"The Reverend" Alfred Charles "Al" Sharpton Jr. has been a regular guest on MSNBC (or as I call it BSNBC) network especially on Morning Joke, Bill O'Reilly kissed his ass and offered him air time when he was trying to disrupt the 2004 Democratic National Convention with an off-the-script speech that ran 23 minutes when he was allotted 6 minutes (he's a regular "contributor" on FOX/FAUX News too), and BSNBC has now given him his own TV show called "Politics Nation". But should Al Sharpton, a shameless self-promoter, hoaxer and inciter or riots, even be taken seriously? The answer, it seems to me, is no.
Al Sharpton Jr. was born on 3 October 1954 in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY; he "preached" his first sermon at age 4 and toured with the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. When he was 8 or 9 his father left his mother to take up with Al Jr.'s half-sister. His mother's work as a maid was too low to stay in their middle class neighborhood of Hollis, Queens, so they had to move to the public housing projects back in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Sharpton graduated from now-defunct Samuel J. Tilden High School, named for the former New York governor who actually won the 1876 presidential election which was stolen by the Republicans (and you thought 2000 was the first?). In 1969 Sharpton was appointed by another religious/racialist huckster, Jesse Jackson, to the be the youth director of Operation Breadbasket, founded in 1962 as a department of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and run by Rev. Fred C. Bennette in Atlanta. Jackson was named head of the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket (Chicago became Jackson's base, as it is for former "community organizer" Barak Obama), and Breadbasket used boycotts to get more jobs for blacks. Jackson came to use them to get jobs and concessions for family members Jackson is a huckster who used the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. to promote himself and vault past others who had paid their dues in the civil rights movement like Ralph Abernathy. Jackson flew to Chicago the night of April 4, 1968 and was booked on television wearing a bloody turtleneck and claiming he held the dying King in his arms and King spoke his last words to him (which was a colossal lie because the bullet wound to MLK would have left him unable to speak; and it was Abernathy, who was on the balcony with King when he was shot--Jackson was below in the parking lot--who held King's body). Republican/corporate mouthpiece FOX/FAUX News hired the supposedly left-wing Jackson's daughter Santita. Jesse Jackson Sr. has recently been accused of having an affair with a white female FOX News "contributor" named Tamara Holder. The accusations are made by Jackson's personal travel assistant Tommy R. Bennett, who ran the PUSH/EXTORT (oops, I mean PUSH/EXCEL, the organization Jackson started after he quit the SCLC after being suspended by Abernathy for "acts of impropriety" and violating SCLC policy) legal clinic. This isn't surprising, in 1999 Jackson had an affair with a staffer Karin Stanford in which he fathered a daughter, Ashley (born May 1999). Jackson paid $35,000 of hush money out of RAINBOW/PUSH funds (which CNN and others have questioned the legality of--unlike John Edwards, he was never charged with a crime). On Memorial Day, 25 May 1987, Jesse Jackson was made a Master Mason, the third and highest of the three degrees of freemasonry, and initiated into Prince Hall Freemasonry. Among the members of that branch of freemasonry are, according to this website, and this site, is Al Sharpton. Amazing how these men of the cloth forget the commandments about adultery and about how they can't serve God and mammon (money).
In 1971 Al Sharpton Jr. founded the National Youth Movement, after quitting the SCLC in protest over Jackson's suspension.
Sharpton started his race-baiting career in 1984 after Bernard Goetz shot 4 black muggers on a subway train on 22 December 1984. Two years later he was leading marchers through the Howard Beach section of Queens on 27 December 1986, seven days after 3 young blacks were chased by many whites onto the Belt Parkway where one was hit by a car and killed. This stunt put Sharpton on the map.With him leading the march was a "civil rights" lawyer named Alton Maddox. These two, along with another lawyer named C. Vernon Mason, would become prominent 11 months later when a black 15 year old (three weeks away from her 16th birthday) claimed that she'd been kidnapped, raped and assaulted by several white men, one of whom, she said, had a badge, in the woods.
TAWANA BRAWLEY HOAX 1987
On November 28, 1987 a black teenage girl just three weeks short of her 16th birthday was discovered by Lorenzo Lloray in a plastic trash bag, lying on the ground. Mrs. Joyce Lloray had looked out the sliding glass door of her apartment, only to see the girl climbing into the trash bag and lying down on the cold, wet ground. She asked her husband to take a look, and when the girl didn't respond to his questions, they called the Duchess County Sheriff's office. When the cops and EMT's got there, they found the girl's clothes torn, cut and partially burned. On her chest and torso the words, "Nigger", "Bitch" and "KKK" had been drawn, apparently with charcoal, and feces was smeared on her and her clothes. The girl was taken to a hospital and the FBI was called in for an apparent civil rights violation, a rape kit was administered and sent to the FBI lab.
The girl's name was Tawana Brawley, and her mother Glenda Brawley was called to the hospital. She arrived with her live-in boyfriend Ralph King, who reeked of alcohol and began a rant yelling not to talk to the cops and how he was going to call a lawyer. They wanted her questioned by a black policeman, and one was called in from the Poughkeepsie, NY, police department. The Brawley's lived in Wappinger, New York, which bordered Poughkeepsie, and part of it was in the village of Wappingers Falls. Tawana wouldn't speak but wrote down "white cop" on the policeman's notebook, and nodded in the affirmative when asked if a white policeman had assaulted her. Through this question and non-verbal answer session, she said 3 or more attackers had raped her "a lot" and gave a description of a light-blond male, about 32, six feet four inches tall, thin build. The media jumped on this, including the NY Times, LA Times and Washington Post, and rumor was printed as though it was fact, in a racially charged atmosphere.
