Al Sharpton Biography

What can you say about a man who creates the news, reports on the news and more often, is the news. Never far from the media spot light, crusading for some cause or the other, Al Sharpton is by now almost a household name.Born October 3 1954 in Brooklyn New York the son of Reverend Alfred Sharpton Snr. and his wife Ada. Al Sharpton took an interest in his father's work as a reverend at an early age and performed his first sermon at the age of four and went on to be ordained as a minister at the unbelievably young age of ten by Bishop F D Washington.Al's parents divorced when he was nine years old which left his family extremely poor and forced his mother to move them Queens, New York, to the projects in Brownsville where they lived on his mother's income as a maid which was subsidized by welfare.After graduating form Samuel J Tilden High School in Brooklyn he attended Brooklyn College but left after just two years, in 1975.With no formal education Sharpton used the only tools he was sure he had, his charismatic personality and his ability to connect with people and went on tour as a manager with James Brown. It was during that time that Al met his wife to be Kathy Jordan who was a backing singer for James Brown. They were married in 1983.Al Sharpton's activist days began in 1969 when he was appointed as youth director of Operation Breadbasket by Jesse Jackson. This was an organization that promoted new and better jobs for African- Americans. After his awareness to the situation was awoken by Jesse Jackson, Sharpton founded his own movement, the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth.During the 1990's Al Sharpton became an almost self appointed activist in the United States championing such issues as the case against the NYPD for the alleged wrongful shooting of the Guinea immigrant, Amadou Diallo, citing police brutality and racial profiling as the reason for the police's killing of Diallo.Later in 2001 Sharpton found himself on the wrong side of the law after protesting near a United States Navy bombing site in Puerto Rico he was jailed for ninety days.Prior to an organized protest that was being lead by Sharpton in Bensonhurts, Brooklyn in January 1991 Sharpton was stabbed in the chest and seriously injured by Michael Riccardi who was later found to be drunk. Sharpton sued the city of New York claiming that the police who were present at the time of the incident did not supply him with sufficient protection. He was awarded an out of court settlement of $200,000.During his colourful career as an activist Al Sharpton has gained much television exposure, not only on talk shows such as Larry King Live and The David Letterman Show but by making cameo appearances in Law and Order with Sam Waterston and Mariska Hargitay and in Boston Legal with William Shatner. He was also a guest celebrity on Saturday Night Live. On the big screen Sharpton had a cameo in Malcolm X with Muhammad Ali, Cold Feet, Bamboozled and Mr. Deeds with Adam Sandler, Winona Ryder and Steve Buscemi.One of Sharpton's biggest controversies came in 1987 when fifteen year old Tawana Brawley, a black girl, was found to have lied about how she was raped, burned and tortured by six white men, some of them police officers in Wapping Falls, New York. During the case Al Sharpton publicly supported Brawly and accused the men of rape and illegal abduction. Sharpton was sued $345,000 by the defendants for liable after there were no charges brought against them.Once again in 1995 Sharpton propelled himself into unwanted limelight when he protested about a black tenant who was being evicted from his home in order for a white interloper to expand his business. Eventually an armed protester entered the property setting it on fire killing both himself and seven others. Sharpton denied responsibility for inflaming and provoking the violence and publicly apologized for his racial remark.In 2006 Sharpton took his career to another level, radio. He signed a contract with Radio One to present a talk show which went out daily beginning on January 30 2006.In April 2007 Al Sharpton was one of the first to jump on a racist remark made by Don Imus on his radio show when Imus referred to the Rugter's University woman's basketball team as nappy headed hos . A huge media debate unsued and the furor continued for several days resulting in the firing of Don Imus from MSNBC and CBS even after he publicly apologized for his remark.In 2004 Al Sharpton was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. During the lead up to the 2008 presidential elections with Barack Obama being one of the Democratic nominees there was speculation of some resentment of his bid for the White House by Al Sharpton. He was reported as saying, Obama never did anything for the community, never worked with anybody from the community, that nobody knows the people around him, that he's a candidate driven by white leadership