Al Sharpton Bio, Wiki, Age, Family, Wife, Preaching, Weight Loss, Net Worth

Al Sharpton Biography

Al Sharpton (Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr.) is an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, talk show host, and politician. He is the founder of the National Action Network. In 2004, he ran for the Democratic presidential candidacy in the United States.

Al Sharpton Age

Sharpton is 67 years old as of 2021. He was born on October 3, 1954, in Brownsville, New York, United States. He celebrates his birthday on the 3rd of October every year.

Al Sharpton Height

Sharpton stands at a height of 1.78 m.

Al Sharpton Family

Ada (née Richards) and Alfred Charles Sharpton Sr. raised Sharpton. The family has Cherokee ancestors. At the age of four, he spoke his first sermon and toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Sharpton’s father divorced his wife in 1963 to pursue a relationship with Sharpton’s half-sister. Ada got a maid job, but her wages were so poor that the family was forced to move from middle-class Hollis, Queens, to the public housing complexes in Brooklyn’s Brownsville district.

Al Sharpton Wife

He met his future wife Kathy Jordan, a backup vocalist, while on tour with James Brown in 1971. Jordan and Sharpton married in 1980. In 2004, the couple divorced. While still married to his second wife (Kathy Jordan), the New York Daily News reported in July 2013 that Sharpton had a self-described “girlfriend,” Aisha McShaw, 35, and that the couple had “been an item for months…. photographed at sophisticated bashes all over the country.” According to the Daily News, McShaw describes herself as a “personal stylist” and a “personal banker.”

Al Sharpton Net Worth

Sharpton has an estimated net worth of $500 Thousand, which he has earned through his career as a civil rights activist, Baptist minister, talk show host, and politician.

Al Sharpton Salary

He earns an annual salary of $324,000 .

Al Sharpton Education

Sharpton graduated from Brooklyn’s Samuel J. Tilden High School and attended Brooklyn College for two years before leaving out in 1975. In 1972, he accepted the role of youth director for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign. Between 1973 through 1980, Sharpton was the tour manager for James Brown.

Al Sharpton Activism

Jesse Jackson appointed Sharpton as the youth director of the New York City division of Operation Breadbasket in 1969, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting new and better jobs for African Americans. Sharpton created the National Youth Movement in 1971 in order to gather funds for disadvantaged youth.

Al Sharpton Bernhard Goetz

Aboard December 22, 1984, Bernhard Goetz shot four African-American men who approached him and attempted to rob him on a New York City Subway 2 train in Manhattan. Except for possessing an unregistered pistol, Goetz was acquitted of all charges at his trial. Sharpton led multiple protests against what he viewed as the case’s insufficient prosecution. According to Sharpton and other civil rights leaders, Goetz’s actions were racist, and a federal civil rights probe was demanded. The gunshot was the result of an attempted robbery, according to a federal probe.

Al Sharpton Howard Beach

Three African-American men were assaulted by a mob of white men in the Howard Beach section of Queens on December 20, 1986. Their assailants pursued the three men into the Belt Parkway, where one of them, Michael Griffith, was fatally struck by a passing automobile. A week later, on December 27, Sharpton led a march through the streets of Howard Beach with 1,200 protestors. Residents of the predominantly white neighborhood hurled racial epithets at the predominantly black protesters. After the two surviving victims declined to cooperate with the Queens district attorney, New York Governor Mario Cuomo appointed a special prosecutor. Sharpton’s involvement in the case catapulted him to national fame.

Al Sharpton Preaching

Since the age of four, Sharpton has been preaching. At the age of nine, he was licensed and ordained. He started the National Youth Movement in 1971 and directed it for seventeen years, registering young people to vote and providing them with work possibilities. His direct action and civil disobedience efforts have raised awareness of injustice in a variety of sectors. While continuing to preach, Sharpton followed other interests: in his teens, he formed a deep bond with James Brown and created a father-son relationship with him, eventually recording the album God Smiled on Me with him. He worked as a youth organizer with boxing promoter Don King in the 1970s and early 1980s, learning about African American politics and entertainment.

Al Sharpton National Action Network

Sharpton, on the other hand, never drifted far from activism. In 1991, he founded the National Action Network to promote progressive, people-centered social policies through voter education and registration drives, economic assistance for small community businesses, and confrontation of corporate racism. Sharpton has always stood out for African Americans, from candidates for public office to Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was brutalized by Brooklyn cops in 1997.

He is now working to create a nationwide multi-cultural, multi-racial movement that will address a variety of concerns. To that purpose, Sharpton, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, and Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree founded “Second Chance” in 1999, a program that helps non-violent felony prisoners when they are released from jail. In 1999, after police shot unarmed Amadou Diallo 42 times, Sharpton organized a major protest. Sharpton opposed the US Navy’s bombing of Vieques, a Puerto Rican island, in 2001. Sharpton is following in the footsteps of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. by attempting to combat injustice wherever he finds it.

Al Sharpton Stabbed

When Sharpton was stabbed in the chest in the schoolyard at P.S. 205 by Michael Riccardi on January 12, 1991, while prepared to lead a rally through Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, New York, he averted major injury. Sharpton’s assistants captured the inebriated attacker and handed him over to police who had arrived for the planned protest. Riccardi was convicted of first-degree assault in 1992. When the judge sentenced Riccardi, Sharpton requested leniency from the judge.