On 14 December, 1987, Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, led 1000 people on a march through Newburgh, NY; among the marchers were "The Reverend" Al Sharpton and lawyer Alton H. Maddox. On 10 February 1988 actor and comedian Bill Cosby and Essence magazine publisher Edward Lewis put up a $25,000 reward for information about Tawana Brawley's alleged assailants. On 4 April 1988 (the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King's murder) Sharpton and activist/folk singer Pete Seeger held a rally to support Brawley at the state capital, Albany; Phil Donohue broadcast live from a rally. A grand jury investigated the case for seven months, and every day protestors were bussed in to chant outside the courthouse, often led by Al Sharpton. Glenda Brawley and Ralph King, her boyfriend, called in three "advisers" while the case was being investigated by a grand jury, anticipating a big lawsuit settlement; the three were lawyers Alton H. Maddox, C. Vernon Mason and "The Reverend" Al Sharpton.
Glenda Brawley and Ralph King had wanted a special prosecutor, not a grand jury. So it came as no surprise that "advisor" Al Sharpton accused a part-time policeman who had committed suicide on 2 December 1987 (and only slightly fit the description Tawana haphazardly put out) named Harry Crist Jr. Crist's whereabouts during the four days Brawley was missing were examined, his alibi was provided by Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones and New York State Trooper Scott Patterson. Sharpton proclaimed Crist guilty posthumously, and also accused Assistant D.A. Pagones. The investigation into Crist's whereabouts revealed he'd been upset over a lack of career advancement and his suicide occured only hours after the breakup of a relationship with a women he deeply loved. With no evidence at all and no regard for the Crist family, Sharpton smeared the dead man as a child rapist. As if that wasn't bad enough, he then accused not only Pagones but Trooper Patterson as two of the rapists, and accused Assistant D.A. Pagones of murdering Crist to maintain a coverup (that he alleged Governor Mario Cuomo was part of). Sharpton accused NY State Attorney General Robert Abrams, who is Jewish, of masturbating over photos of Brawley and compared Abrams to Hitler. The troika of Sharpton/Maddox/Mason claimed Governor Cuomo had ties to the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan, and that Assistant D.A. Pagones had "organized crime cronies"; and said this on various national TV outlets.
But the Tawana Brawley case had started to unravel early on. The FBI lab could find no evidence of rape from the kit samples taken and sent to them, forensics tests showed no exposure to the elements that a gang rape in the woods in late November would be expected to occur. She had been seen entering an apartment at the Pavillion Apartments, where the Lloray's lived, and where she and her mother had once lived, on the morning of the alleged abduction. She had no cuts or scrapes other than one behind the ear that was several days old, her mother Brenda was spotted at the Pavillion shortly before Tawana was seen getting into the garbage bag, it was sometime that afternoon before her mother reported her missing. Evidence was turned up indicating the damage to Tawana's clothes occurred at the Pavillion apartment 19A. The feces had come from a neighbor's dog.
Glenda Brawley was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury but failed to appear, a warrant for her arrest was issued. The troika took her to a Baptist church in the hopes that the police would force their way in and arrest her; didn't happen. Two of Sharpton's associates quit, saying that Sharpton knew all along the story was a hoax. Black leaders like Roy Innes of the Congress of Racial Equality criticized Sharpton and the others for the whole mess, saying it would damage the credibility of others who were real victims.
After seven months of painstaking investigation, the conclusion of the grand jury, in a 170 page report, was that Tawana Brawley was never kidnapped, never raped, never brutalized, and the whole thing was a hoax concocted after Tawana skipped school to go see an old boyfriend, Todd Buxton, incarcerated in the Orange County Jail in Newburgh. The grand jury concluded that the late Harry Crist, Assistant D.A. Steven Pagones and State Trooper Scott Patterson had nothing to do with anything. Steven Pagones sued for $395 million in damages, naming Tawana Brawley also since she said repeatedly she agreed with all the "advisers" were doing and saying. He was awarded $345,000 in damages against Sharpton, Maddox and Mason, and Tawana Brawley was ordered to pay $185,000.
Alton Maddox was suspended indefinitely in 1990 from practicing law in New York state for refusing to testify in a grievance hearing regarding his conduct in the Brawley hoax. C Vernon Mason was disbarred in 1995 by the New York State Appellate Court for "professional misconduct". The court cited 66 cases of misconduct with 20 clients over the course of 6 years. Typically, both Maddox and Mason claimed it was retaliation for defending Tawana Brawley and because they were black. In 1998 Al Sharpton had only paid $15,000 to Steven Pagones, eventually the rest of his share of the defamation award was paid by a group of wealthy black businessmen, including: Percy Sutton, the head of Inner City Broadcasting Corp, Earl Graves Sr., chairman of Black Enterprise magazine, the late lawyer Johnnie Cochran of O.J. Simpson fame, Bill Tatum publisher Amsterdam News, car dealer Richard Gidron (president of Dick Gidron Cadillac and also a Prince Hall Freemason) and the aforementioned Ed Lewis. Tawana Brawley moved out of New York State to Washington D.C. and changed her name to Maryam Muhammad, and has toured black colleges collecting speaking fees for telling the same lies. She is as unrepentant about the damage she cause to other people and their families (the Pagones' divorced, Steven blamed the stress of the accusations as a cause) as Al Sharpton is. Maddox resurfaced in 2009 as part of Manhattan D.A.-elect Cy Vance's transition team.
