Knife Attack Made a More Serious Man of Sharpton

NEW YORK —  The Rev. Al Sharpton had been leading demonstrations in Brooklyn for 20 consecutive weekends, protesting the murder of a black teenager by a white mob, and he thought he’d seen it all: Angry housewives cursing him for coming to their neighborhood. Hoodlums throwing watermelons and rocks from the sidewalks.

But on a cold January morning in 1991, as the fiery black activist prepared to lead a protest march through the white working-class neighborhood of Bensonhurst, a man raced up to him and plunged a knife into his chest. Sharpton pulled out the 5-inch blade and crumpled to the ground, as hundreds of his supporters began screaming for help.

“I thought I was going to die,” the minister and now Democratic presidential candidate recalled recently. The knife wound came perilously close to his heart, but surgeons were able to save him.

That close call, though, transformed Sharpton from a racial provocateur into a leader who wants to be taken seriously on the national political stage. As he lay in the hospital, the man known as “Rev. Soundbite” thought about mortality and vowed to change his life.

“I wanted to be more substantive, to be more than a slogan that people shout in the streets,” he said this week. “I had to be less flippant, and more sober in my style. I couldn’t shoot from the hip as much.”

More importantly, Sharpton said, he wanted to prove his allegiance to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent teachings by reaching out to the man who had attacked him. The preacher showed up at the sentencing, asking for leniency. Michael Riccardi, a 27-year-old alcoholic, got a 5- to 15-year sentence for first-degree assault.

“The toughest thing was when I visited him in jail, and told the man who tried to kill me that I forgave him,” Sharpton said. “The day I walked out of that jail prepared me for the rest of my life.”

Thirteen years later, Sharpton, 49, cuts a distinctive figure on the campaign trail.

A leading figure in the black community, he says he has modeled his campaign on the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential bids. Few expect Sharpton to win. He has raised only $284,000, according to public reports, and cannot hope to compete with other candidates’ budgets.

Instead, he is using his campaign to raise his profile in national Democratic politics. His strategy: to compete in most primaries, hoping to make a splash in New York, California and other states with large numbers of African American and other minority voters. He says he expects to play an even bigger role if the nomination remains in doubt at convention time.

“Don’t underestimate this man,” said New York City Councilman Charles Barron, a strong backer. “When people like [Mass. Sen. John F.] Kerry and [former Vermont Gov. Howard] Dean come into our neighborhoods, most of our people will have no idea who they are. But they’ve heard of the reverend, and that’s going to make a difference.”

If Sharpton is a hero to some, he’s a hustler to others. Critics have dismissed him as a con man, or a clown, and they say there is no way he can escape his checkered past, including his first prominent moment in the national spotlight.

That was in 1987, when he rallied support for Tawana Brawley, a black teenager who claimed she’d been raped by a gang of white men. It all turned out to be a hoax, but Sharpton has never apologized for his role, a refusal that has alienated him from many white voters.

“The challenge for Sharpton is to rise above all the criticism and show that he is a leader who stands for ideas -- principles that he has almost given his life for,” said Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and essayist who strongly supports him. “This man is uniquely qualified to talk about race, and that’s because he has grown and matured in his own life.”

Born in Brooklyn, Sharpton amazed family and friends by preaching at a church service when he was 4 and becoming an ordained Pentecostal minister six years later. But his middle-class existence was shattered when, at age 9, his father left home and the family moved into a crowded Brooklyn housing project.

As a teenager, he got involved in community projects and gravitated to a series of New York political mentors, including the late Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. But his life was profoundly altered when he met soul singer James Brown backstage after a 1973 concert. He worked as an aide to Brown for several years and grew a hairdo like his famous mentor. He also met his future wife, Kathy Jordan, then one of Brown’s backup singers.

Sharpton plunged into politics as racial tensions began erupting on New York’s streets. Friends attribute his rise to his ability to hold a crowd enthralled, his smooth rapport with reporters and -- perhaps most important -- a yawning leadership void in New York’s black community.

