-fourth anniversary of the famous March on Washington at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, Sharpton organized the Ministers March for Justice, promising to bring a thousand members of the clergy to Washington, D.C., to deliver a “unified moral rebuke” to President Donald Trump.
Several thousand religious leaders showed up, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that “President Trump has united us, after all. He brought together the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Jews.
Al Sharpton Political views
Sharpton began a push for criminal justice reform in 2004, citing the fact that black people represent a greater proportion of those arrested and incarcerated in America.
Al Sharpton Jefferson Memorial Controversy
In August 2017, Sharpton called for the federal government to stop maintaining the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and had children with his slave Sally Hemings. He said taxpayer funds should not be used to care for monuments to slave-owners and that private museums were preferable.
“People need to understand that people were enslaved. Our families were victims of this. Public monuments of some extreemists like Jefferson are supported by public funds. You’re asking me to subsidize the insult to my family.”
Al Sharpton LoanMax
In 2005, Sharpton appeared in three television commercials for an automobile title loan company called LoanMax. He was later criticized for his appearance because LoanMax reportedly charges fees which are the equivalent of 300% Annual Percentage Rate charge.
Relationships
While touring with James Brown in 1971, Sharpton met Ms.Kathy Jordan, who was a backup singer at that time. In 1980, Sharpton married Jordan. The couple however separated in 2004.
In July 2013, the New York Daily News reported that Sharpton, while still married to his second wife (the first being Marsha Tinsley), now had a self-described “girlfriend” called Aisha McShaw,aged 35, and that the couple had “been an item for months…. photographed at elegant bashes all over the country.” McShaw, the Daily News reported, referred to herself professionally as both a “personal stylist” and “personal banker.”
Al Sharpton and Aisha McShaw
I spoke to the press about the need for all to stand together against all bigotry in New Zealand, Pittsburgh, Charleston or wherever it occurs. Extremists will heckle (as some did today) but it only shows our real commitment to moral and consistent leadership. pic.twitter.com/F2VZEN4HhQ
— Reverend Al Sharpton (@TheRevAl) March 18, 2019
Al Sharpton Instagram
Speaking at the press conference on the State Capital steps about Justice for Stephon Clarke. Atty. Ben Crump, Sevante Clark, his grandmother and mother stands with us.