Post Brawley Hoax
This experience taught Sharpton nothing, except that some people are stupid enough to believe anything, and that in his case, bad publicity is better than no publicity. A year after the Brawley story was exposed as a hoax, he involved himself in a case in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where three black kids were chased and beaten by a group of whites (estimates vary widely, from 10 to 30). One of the pursuers shot and killed 16 year old Yusaf Hawkins. At the time of this incident, Bensonhurst was primarily an Italian district. Sharpton saw a chance to gain more notoriety and led another "protest march" in a racially charged situation, as well as threatening that Hawkins three companions would not co-operate with authorities unless they hired more black attorneys (they did co-operate). After one of the two men who went on trial was acquitted of a murder charge (but convicted on several other charges) he led another march. On 12 January 1991 he was about to lead a third march when he was stabbed, but survived. Although he had a "security detail", Sharpton sued the city for not protecting him. On 8 December 2003 (23rd anniversary of John Lennon's murder in New York) the city reached a settlement with Sharpton for $200,000 (none of which went to Steven Pagones, the Crist family or Scott Patterson). Sharpton was stabbed the same day that Congress abrogated its constitutional duty to declare (or not declare) war, and voted to "authorize the use of force" against Iraq to remove them from Kuwait, after Ambassador April Glaspie had told Saddam Hussein what Iraq did in Kuwait didn't concern the United States.
In 1991, the stabbing didn't stop Sharpton from forming the National Action Network. It has been investigated for tax "payment irregularities". As of 2006 NAN owed $1.9 million in taxes and penalties. Sharpton learned well from his mentor Jesse Jackson, and has engaged in threatening companies and corporations with boycotts and protest rallies while at the same time "soliciting" donations and sponsorships from them. Several corporations including Anheuser-Busch and Colgate-Palmolive have donated large sums to the National Action Network, as well as GM, Chase bank, Pepsi, FedEx, Wal-Mart and Johnson & Johnson among others.. The New York Post claims this was a shakedown, donations made to avoid boycotts (Anheuser-Busch is said to have given a Budweiser distributorship to Jesse Jackson's sons Jonathon and Yusef to avoid a boycott).
CROWN HEIGHTS--SHARPTON INCITES A RIOT AND MURDER
On 19 August 1991, a 22 year old Jewish man named Yosef Lifsh was driving a station wagon with three passengers as part of a three car motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of a Hasidic sect he belonged to. The motorcade was led by an unmarked police car with a flashing light, Lifsh fell behind and continued on through an intersection to rejoin the other cars. He said that he thought he had the right-of-way because of the police car escort (even though he'd fallen behind). His station wagon hit another car that thought it had the right-of-way, veered onto the sidewalk, knocking down a 600 pound stone building pillar and hit the wall of of an apartment building. The wall collapsed and fell onto 7 year old Gavin Cato, the son of immigrants from Guyana, who was attempting to fix the chain on his bicycle, and his 7 year old cousin Angela Cato who was playing nearby. Gavin was killed, Angela was severely injured. There is no unanimity among witnesses about the speed of Lifsh's car, or weather the light was red or yellow (unless the other car ran a red light, the light was red for Lifsh's car). Yosef Lifsh claims he tried to lift the car off the kids first thing (a 1991 or earlier station wagon? Good luck lifting that). Then he got into the car when three or four angry men came, the first emergency personnel on the scene about 3 minutes after the crash said that three or four men were pulling Lifsh out of the car and administering a beating. The first ambulance there was from a Jewish volunteer group called Hatzelah, Police and a city ambulance arrived shortly thereafter, the city ambulance took Gavin Cato to a hospital arriving at 8:32 (12 minutes after the accident) where 7 year old Gavin was pronounced dead. A second Hatzelah ambulance arrived and helped Angela until a second city ambulance arrived and took her to the same hospital (odd that the first Hatzelah ambulance crew wasn't assisting the little girl, or didn't take her to the hospital, and odd that the second Hatzelah ambulance didn't take her to the hospital either). Lifsh claimed he steered away from adults on the sidewalk and towards the wall to stop the car and avoid hitting anyone. He later claimed that the car didn't come to a stop when it hit the wall of the building, but slid along it until it hit the two children. Supposedly two cops and an EMT from a city ambulance told the Hatzelah drivers to get Lifsh out of the area for his own safety, while Gavin Cato was being removed from under the station wagon. In any event, they removed him from the scene, and the crowd grew outraged that he was getting out in a private ambulance while the two kids were still pinned under the car. It is curious that one of the policemen didn't put him in their car and call for backup to remove him from the scene (especially with an angry crowd), so that there would be enough ambulance and EMT's to treat and transport the injured children. Some in the crowd thought the Hatzelah drivers were refusing to help blacks. Lifsh was not given a breathalyzer test for more than an hour (70 minutes) after the accident. It was negative. Jewish writers both here and abroad said it was all the blacks fault, the Jews in the area committed no violence in the 3 day riot that ensued. I have to think Yosef Lifsh ran a red light instead of stopping and waiting and used the "I thought I was part of a police led motorcade and had the right of way" to justify running a red light rather than lose sight of his religious leader's car, and started the whole mess.
