E-mail a friendRev. Al Sharpton
original airdate March 31, 2008
Al Sharpton is both constant and controversial. Growing up, his world was churches, nightclubs and protest marches. He was ordained at age 10 and preached on tour with Mahalia Jackson. He briefly managed James Brown, was a youth organizer with Don King, worked on projects with Jesse Jackson and, in '91, founded the National Action Network. Sharpton was the first Black to run for the U.S. Senate from NY and won 32% of the vote in his '97 run for mayor. He also ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in '04.
National Action Network founder says that, with regard to race, the nation has not changed that much since 1968. (2:14)
Rev. Al Sharpton says that America is good at accepting a moment, but not a movement. Full interview. (23:19)
Rev. Al Sharpton
Tavis: As we kick off our week here at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, I am pleased to be joined by the Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network and a host of the syndicated radio program "Keeping it Real." When he was just 13 years old, Rev. Al was appointed youth director of the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket in New York, thus beginning his long career on behalf of civil rights issues. Rev. Al, as always, good to see you, man.
Rev. Al Sharpton: Good to see you.
Tavis: Thirteen.
Sharpton: Yeah, I was 13. In fact, it was the year Dr. King was killed. And I became youth director in New York under Rev. William Jones.
Tavis: What did it mean at that age to be a part of SCLC? As you and I both know, SCLC was the only organization King ever founded in his lifetime, so it meant something to him. So you're 13 and you come into this organization which means what for you at that age?
Sharpton: It meant a lot. I was already a boy preacher, and it became clear to me that my calling was social ministry, not pasturing a church. And by coming in it was more me approaching it from the religious side, that I felt that social justice was part of our calling as ministers. And Dr. King had just gotten killed. I was in the New York, the northern part of SCLC, and we were trying to bring the movement north, which he had tried in Chicago, because the issues of police brutality, the Kerner Report had just come out.
And though I was barely a teenager, it was real to us because it was the time of the anti-Vietnam War movement, a time of women's movement, it was a time of activism. And when Dr. King was killed, it was like the bottom had fell out and all of us were trying in our own way, even kids, to get the pieces and put them back together again.
Tavis: So much of King's movement or the movement that he led is obviously situated here in the South, where we sit tonight. And yet I think if you have an earnest and honest reading of his work, he was concerned, he was disturbed by the lack of organization amongst Black folk in the North. When he tried to go north to Chicago, when he tried to go north to New York, he felt a frustration. How would you describe the frustration he felt trying to advance north as compared to the frustration he felt tried to organize down South?
Sharpton: The frustration - and I talked a lot about this with Martin III, who you know I worked very closely with and I got to know his mother well, the frustration was that it was institutional racism in the North. It was more subtle, yet it was more firm. In the South, it was clear - Bull Connor and George Wallace. It was stark, it was there; it was in your face.
In the North they didn't call you a name; they didn't put you in the back of the bus. You just didn't get the job, you didn't get the bank loan; the police would harass you more. So it was harder to dramatize. One of the things I think people don't realize is Dr. King knew how to dramatize better than anyone what was going on with racism, which is why his ministry and his leadership was so effective.
It's harder to dramatize institutional racism because you don't have a target like Bull Connor or like George Wallace. So you've got to try to find different ways to reveal what is there. Everyone knows it's there, but it's harder to pinpoint. And I think that's the frustration that he met in the North.
Tavis: You mentioned racism a moment ago and this is probably the easiest question you'll be asked all week long, but I think it's a pertinent and important question. Help me, in your own way, situate this race conversation that Mr. Obama has called for, this race speech that he was forced to give because of the Jeremiah Wright incident. Help situation for me 40 years after King's assassination this race conversation in America.
Sharpton: I think 40 years later, we have to have a real conversation. The conversation is if we're going to do around the 40th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, which many of us are here to do this week, it can't be about showing some Black examples of success at the top. It must be where the quality of life for Blacks is compared to the quality of life for Whites and others in this country.
And if we look at from that perspective, it has not changed as much as we would like to say it changed. It's easy to throw out one or two Black names that made it in sports or entertainment or even politics, but what about the median income level of Black to White? What about the unemployment level? What about the level of business? What about the level of contracts?
