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. Sharpton quickly returned to New York where citizens and the media were more amenable to his often outrageous charges and accusations than their English counterparts.
In early Michael Riccardi was found guilty of stabbing Sharpton and was sentenced to a year jail term. Sharpton's reputation as a tough defender of civil rights was badly tarnished, however, by the notoriety of the Tawana Brawley case, in which a black teenager claimed she was raped repeatedly by six white men over the course of several days.
Her wild and elaborate claims were eventually exposed as a hoax, and Sharpton, who served as one of Brawley's spokesmen, fanned the flames of the fraud with further reckless and unfounded accusations. Critic Stanley Crouch called Sharpton's tactics? He was successfully sued for defamation by one of the falsely accused rapists, a white assistant district attorney named Steven Pagones.
Decades later, Sharpton still refuses to admit the case was a hoax, or to apologize for the damage and racial divisiveness the case generated. Sharpton has been involved in a series of other causes celebres, including the? Central Park jogger? In , Sharpton founded his own civil rights organization, the National Action Network, which he continues to run today.
He has run for political office in several unsuccessful bids: as a candidate for the New York State Senate , the U. Senate and ; the mayoralty of New York City , and the U. Sharpton has pursued other interests while continuing to preach: in his teens, he established a close bond with James Brown and developed a father-son relationship, eventually recording the record God Smiled on Me with him.
In the s and early s, he worked as a youth organizer with boxing promoter Don King, while learning more about African American politics and entertainment.
However, Sharpton never strayed far from activism. He formed the National Action Network in to fight for progressive, people-based social policies by providing extensive voter education and registration campaigns, economic support for small community businesses and by confronting corporate racism.
That same year, Sharpton was stabbed in a Bensonhurst school yard. This represented a turning point for him. Eventually, he met and reconciled with his attacker. Sharpton has never hesitated to act in support of African Americans, from individuals seeking public offices to Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant brutalized by Brooklyn police in Now he is also seeking to build a national multi-cultural, multi-racial movement addressing a range of issues. Sharpton also orchestrated a massive protest when police shot unarmed Amadou Diallo 42 times in In , Sharpton protested the U.
Navy's bombing of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.
0コメント