Background and career
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (born October 3, 1954) is an American civil rights and social justice activist, Baptist minister, radio talk show host, and TV personality, who is also the founder of the National Action Network civil rights organization. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. He hosts a weekday radio talk show, Keepin' It Real, which is nationally syndicated by Urban One, and he is a political analyst and weekend host for MS NOW, hosting PoliticsNation. Sharpton is known for making various controversial and incendiary comments over his career. He has been accused of making racially insensitive remarks as well as inciting incidents of violence. In 1987, he was highly active in publicizing the Tawana Brawley rape hoax in the media; the allegation was later proven to be false.
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born on October 3, 1954, in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, to Ada (née Richards) (1925–2012) and Alfred Charles Sharpton Sr. (1931–2024). Sharpton has Cherokee roots. He preached his first sermon at the age of four and toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. In 1963, Sharpton's father left his wife to have a relationship with Sharpton's half-sister. 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. At the age of twelve, he would meet Rev. Jesse Jackson, who would become his mentor. In 2026 upon Jackson's passing, Sharpton stated that Jackson was the person who "called me into purpose." Jackson would later appoint Sharpton as the youth director of the Brooklyn branch of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in 1969. A claim which Sharpton made about meeting Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in 1968, has not been supported by historical evidence. However, he was acknowledged to have been mentored in his teenage year by both Jackson and Rev. William Jones (1934–2006). In 2017, Sharpton credited Jackson, Rev. Herb Daughtry, and Rev. Calvin Morris (1941–2023) as the people who "started my activism." Sharpton graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, and attended Brooklyn College, dropping out after two years in 1975. In 1972, he accepted the position of youth director for the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.
Between 1973 and 1980, Sharpton served as James Brown's tour manager. Through this position, he would gain more prominence, and would even make a nationally televised appearance with Brown on an episode of Soul Train in 1974. Brown is acknowledged to have been a major mentor to Sharpton, with the FBI even describing Sharpton as a "protege of Brown" during Sharpton's time as an FBI informant. In an interview with The Guardian in December 2022, Sharpton stated it was in fact Brown who motivated him "to do extraordinary things to get attention.” Brown had profound impact on Sharpton, and was even acknowledged to have challenged Sharpton to join him in meeting with U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to push for a national Martin Luther King Day holiday.
In 1969, 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, Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth. Despite his early life activism, Sharpton has stated it was in fact singer James Brown, who he befriended in 1971 and later became tour manager of, who taught him to "be dramatic in order to get people to see things that they are not inclined to see." With Brown's advice, Sharpton began using the first name "Al" rather than his legal name "Alfred".
Bernhard Goetz shot four African-American men on a New York City Subway 2 train in Manhattan on December 22, 1984, when they approached him and tried to rob him. At his trial Goetz was acquitted of all charges except for carrying an unlicensed firearm. Sharpton led several marches protesting what he saw as the weak prosecution of the case. Sharpton and other civil rights leaders said Goetz's actions were racist and requested a federal civil rights investigation. A federal investigation concluded the shooting was due to an attempted robbery and not race.
On December 20, 1986, three African-American men were assaulted in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens by a mob of white men. The three men were chased by their attackers onto the Belt Parkway, where one of them, Michael Griffith, was struck and killed by a passing motorist. 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, yelled racial epithets 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. Sharpton's role in the case helped propel him to national prominence.