When we get into those issues, we find that we're not much different than '68's Kerner Commission, where you have two nations, one Black and White. Dr. King died fighting for the bottom of Black America to be lifted and to deal with the average life. He died for garbage workers. He didn't die to get people at the top, just board positions and other things, unless they were going to translate that into trying to affect the whole.
And I think that if we're going to have a genuine race discussion, the discussion must not be to just commend the fact that a few broke through, but where is the body of Black America and the body of White America, and how do we close the gap? We're going to do a lot of that in our National Action Network Convention this week.
But that's what Martin III and all of us are saying, is that if you're still doubly unemployed in this country, Black to White, if you still have a healthcare gap based on race, education gap based on race, criminal justice system where we go to jail more for the same crime, how do we close that gap? And don't just tell us about well, look, you got this, look, you got that. We've always had tokens.
The question is, if a Black child born tonight in a maternity ward in a public hospital and a White child's in the next bed, their lives are qualitatively different when they leave that maternity ward. And until we can make that equal, we've not achieved Dr. King's dream.
Tavis: And yet my frustration is - I don't know how you feel, but my frustration is that every time we have one of these moments, as it were, to try to get traction on a real conversation about these disparities, about the impact that race has in America, we kind of hit it and quit it, we don't stick with it. I was personally disturbed, because I could see the cycle happening again.
Every White progressive liberal, even White conservatives, except for maybe Bill Kristol in the "New York Times," but even White conservatives were saying that Obama speech was wonderful, people called it a masterpiece. So everybody jumped on the bandwagon to praise the speech and then a few days later, whatever conversation was supposed to kick up never did.
I raise that only because I am frustrated by - again, here now we are in Memphis with the 40th anniversary King's assassination. Give me reason to believe that on one of these occasions, on one of these moments - somebody's speech, somebody's anniversary of the assassination, we can actually get traction in this multicultural America on this conversation.
Sharpton: Because the problem is that America is very good at accepting a moment, not a movement, and King made it a movement. It was nine years from the Montgomery boycott to the Civil Rights Act of '64. So (unintelligible) speech moment, event moment, but they don't deal with a movement.
And the audacity of people to act like the quest of civil rights was the sixties - well, that was that that generation. What about this generation? In the last year we've had to deal with Jena Six; we've had to deal with Imus; we've had to deal with hangman nooses; we've had to deal with police brutality. Sean Bell case is on trial, 50 shots, right now as we speak.
So to pre-date this and not deal with our generation is in some kind of way to excuse this generation as if to say "Oh, well, we don't have those problems." Well, we do. Obama and all of us are in the same generation. He and I are five or six years apart. So this is not something that happened then and not now. Right now, we still have a problem, and if people can just isolate it to some oratory without some practical ways that we challenge the status quo that is still, in many ways, reinforcing this, then we've missed the point.
Tavis: Let me go back to the point you make now, the point you intimated a few moments ago, and I want to say up front I cast no aspersion on Barack Obama, he's a personal friend. And so this question is not about casting aspersion on him. It is about trying to dig a little deeper here, to the point you raised earlier. What would you say to White Americans who 40 years after King's assassination, think that supporting the brother in the race, supporting the candidate who happens to be Black, is the right thing to do as opposed to having a conversation that really does start to drill down to the kind of public policy we need to do what King was talking about doing?
Because those, as I see it, are two very different things. Sometimes, in other words, you can support the right person for the wrong reason. Does that make sense?
Sharpton: I think it does make sense. I think that what I would say is support Obama if he's the best candidate and if he stands for the best policy, but it has nothing to do with the conversation on race. In fact, we have to have that conversation if Obama's president. We've seen many Black men get in office and it didn't solve the race question in their city, so let's not confuse the two.
The thing that is offensive to me coming out of the northern part of the King movement is a lot of people act like just Obama or somebody else achieving a position was King's dream. That's absurd. King's dream was equality. If assuming those positions lead to that, that's fine. But if it doesn't, it could almost be a distraction if we don't deal with the real issues.