Blacks and Jews had a strained "co-existence" in Crown Heights before this, where a terrorist organization called the Jewish Defense League had "patrolled" the area in the 1970's and caused problems; and the perception that a Jew was removed from the scene before critically injured black children only worsened it. Crowds of young blacks had vandalized cars on predominantly Jewish Kingston Avenue the night of 19 August. Blacks in Crown Heights felt that this was another example of Jews (whom they thought were buying up all the property in the area) getting preferential treatment from police and in allocation of resources.About 11:30 pm that night, 19 August 1991, a group young blacks stopped a car approximately three blocks from the accident scene (President Street and Brooklyn Avenue) and confronted a car being driven by a young Hasidic scholar from Australia, Yankel Rosenbaum, 29. When he fled the car Rosenbaum was stabbed and left bleeding on the hood of his car. He died the next, supposedly from a colossal medical mistake after Mayor David Dinkins was assured Rosenbaum would survive after visiting him in the hospital. A 16 year old son of immigrants from Trinidad named Nelson Lemrick was arrested, tried and acquitted but in 2003 was convicted of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights and did 10 years.
Al Sharpton gave a eulogy at Gavin Cato's funeral on 26 August 1991. Sharpton, the "civil rights leader", the avowed opponent of racism, said this at Gavin Cato's funeral:
“Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid .... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'."
The reference to "Oppenheimer" is to the diamond mine owners and to Jews in general. He threw more fuel on the fire saying ""We will not allow any compromise or sellout of this murderer. We will . . . accept nothing less than the prosecution of this man." And this: “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." Sharpton led a march shortly after the riot with a crowd that was chanting "Who's streets? Our streets!" and "no justice, no peace" (the mantra of Sharpton's National Action Network, right through Crown Heights and past the World HQ of the Chabad Lubavitch sect.
FREDDIE FASHION MART DEATHS 1995
In 1995 the United House of Prayer for all, a black Pentecostal church that owned a retail building in Harlem on West 125th Street asked its Jewish tenant that ran Freddie's Fashion Mart, Fred Harari, leasing space from the church, to evict his subtenant who'd sub-leased space in the building and ran The Record Shack. The sub-leasee was Sikhulu Shange and had leased space here for his record shop for a long time. Shange, a native of South Africa, wrote to local politicians, including U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, and successfully rallied local community and business leaders to his cause as a black businessman being unfairly evicted for no cause, to avoid being evicted by the black church. Shange stated that he felt Harari wanted more space for his store and the owners, the black church, were trying to accommodate the larger business. Notice in that link that in the second paragraph the NY Times calls Harari "white" but the fifth paragraph identifies him as a Jewish. Sharpton had told protestors "We will not stand by allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business".
Shange says that Harari told him he was going to jack up the rent to where Shange couldn't afford to stay. By September Sharpton was involved, and used his old tactics of boycott against Freddie's Fashion Mart. It worked, and the church asked Shange to call off the protestors and offered to lease him a store on another corner of W 125th Street, to which Shange agreed. The deal fell apart because Shange said the terms were too restrictive and the rent exorbitant. He asked the protestors to resume picketing and distribute leaflets urging a boycott of Freddie's Fashion Mart. Some leaflets questioned the role of United House of Prayer for All, some used anti-Jewish language. On December 8 (eight years to the day before a court would settle with Al Sharpton on the defamation suit brought by Steven Pagones in the Tawana Brawley hoax) a man named Roland J. Smith walked into Freddie's Fashion Mart with a gun and flammable liquid, shot several customers and set the store on fire. He then committed suicide. The four people Smith shot escaped the store, but eight people died of smoke inhalation from the fire.
Sharpton later expressed regret for his "white interloper" comment. He claims he didn't have anything to with the Crown Heights riot and wasn't there. Well technically he wasn't there when the riots of 19-22 August occured. His "eulogy" (the "Oppenheimer" and the "pin back the yarmulkes" remarks were made then) for 7 year old Gavin Cato occurred at the funeral, 26 August. However his march through Crown Heights and past the Chabad Lavitch HQ were highly inflammatory. But he does not and will not apologize for the harm he did in the Tawana Brawley hoax.
That said, Al Sharpton is getting unjustly bashed (although it's not surprising given his record) for saying something he didn't really say. That is, Sharpton is being accused of saying that Republicans (and FAUX News reactionary mouthpiece Sean Hannity) views blacks like Hitler viewed Jews. Sharpton didn't say that, or anything close to it. This is the most reasoned piece I've seen on the incident. Sharpton, though, was stupid enough to get into an argument with Dr. Cornell West, a man with 10 times Sharpton's intellect (or maybe 20 times); Sharpton thinks that black leaders except for President Obama, are doing nothing for American blacks will Dr. West thinks (as I do) that Obama is a "black mascot" for the rich. Now Sharpton is embroiled in another legal battle, he's accused of being in a scheme with singer Wyclef Jean to launder drug money.