“His candidacy now, and his emergence back then, is symptomatic of a deep crisis in black leadership,” said West. “So many of our elected officials have moved behind mainstream candidates, and they don’t speak with the kind of power and passion that’s needed to win support from people on the street.”

When black people were the victims of injustice, Sharpton was often the first to rush to their sides. Although many white elected officials spoke derisively about Sharpton’s marches, they could not afford to ignore their political effect.

Most New Yorkers first learned of Sharpton in 1985, when the portly minister, who did not have a permanent church, led demonstrations against Bernard H. Goetz, the subway gunman who shot four black teenagers he said were going to rob him.

He next organized marches in Howard Beach, Queens, where white youths had chased three black men from a diner into traffic, where one was killed by a car. He also rallied supporters in Crown Heights when Gavin Cato, a young black boy, was accidentally run over by a Hasidic rabbi’s motorcade, an event that triggered several days of violence between blacks and Jews.

Sharpton’s tactics often divided New Yorkers, but never so much as during the Brawley case. The upstate teenager became a cause celebre for black activists, and the reverend was her taunting, ubiquitous spokesman. He echoed her charges, including the accusation that Steven Pagones, an assistant district attorney, had raped her.

Pagones angrily denied it, and a subsequent grand jury investigation determined that Brawley’s entire story was a fraud. A court also ruled that Sharpton had defamed the Dutchess County official, ordering him to pay Pagones $65,000. (He paid the fine.)

This issue continues to haunt him, so why doesn’t he simply apologize?

“I fought for justice in that case,” he said. “I stood up for something I believed in, and I truly believed a young woman who said to all of us that her civil rights had been violated. Was I supposed to not believe her?”

The issue is 17 years old, Sharpton added, “and if in all that time this is the one civil rights case you’ve got to ask me about, that’s not a bad batting average for a public figure.”

Some New Yorkers, such as former Mayor Edward I. Koch, think Sharpton’s refusal to apologize will always shadow his bid for multiracial respectability.

“I told him [Sharpton] I consider him a very able black leader,” said Koch. “But I said, ‘You’ll never be a crossover leader getting white support in any large numbers until you repudiate the Tawana Brawley hoax.’ He thanked me, and that was it.”

By 1991, Sharpton had a well-earned reputation for divisive street politics. But then came the march in Bensonhurst, where only two whites had been arrested for being part of a mob that killed a black youth who had wandered into their neighborhood.

The story of Sharpton’s stabbing that day has become a part of his Sunday sermons in churches from Harlem to Watts. He has written about the incident in two books and invoked it during speeches on the stump.

“This man truly changed, and for the better,” said Carl Redding, Sharpton’s driver that day.

In the months after he was attacked, Sharpton set out on a more independent course. He formed the National Action Network, which has coordinated rallies and demonstrations across the nation, and he learned to work more within the system.

Even his wardrobe changed; Sharpton shed his familiar jogging suits and running shoes for well-tailored suits and a less flamboyant hairstyle.

“Do I think Al Sharpton is different now? There’s no question about it,” said veteran Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “Democratic politicians realize now that they’d be fools to tangle with him or marginalize him. Al Sharpton has become the political boss of New York’s underclass.”

Sharpton ran unsuccessfully in three campaigns -- the U.S. Senate races from New York in 1992 and 1994 and the New York City mayor’s race in 1997. Each time, he won a sizable share of the black vote and grudging respect from politicians who differed with him.

His transformation seemed complete during the weeks following the 1999 death of Amadou Diallo. Four undercover New York police officers, mistaking the unarmed West African peddler for a rape suspect, killed him in a hail of 41 bullets.

Sharpton orchestrated massive acts of civil disobedience in which Hollywood celebrities, prominent business leaders and local politicians were arrested.

His supporters point to that as evidence of Sharpton’s new, more mainstream political style. But opponents saw a retooled version of the old Sharpton style.