And I think that a lot of white America likes to go for what is easy. I did this, so therefore I'm all right, rather than what is difficult, and that is to really deal with how you make the society fair and equal to everyone. Right now the high incarceration of Black men, why is that? The health disparities, why is that? That's a little harder than saying "I like to watch this person's show" or "I like to vote for this person, but I'm not going to change anything."
White America needs to sincerely come to grips with that, which is what Dr. King did, which is why Dr. King was so controversial and considered a polarizer when he was killed.
Tavis: And yet the flip side of that last point - I'm glad you went there - the flip side of that last point about being controversial and polarizing is that King is always and forever cast as a dreamer. The only brother, of course, for whom we have a national holiday. White folk, by and large, love Dr. King because of his love language.
I wonder, to your point, how much of the love for Dr. King even today, 40 years after his death, has to do with the fact that people don't know the full breadth and depth, the range of what he talked about, so that people think he only gave one speech, "I Have A Dream," and that speech only had one line in it, about the color of the skin, not the content of the character.
But nobody really wants to wrestle with that part of King near the end of his life, when he talked about wealth redistribution because of the Chicago movement, when he talked about America being an arrogant nation and God's judgment coming down on America in that Vietnam speech, where he said that the U.S. at the time was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.
Just a quick snippet of some of the stuff he said at the end of his life. They wouldn't let him come to the White House; they killed him, of course, in this city. Talk to me about the other side of his message.
Sharpton: Lyndon Johnson stopped talking to King after Dr. King came out against the Vietnam War. Now you must remember the courage it took for - Martin Luther King had access to the White House, had worked with the president on the Civil Rights Act and the Voter Rights Act, created a climate that Congress passed it, but he still said "I would rather not have access to the halls of power to raise the moral question."
That's real leadership. He was isolated; he was the target of FBI schemes. He was the target of the media, the "New York Timeses" of the world, who were criticizing King, calling him a polarizer, saying he stepped outside of civil rights. So I think that not only does America not want to deal with his latest speeches, they don't even deal with the whole "I Have A Dream" speech.
He said "We come to Washington because we've been given a check that has bounced in the bank of justice for insufficient funds." He was talking then about indicting America for its inconsistencies. I would say the day we've redeposited that check, it's marked "stop payment." They stopped the check. The money's there. The money was there for Katrina, the money was there in terms of the criminal justice system.
They have no intention of paying it. But if we raise it today, we are called those that are not in the King spirit. Well, what King are you talking about? A fabled King that you've created, or the real King? Which is why those of us that were too young to be in Memphis and those of us unborn are leading the memorial this year to say we have to talk about 40 years going forward, not just stand around remembering what happened to King.
But let's pick up the dream and make a reality. And that dream may not be the dream a lot of America wants to embrace, but we cannot afford to continue to see these inequities go unchallenged.
Tavis: Let me offer this, then, as the exit question. I suspect throughout the week I'll get a chance to ask many of our guests this question. For you, for Al Sharpton, what is the abiding legacy of Dr. King's life?
Sharpton: Activism. Dr. King never held a public office. Dr. King never sought one, Dr. King never had inside influence in corporate boardrooms. He knew how to be an activist, to bring to the surface and put in everyone's living room the brutality and viciousness of Americans' racism and America's war on the poor and the military war. Militarism, materialism, and racism is what he fought. He dramatized that better than anyone in American history. That's why he's in history. And I think that we must remember Dr. King as the activist that he was.
Tavis: Your march on Friday, tell me about it right quick.
Sharpton: Friday, we gather in front of Memphis City Hall at 1:30, Martin Luther King III, Rev. Bernice King, a great orator in her own right, will join all of us. We will march to here, the Lorraine Motel, at 6:01 central time, 7:01 eastern time. We will pause in a moment of silence. That will be the moment, 40 years later, that Dr. King was killed, and we will call on Americans to recommit themselves to some form of social justice.
It could be working with your local PTA where your kids go to school, your church, your civic group. But we should use that sacred moment to say "What am I doing in my life to continue to make this a reality, not just some surface ceremonial celebration?"
Tavis: Rev. Al, good to see you.
Sharpton: Good to see you, Tavis.
Tavis: Rev. Al Sharpton, the National Action Network. He's here all week long with us, doing media and talking about the issues relative to Dr. King 40 years later.
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