And this is the guy that has his own radio show, that BSNBC gave his own TV show too, and is a regular guest on BSNBC shows like Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and on FOX/FAUX News.
Al Sharpton Jr. was born on 3 October 1954 in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY; he "preached" his first sermon at age 4 and toured with the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. When he was 8 or 9 his father left his mother to take up with Al Jr.'s half-sister. His mother's work as a maid was too low to stay in their middle class neighborhood of Hollis, Queens, so they had to move to the public housing projects back in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Sharpton graduated from now-defunct Samuel J. Tilden High School, named for the former New York governor who actually won the 1876 presidential election which was stolen by the Republicans (and you thought 2000 was the first?). In 1969 Sharpton was appointed by another religious/racialist huckster, Jesse Jackson, to the be the youth director of Operation Breadbasket, founded in 1962 as a department of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and run by Rev. Fred C. Bennette in Atlanta. Jackson was named head of the Chicago branch of Operation Breadbasket (Chicago became Jackson's base, as it is for former "community organizer" Barak Obama), and Breadbasket used boycotts to get more jobs for blacks. Jackson came to use them to get jobs and concessions for family members Jackson is a huckster who used the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. to promote himself and vault past others who had paid their dues in the civil rights movement like Ralph Abernathy. Jackson flew to Chicago the night of April 4, 1968 and was booked on television wearing a bloody turtleneck and claiming he held the dying King in his arms and King spoke his last words to him (which was a colossal lie because the bullet wound to MLK would have left him unable to speak; and it was Abernathy, who was on the balcony with King when he was shot--Jackson was below in the parking lot--who held King's body). Republican/corporate mouthpiece FOX/FAUX News hired the supposedly left-wing Jackson's daughter Santita. Jesse Jackson Sr. has recently been accused of having an affair with a white female FOX News "contributor" named Tamara Holder. The accusations are made by Jackson's personal travel assistant Tommy R. Bennett, who ran the PUSH/EXTORT (oops, I mean PUSH/EXCEL, the organization Jackson started after he quit the SCLC after being suspended by Abernathy for "acts of impropriety" and violating SCLC policy) legal clinic. This isn't surprising, in 1999 Jackson had an affair with a staffer Karin Stanford in which he fathered a daughter, Ashley (born May 1999). Jackson paid $35,000 of hush money out of RAINBOW/PUSH funds (which CNN and others have questioned the legality of--unlike John Edwards, he was never charged with a crime). On Memorial Day, 25 May 1987, Jesse Jackson was made a Master Mason, the third and highest of the three degrees of freemasonry, and initiated into Prince Hall Freemasonry. Among the members of that branch of freemasonry are, according to this website, and this site, is Al Sharpton. Amazing how these men of the cloth forget the commandments about adultery and about how they can't serve God and mammon (money).
In 1971 Al Sharpton Jr. founded the National Youth Movement, after quitting the SCLC in protest over Jackson's suspension.
Sharpton started his race-baiting career in 1984 after Bernard Goetz shot 4 black muggers on a subway train on 22 December 1984. Two years later he was leading marchers through the Howard Beach section of Queens on 27 December 1986, seven days after 3 young blacks were chased by many whites onto the Belt Parkway where one was hit by a car and killed. This stunt put Sharpton on the map.With him leading the march was a "civil rights" lawyer named Alton Maddox. These two, along with another lawyer named C. Vernon Mason, would become prominent 11 months later when a black 15 year old (three weeks away from her 16th birthday) claimed that she'd been kidnapped, raped and assaulted by several white men, one of whom, she said, had a badge, in the woods.
TAWANA BRAWLEY HOAX 1987
On November 28, 1987 a black teenage girl just three weeks short of her 16th birthday was discovered by Lorenzo Lloray in a plastic trash bag, lying on the ground. Mrs. Joyce Lloray had looked out the sliding glass door of her apartment, only to see the girl climbing into the trash bag and lying down on the cold, wet ground. She asked her husband to take a look, and when the girl didn't respond to his questions, they called the Duchess County Sheriff's office. When the cops and EMT's got there, they found the girl's clothes torn, cut and partially burned. On her chest and torso the words, "Nigger", "Bitch" and "KKK" had been drawn, apparently with charcoal, and feces was smeared on her and her clothes. The girl was taken to a hospital and the FBI was called in for an apparent civil rights violation, a rape kit was administered and sent to the FBI lab.
The girl's name was Tawana Brawley, and her mother Glenda Brawley was called to the hospital. She arrived with her live-in boyfriend Ralph King, who reeked of alcohol and began a rant yelling not to talk to the cops and how he was going to call a lawyer. They wanted her questioned by a black policeman, and one was called in from the Poughkeepsie, NY, police department. The Brawley's lived in Wappinger, New York, which bordered Poughkeepsie, and part of it was in the village of Wappingers Falls. Tawana wouldn't speak but wrote down "white cop" on the policeman's notebook, and nodded in the affirmative when asked if a white policeman had assaulted her. Through this question and non-verbal answer session, she said 3 or more attackers had raped her "a lot" and gave a description of a light-blond male, about 32, six feet four inches tall, thin build. The media jumped on this, including the NY Times, LA Times and Washington Post, and rumor was printed as though it was fact, in a racially charged atmosphere.
