NO LONGER RANTING BUT STILL FIGHTING
Rev. Al mellows, but is no less committed to justice
These days, the Rev. Al Sharpton’s fiery anger gives off more light than heat.
In the 66-year-old activist’s latest book, “Rise Up: Confronting a Country at the Crossroads,” he still speaks out on issues from the pandemic to Black Lives Matter. Now, though, his mood is tempered, his language made to persuade.
If your opinion of Sharpton remains mired in images of the tracksuit agitator from 40 years ago, consider the president and founder of National Action Network’s explanation of his look back then.
“The medallion I often sported in the 1980s – the one Rudy Giuliani told James Comey to bring to him as a trophy for protesting police brutality – was given to me asa an award for my work in civil rights,” Sharpton writes. “So, let’s be clear: I may have adopted the swagger of a showman – all the better to get eyeballs on the causes I was bringing into the light – but I also put in the work. In New York, Trump was also seen as an entertainer of sorts, a guy who liked to throw his weight around and wanted the limelight all to himself. I can’t say he’s much different today.”
President Trump and Sharpton have known each other for more than 40 years. Recalling a helicopter ride with Trump and boxing promoter Don King from Manhattan to Atlantic City, the reverend writes, “It was the longest ride of my life. I got an earful. Honestly, I can’t even remember what was said ’cause both men were speaking over each other the entire time.”
Later, Sharpton declined Trump’s invitation to be on his reality show.
“Trump personally called me twice to get me to budge,” Sharpton writes. “Appearing on’ ‘ The Apprentice’ would have hurt the movement and issues I’ve dedicated myself to advancing. Over the years, I’ve learned the difference between being able to laugh at yourself and being laughed at.”
For decades, Sharpton has been at the center of the fight for racial justice, perhaps most infamously during his support of Tawana Brawley. The Black teen’s rape accusations against six white men were later unveiled as a hoax. Sharpton was vilified.
Yet, as academic and writer Michael Eric Dyson points out in his foreword, “Amid the firestorm of criticism of the civil rights leader, few pointed out then, and few have said since, that Sharpton’s greatest fault may have been that he took Brawley seriously and at her word.”
Sharpton has always been quick to sound the alarm, and today he sees a country in crisis. He doesn’t just urge people to take action. He preaches.
“Make no mistake: Wickedness has reached high places if the president of the United States can unblinkingly equate neo-Nazis with counterprotesters,” he writes. “Such wickedness reduces us all to our lowest, most base instincts.”
Gleaning lessons from history, Sharpton reminds readers about Trump’s full-page ad in newspapers, calling for the death penalty to be imposed on the Central Park Five. The men were eventually exonerated.
At the time, Sharpton listened to Nelson Mandela’s unwavering belief that South Africa would change. The lesson was that change “takes time, vigilance, and courage to root out ugly truths.”
Showing how the political is personal, and how inequities plague the country, Sharpton reflects on events and puts himself into the continuum. With the election drawing near, Sharpton recalls being a young organizer, begging peo
ple to vote. He’s still at it because he knows how precious the vote is.
“It wasn’t that long ago that Blacks and women couldn’t vote in this country,” Sharpton writes. “It wasn’t that long ago that my mother dropped out of school to pick cotton for a living. My right to vote is dependent on the lives of those who came before me, people who fought against the injustices of second-class citizenship by legal and institutional enforcement. And I can’t walk 15 minutes out of my way to vote?”
Sharpton’s perspective gives his arguments more weight. Granted, those who only remember him as that agitator in a tracksuit may not listen. But if they don’t, they won’t learn that when he was born, Oct. 3, 1954, his birth certificate read “Negro,” firmly setting him apart.
“That’s not only a description, it’s also a designation,” he writes.
Sharpton talks about tracing his roots and visiting the plantation where his ancestors were slaves. He reminds people that he is a Sharpton because that was the name of the white family which owned his relatives.
“So, I’m shocked when people tell me all I see is race because I’m shocked that they
don’t see it.”
Is he angry? Yes. Sharpton, though, is not railing. He is explaining. Maybe it is writing this as an elder, watching Black men and women getting slaughtered in the streets and their homes, which made him dig deep into his past.
The passages about Trump are rich. Infuriated by his insistence that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, Sharpton called Trump a racist. Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, then invited Sharpton to Trump Tower for a meeting.
Trump’s Fifth Ave. office can startle visitors as they take in the gallery of framed magazine covers – all of himself.
“His self-adulation is staggering and, to my mind, an indication of a deep-seated personal insecurity,” Sharpton writes. The meeting went as badly as anyone could have predicted, “with Trump loudly insisting that he wasn’t a racist” and Sharpton explaining that birtherism is inherently racist. After 45 minutes, the men “agreed to disagree. At no point did I apologize.”
Soon, Trump was on Fox, recounting his version of the meeting, which had Sharpton saying how much he loves Trump and apologizing for the comments.
Even stranger was when not long after, the men ran into each other at a taping of “Saturday Night Live.” As Sharpton was taking his seat, Trump pulled him in, in one of his famous handshakes, and said, “’You do what you gotta do. I do what I gotta do.’ I realized then that he was committed. It didn’t matter whether or not he personally believed in the birtherism movement: He was going to use it as a political leverage to stoke fear and hate.”
Sharpton already knew that racism could be weaponized, and that’s only been proven repeatedly and fatally over the last four years. He gives props to the many who fought before him. His unwavering respect for Shirley Chisholm, whom he called Mrs. C, and she called him Alfred, is among the most heartfelt passages.
“When she walked into a room, she made an entrance like she knew she was breaking a barrier just by being there. She was fond of saying, ‘If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.’”
The inclusivity of this book has Sharpton writing about #MeToo and the LGBTQ community, paying tribute to the “magnificence of Billy Porter.”
Although Sharpton offers a primer for the next generation of activists, he intends to keep fighting – perhaps even after his last breath. “Even when my body is laid to rest six feet under, my lips may be quiet, but my spirit will still be chanting, ‘No justice, no peace!’”