“There have been more new Sharptons than new Nixons,” said Fred Siegel, history professor at The Cooper Union in New York. For Sharpton, Siegel added, “the game is the only goal, and the object of the game is to inject himself into as many situations as possible, to leverage his own influence as often as possible.”

Sharpton’s onetime support for Republicans, such as former New York Sen. Alfonse D’Amato and New York Gov. George E. Pataki, suggests “he’s a classic con man,” Siegel said. “And his chief contribution to the political process has been to take down Democratic candidates, to damage them.”

Sharpton says it was a mistake to back D’Amato, but he adds that blacks are not always bound by party ties.

But Wayne Barrett, author of a book on former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, saw it as “classic behavior by Al.” Added Barrett: “It raises the question of what his real agenda is in this current presidential race. He could play a constructive role, or he could be truly disruptive.”

Sharpton’s presidential aspirations haven’t brought him above single digits in the polls. But he has been highly visible, especially during the give-and-take of the staged debates.

During a testy exchange in Iowa with Dean, Sharpton criticized the former Vermont governor for failing to acknowledge that he had not named any people of color to his Cabinet.

It was an in-your-face moment that Sharpton clearly relished. But “I didn’t once call him a name,” Sharpton noted later. “Fifteen years ago I might have called him a name.”

He was polite and focused, Sharpton insists. But that was in front of a largely white audience. Last week, during Martin Luther King Day observations at Harlem’s historic Canaan Baptist Church, a different Al Sharpton was on display.

Sharpton recounted his exchange with Dean, and blasted those who had criticized him for raising the race question.

“The audacity of these people!” he shouted, as the packed crowd cheered in sing-song rhythm. “To ask me why I would question a man on his race record!”

Pacing back and forth, Sharpton thundered: “I’ve been in jail for this movement! On my chest I bear a scar! Stabbed for this movement! So don’t tell me to back down!”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Al Sharpton

Personal

Born: Oct. 3, 1954, in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Hometown: Brooklyn

Family: Married to Kathy Jordan; two daughters, Dominique, 17, Ashley, 16

Education: Tilden High School; attended Brooklyn College, 1973-1975

Career: Minister, 1964-present; aide on James Brown tours, 1973-1980; civil rights activist; candidate for U.S. Senate, 1992 and 1994; candidate for mayor of New York, 1997

By the numbers

34%: Sharpton’s share of the vote in the District of Columbia primary Jan. 14.

43%: Howard Dean’s share of the vote in the D.C. primary.

4: Number of candidates on the ballot.

17,371: Number of people who have voted on the Sharpton website’s poll of the most important issue facing Americans today. (The economy was first in the poll, with 30.7% of the vote.)

$283,714: Amount raised by the Sharpton campaign as of Oct. 15.

$0: Amount the Sharpton campaign has spent on TV advertising.

0%: Sharpton’s share of delegates won in the Iowa caucuses.

$3: Price of a 7-inch vinyl James Brown album from 1981 featuring Sharpton and the single “God Has Smiled on Me -- Part One and Part Two,” for auction on EBay.

A closer look

* Began preaching at age 4, and was ordained a minister at age 10.

* Views James Brown, his former employer, as a father figure.

* Was almost killed in 1991, when he was attacked by an assailant with a knife.

* Became notorious for his controversial role as advisor to Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old who claimed to have been gang-raped by white men in 1987.

The lowdown

With his preacher’s cadence and a wicked wit, Sharpton has provided some of the livelier moments at assorted presidential debates. But Sharpton has done few of the things that a candidate needs to do to seriously compete for the Democratic presidential nomination, such as building a campaign infrastructure and devoting long hours to campaigning in critical early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. Regardless, he has said he intends to stay in the race all the way to the Democratic National Convention in July.

-- Analysis by Mark Z. Barabak

Sources: National Journal, Washington Post, www.sharpton2004.org, www.ebay.com, www.opensecrets.org