On 14 December, 1987, Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, led 1000 people on a march through Newburgh, NY; among the marchers were "The Reverend" Al Sharpton and lawyer Alton H. Maddox. On 10 February 1988 actor and comedian Bill Cosby and Essence magazine publisher Edward Lewis put up a $25,000 reward for information about Tawana Brawley's alleged assailants. On 4 April 1988 (the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King's murder) Sharpton and activist/folk singer Pete Seeger held a rally to support Brawley at the state capital, Albany; Phil Donohue broadcast live from a rally. A grand jury investigated the case for seven months, and every day protestors were bussed in to chant outside the courthouse, often led by Al Sharpton. Glenda Brawley and Ralph King, her boyfriend, called in three "advisers" while the case was being investigated by a grand jury, anticipating a big lawsuit settlement; the three were lawyers Alton H. Maddox, C. Vernon Mason and "The Reverend" Al Sharpton.
Glenda Brawley and Ralph King had wanted a special prosecutor, not a grand jury. So it came as no surprise that "advisor" Al Sharpton accused a part-time policeman who had committed suicide on 2 December 1987 (and only slightly fit the description Tawana haphazardly put out) named Harry Crist Jr. Crist's whereabouts during the four days Brawley was missing were examined, his alibi was provided by Assistant District Attorney Steven Pagones and New York State Trooper Scott Patterson. Sharpton proclaimed Crist guilty posthumously, and also accused Assistant D.A. Pagones. The investigation into Crist's whereabouts revealed he'd been upset over a lack of career advancement and his suicide occured only hours after the breakup of a relationship with a women he deeply loved. With no evidence at all and no regard for the Crist family, Sharpton smeared the dead man as a child rapist. As if that wasn't bad enough, he then accused not only Pagones but Trooper Patterson as two of the rapists, and accused Assistant D.A. Pagones of murdering Crist to maintain a coverup (that he alleged Governor Mario Cuomo was part of). Sharpton accused NY State Attorney General Robert Abrams, who is Jewish, of masturbating over photos of Brawley and compared Abrams to Hitler. The troika of Sharpton/Maddox/Mason claimed Governor Cuomo had ties to the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan, and that Assistant D.A. Pagones had "organized crime cronies"; and said this on various national TV outlets.
But the Tawana Brawley case had started to unravel early on. The FBI lab could find no evidence of rape from the kit samples taken and sent to them, forensics tests showed no exposure to the elements that a gang rape in the woods in late November would be expected to occur. She had been seen entering an apartment at the Pavillion Apartments, where the Lloray's lived, and where she and her mother had once lived, on the morning of the alleged abduction. She had no cuts or scrapes other than one behind the ear that was several days old, her mother Brenda was spotted at the Pavillion shortly before Tawana was seen getting into the garbage bag, it was sometime that afternoon before her mother reported her missing. Evidence was turned up indicating the damage to Tawana's clothes occurred at the Pavillion apartment 19A. The feces had come from a neighbor's dog.
Glenda Brawley was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury but failed to appear, a warrant for her arrest was issued. The troika took her to a Baptist church in the hopes that the police would force their way in and arrest her; didn't happen. Two of Sharpton's associates quit, saying that Sharpton knew all along the story was a hoax. Black leaders like Roy Innes of the Congress of Racial Equality criticized Sharpton and the others for the whole mess, saying it would damage the credibility of others who were real victims.
After seven months of painstaking investigation, the conclusion of the grand jury, in a 170 page report, was that Tawana Brawley was never kidnapped, never raped, never brutalized, and the whole thing was a hoax concocted after Tawana skipped school to go see an old boyfriend, Todd Buxton, incarcerated in the Orange County Jail in Newburgh. The grand jury concluded that the late Harry Crist, Assistant D.A. Steven Pagones and State Trooper Scott Patterson had nothing to do with anything. Steven Pagones sued for $395 million in damages, naming Tawana Brawley also since she said repeatedly she agreed with all the "advisers" were doing and saying. He was awarded $345,000 in damages against Sharpton, Maddox and Mason, and Tawana Brawley was ordered to pay $185,000.
Alton Maddox was suspended indefinitely in 1990 from practicing law in New York state for refusing to testify in a grievance hearing regarding his conduct in the Brawley hoax. C Vernon Mason was disbarred in 1995 by the New York State Appellate Court for "professional misconduct". The court cited 66 cases of misconduct with 20 clients over the course of 6 years. Typically, both Maddox and Mason claimed it was retaliation for defending Tawana Brawley and because they were black. In 1998 Al Sharpton had only paid $15,000 to Steven Pagones, eventually the rest of his share of the defamation award was paid by a group of wealthy black businessmen, including: Percy Sutton, the head of Inner City Broadcasting Corp, Earl Graves Sr., chairman of Black Enterprise magazine, the late lawyer Johnnie Cochran of O.J. Simpson fame, Bill Tatum publisher Amsterdam News, car dealer Richard Gidron (president of Dick Gidron Cadillac and also a Prince Hall Freemason) and the aforementioned Ed Lewis. Tawana Brawley moved out of New York State to Washington D.C. and changed her name to Maryam Muhammad, and has toured black colleges collecting speaking fees for telling the same lies. She is as unrepentant about the damage she cause to other people and their families (the Pagones' divorced, Steven blamed the stress of the accusations as a cause) as Al Sharpton is. Maddox resurfaced in 2009 as part of Manhattan D.A.-elect Cy Vance's transition team.
