Sharpton, Rev. Al
(Alfred Charles Sharpton), 1954- , African-American minister and civil
rights activist, b, Brownsville, Brooklyn, N.Y. A child-prodigy preacher,
Sharpton is said to have given his first sermon at age four, and was
ordained as a Pentecostal minister (variously reported at age 9 or 10); he
later became a Baptist minister (in 1994). When he was 16, he founded the
National Youth Movement to publicize the needs of children living in
poverty, and a year later, in 1972, he served as youth director for Shirley
Chisholm’s presidential campaign. Besides his political
activism, from 1973-80 Sharpton managed singer James Brown’s tours. Inspired by
several incidents in which Black New Yorkers were subject to violence or
harassment, Sharpton became a leader of rallies and protests in New York
City in the mid-‘80s, leading him to form the National Action Network
in 1991. Sharpton has run for several political offices, including for Mayor
of New York City (1997), Senator from New York (1988, 1992, 1994), and
President of the United States (2004). In 2011, he began hosting the shown
Politics Nation on cable news network MSNBC, where he
is also a regular commentator. Sharpton has admitted to being an FBI
informant in the 1980s, claiming he was working to stem the flow of drugs
into Black communities. He also has had various run-ins with the IRS and
other authorities regarding unpaid taxes.
See his autobiographies (1996, 2013); political writing, Rise Up:
Confronting a Country at the Crossroads (2020; with M.E.
Dyson).
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