Riccardi was sentenced to five to fifteen years in prison by the judge, and he served ten years before being freed on parole on January 8, 2001. Despite forgiving his attacker and appealing for mercy on his behalf, Sharpton launched a lawsuit against the city of New York, stating that the numerous police officers present failed to defend him from his attacker. He finally struck a $200,000 settlement with the city in December 2003, just as jury selection was about to begin.

Al Sharpton Politics

Sharpton has sought for elected office several times without success. In an interview, he acknowledged that winning office may not have been his goal in his past campaigns, saying: “Much of the media’s criticism of me is predicated on their objectives, which they impose on me. Those aren’t necessarily my objectives. ‘Well, Sharpton hasn’t won a political office,’ they’ll argue. But that may not be my intention! Maybe I ran for office to change the conversation or to bring up the issue of social justice.”

In 1988, 1992, and 1994, Sharpton sought for a seat in the United States Senate from New York. He ran for Mayor of New York City in 1997. He and his wife stayed in a property in Englewood, New Jersey, throughout his 1992 campaign, despite he claimed his domicile was an apartment in Brooklyn. On December 15, 2005, Sharpton agreed to reimburse the federal government $100,000 in public funding he received for his 2004 presidential campaign. The restitution was required because Sharpton had spent more money on his campaign than was allowed by federal law.

Sharpton’s campaign had debts of $479,050 at the time, and owed Sharpton himself $145,146 for “Fundraising Letter Preparation — Kinko’s,” according to his most recent Federal Election Commission filings (from January 1, 2005). In 2009, the Federal Election Commission reported that Sharpton’s 2004 presidential campaign team had been fined $285,000 for violating campaign finance rules during his campaign. In 2007, Sharpton stated that he will not run for president in 2008.

Al Sharpton Taxes

Sharpton was charged with a misdemeanor for failing to file a state income tax return in 1993. Authorities then discovered that one of Mr. Sharpton’s for-profit firms, Raw Talent, which he used to store money from speaking engagements, had also failed to pay taxes, a failing that had gone on for years. The Associated Press reported on May 9, 2008, that Sharpton and his companies owed about $1.5 million in delinquent taxes and penalties. Sharpton owed $931,000 in federal income tax and $366,000 to the state of New York, plus another $176,000 to the state through his for-profit company, Rev. Al Communications.

The New York Post reported on June 19, 2008, that the IRS had issued subpoenas to many firms that had donated to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General of New York State, started an investigation into the National Action Network in 2007 after it failed to file required financial reports. Several prominent firms, including Anheuser-Busch and Colgate-Palmolive, have donated thousands of dollars to the National Action Network, according to the Washington Post.

The funds, according to the Post, were designed to prevent the National Action Network from organizing boycotts or rallies. In response to the investigations, Sharpton said that they indicated a political purpose by US agencies. The Detroit News’ Robert Snell reported on September 29, 2010, that the Internal Revenue Service has filed a notice of federal tax lien against Sharpton in the sum of $538,000 in New York City. According to Sharpton’s lawyer, the notice of federal tax lien refers to Sharpton’s federal income tax return for the year 2009, which has been extended until October 15, 2010. The lien, according to the Snell report, relates to taxes assessed in 2009. Sharpton and his for-profit businesses owed $4.5 million in state and federal taxes as of November 2014, according to The New York Times.

Al Sharpton Barack Obama

Sharpton was described as a “adviser” to President Barack Obama and as Obama’s “go-to man” on racial matters by Glenn Thrush of Politico in 2014.

Al Sharpton George Floyd

On June 4, 2020, Sharpton delivered a eulogy at the funeral of George Floyd, in which he asked for the four Minneapolis cops involved in Floyd’s murder to be brought to justice. He also chastised President Donald Trump for talking about “calling in the military” when “some kids inadvertently start violence that our family does not condone” and for “not saying a word about the 8 minutes and 46 seconds of police murder of George Floyd.” Following Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd on April 20, 2021, Sharpton held a prayer with the Floyd family in Minneapolis.

Al Sharpton MSNBC

Sharpton inked a deal with Matrix Media in June 2005 to develop and host a live two-hour daily talk show, but it was never broadcast. Sharpton inked a deal with Radio One in November 2005 to host a daily national talk radio show called Keepin It Real with Al Sharpton, which premiered on January 30, 2006.

On August 29, 2011, Sharpton took over as host of PoliticsNation, an MSNBC program that aired weeknights at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time. The program was moved to Sunday mornings, one hour per week, in October 2015. He continues to contribute to Morning Joe on a regular basis.

Al Sharpton Weight Loss

The MSNBC broadcaster began reducing weight by weaning himself off meats and grains, and in recent years, he has been more rigid about his diet.

Al Sharpton Books

Go and Tell Pharaoh, with Nick Chiles, Al on America, The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton on the Path to American Leadership, and Rise Up: Confronting a Country at a Crossroads are the four books Sharpton has written or co-wrote.