Post Brawley Hoax
This experience taught Sharpton nothing, except that some people are stupid enough to believe anything, and that in his case, bad publicity is better than no publicity. A year after the Brawley story was exposed as a hoax, he involved himself in a case in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where three black kids were chased and beaten by a group of whites (estimates vary widely, from 10 to 30). One of the pursuers shot and killed 16 year old Yusaf Hawkins. At the time of this incident, Bensonhurst was primarily an Italian district. Sharpton saw a chance to gain more notoriety and led another "protest march" in a racially charged situation, as well as threatening that Hawkins three companions would not co-operate with authorities unless they hired more black attorneys (they did co-operate). After one of the two men who went on trial was acquitted of a murder charge (but convicted on several other charges) he led another march. On 12 January 1991 he was about to lead a third march when he was stabbed, but survived. Although he had a "security detail", Sharpton sued the city for not protecting him. On 8 December 2003 (23rd anniversary of John Lennon's murder in New York) the city reached a settlement with Sharpton for $200,000 (none of which went to Steven Pagones, the Crist family or Scott Patterson). Sharpton was stabbed the same day that Congress abrogated its constitutional duty to declare (or not declare) war, and voted to "authorize the use of force" against Iraq to remove them from Kuwait, after Ambassador April Glaspie had told Saddam Hussein what Iraq did in Kuwait didn't concern the United States.
In 1991, the stabbing didn't stop Sharpton from forming the National Action Network. It has been investigated for tax "payment irregularities". As of 2006 NAN owed $1.9 million in taxes and penalties. Sharpton learned well from his mentor Jesse Jackson, and has engaged in threatening companies and corporations with boycotts and protest rallies while at the same time "soliciting" donations and sponsorships from them. Several corporations including Anheuser-Busch and Colgate-Palmolive have donated large sums to the National Action Network, as well as GM, Chase bank, Pepsi, FedEx, Wal-Mart and Johnson & Johnson among others.. The New York Post claims this was a shakedown, donations made to avoid boycotts (Anheuser-Busch is said to have given a Budweiser distributorship to Jesse Jackson's sons Jonathon and Yusef to avoid a boycott).
CROWN HEIGHTS--SHARPTON INCITES A RIOT AND MURDER
On 19 August 1991, a 22 year old Jewish man named Yosef Lifsh was driving a station wagon with three passengers as part of a three car motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of a Hasidic sect he belonged to. The motorcade was led by an unmarked police car with a flashing light, Lifsh fell behind and continued on through an intersection to rejoin the other cars. He said that he thought he had the right-of-way because of the police car escort (even though he'd fallen behind). His station wagon hit another car that thought it had the right-of-way, veered onto the sidewalk, knocking down a 600 pound stone building pillar and hit the wall of of an apartment building. The wall collapsed and fell onto 7 year old Gavin Cato, the son of immigrants from Guyana, who was attempting to fix the chain on his bicycle, and his 7 year old cousin Angela Cato who was playing nearby. Gavin was killed, Angela was severely injured. There is no unanimity among witnesses about the speed of Lifsh's car, or weather the light was red or yellow (unless the other car ran a red light, the light was red for Lifsh's car). Yosef Lifsh claims he tried to lift the car off the kids first thing (a 1991 or earlier station wagon? Good luck lifting that). Then he got into the car when three or four angry men came, the first emergency personnel on the scene about 3 minutes after the crash said that three or four men were pulling Lifsh out of the car and administering a beating. The first ambulance there was from a Jewish volunteer group called Hatzelah, Police and a city ambulance arrived shortly thereafter, the city ambulance took Gavin Cato to a hospital arriving at 8:32 (12 minutes after the accident) where 7 year old Gavin was pronounced dead. A second Hatzelah ambulance arrived and helped Angela until a second city ambulance arrived and took her to the same hospital (odd that the first Hatzelah ambulance crew wasn't assisting the little girl, or didn't take her to the hospital, and odd that the second Hatzelah ambulance didn't take her to the hospital either). Lifsh claimed he steered away from adults on the sidewalk and towards the wall to stop the car and avoid hitting anyone. He later claimed that the car didn't come to a stop when it hit the wall of the building, but slid along it until it hit the two children. Supposedly two cops and an EMT from a city ambulance told the Hatzelah drivers to get Lifsh out of the area for his own safety, while Gavin Cato was being removed from under the station wagon. In any event, they removed him from the scene, and the crowd grew outraged that he was getting out in a private ambulance while the two kids were still pinned under the car. It is curious that one of the policemen didn't put him in their car and call for backup to remove him from the scene (especially with an angry crowd), so that there would be enough ambulance and EMT's to treat and transport the injured children. Some in the crowd thought the Hatzelah drivers were refusing to help blacks. Lifsh was not given a breathalyzer test for more than an hour (70 minutes) after the accident. It was negative. Jewish writers both here and abroad said it was all the blacks fault, the Jews in the area committed no violence in the 3 day riot that ensued. I have to think Yosef Lifsh ran a red light instead of stopping and waiting and used the "I thought I was part of a police led motorcade and had the right of way" to justify running a red light rather than lose sight of his religious leader's car, and started the whole mess.
Blacks and Jews had a strained "co-existence" in Crown Heights before this, where a terrorist organization called the Jewish Defense League had "patrolled" the area in the 1970's and caused problems; and the perception that a Jew was removed from the scene before critically injured black children only worsened it. Crowds of young blacks had vandalized cars on predominantly Jewish Kingston Avenue the night of 19 August. Blacks in Crown Heights felt that this was another example of Jews (whom they thought were buying up all the property in the area) getting preferential treatment from police and in allocation of resources.About 11:30 pm that night, 19 August 1991, a group young blacks stopped a car approximately three blocks from the accident scene (President Street and Brooklyn Avenue) and confronted a car being driven by a young Hasidic scholar from Australia, Yankel Rosenbaum, 29. When he fled the car Rosenbaum was stabbed and left bleeding on the hood of his car. He died the next, supposedly from a colossal medical mistake after Mayor David Dinkins was assured Rosenbaum would survive after visiting him in the hospital. A 16 year old son of immigrants from Trinidad named Nelson Lemrick was arrested, tried and acquitted but in 2003 was convicted of violating Rosenbaum's civil rights and did 10 years.
Al Sharpton gave a eulogy at Gavin Cato's funeral on 26 August 1991. Sharpton, the "civil rights leader", the avowed opponent of racism, said this at Gavin Cato's funeral:
“Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid .... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'."
The reference to "Oppenheimer" is to the diamond mine owners and to Jews in general. He threw more fuel on the fire saying ""We will not allow any compromise or sellout of this murderer. We will . . . accept nothing less than the prosecution of this man." And this: “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." Sharpton led a march shortly after the riot with a crowd that was chanting "Who's streets? Our streets!" and "no justice, no peace" (the mantra of Sharpton's National Action Network, right through Crown Heights and past the World HQ of the Chabad Lubavitch sect.
FREDDIE FASHION MART DEATHS 1995
In 1995 the United House of Prayer for all, a black Pentecostal church that owned a retail building in Harlem on West 125th Street asked its Jewish tenant that ran Freddie's Fashion Mart, Fred Harari, leasing space from the church, to evict his subtenant who'd sub-leased space in the building and ran The Record Shack. The sub-leasee was Sikhulu Shange and had leased space here for his record shop for a long time. Shange, a native of South Africa, wrote to local politicians, including U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, and successfully rallied local community and business leaders to his cause as a black businessman being unfairly evicted for no cause, to avoid being evicted by the black church. Shange stated that he felt Harari wanted more space for his store and the owners, the black church, were trying to accommodate the larger business. Notice in that link that in the second paragraph the NY Times calls Harari "white" but the fifth paragraph identifies him as a Jewish. Sharpton had told protestors "We will not stand by allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business".
Shange says that Harari told him he was going to jack up the rent to where Shange couldn't afford to stay. By September Sharpton was involved, and used his old tactics of boycott against Freddie's Fashion Mart. It worked, and the church asked Shange to call off the protestors and offered to lease him a store on another corner of W 125th Street, to which Shange agreed. The deal fell apart because Shange said the terms were too restrictive and the rent exorbitant. He asked the protestors to resume picketing and distribute leaflets urging a boycott of Freddie's Fashion Mart. Some leaflets questioned the role of United House of Prayer for All, some used anti-Jewish language. On December 8 (eight years to the day before a court would settle with Al Sharpton on the defamation suit brought by Steven Pagones in the Tawana Brawley hoax) a man named Roland J. Smith walked into Freddie's Fashion Mart with a gun and flammable liquid, shot several customers and set the store on fire. He then committed suicide. The four people Smith shot escaped the store, but eight people died of smoke inhalation from the fire.
Sharpton later expressed regret for his "white interloper" comment. He claims he didn't have anything to with the Crown Heights riot and wasn't there. Well technically he wasn't there when the riots of 19-22 August occured. His "eulogy" (the "Oppenheimer" and the "pin back the yarmulkes" remarks were made then) for 7 year old Gavin Cato occurred at the funeral, 26 August. However his march through Crown Heights and past the Chabad Lavitch HQ were highly inflammatory. But he does not and will not apologize for the harm he did in the Tawana Brawley hoax.
That said, Al Sharpton is getting unjustly bashed (although it's not surprising given his record) for saying something he didn't really say. That is, Sharpton is being accused of saying that Republicans (and FAUX News reactionary mouthpiece Sean Hannity) views blacks like Hitler viewed Jews. Sharpton didn't say that, or anything close to it. This is the most reasoned piece I've seen on the incident. Sharpton, though, was stupid enough to get into an argument with Dr. Cornell West, a man with 10 times Sharpton's intellect (or maybe 20 times); Sharpton thinks that black leaders except for President Obama, are doing nothing for American blacks will Dr. West thinks (as I do) that Obama is a "black mascot" for the rich. Now Sharpton is embroiled in another legal battle, he's accused of being in a scheme with singer Wyclef Jean to launder drug money.
And this is the guy that has his own radio show, that BSNBC gave his own TV show too, and is a regular guest on BSNBC shows like Morning Joe, Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and on FOX/FAUX News.
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