Al Sharpton

CTL-E-5386 · Person · activist · 1954–present

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

Al Sharpton, born Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954, is an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, broadcaster and former political candidate. He preached as a small child and was ordained young, an origin that shaped a career conducted largely through pulpits, marches and cameras. As a teenager he was appointed youth director of Operation Breadbasket in New York by Jesse Jackson, and in 1971 he founded the National Youth Movement. Through the 1980s he became a national figure by leading protests in New York cases involving racial violence and policing, work that brought both devoted support and sustained controversy, which Britannica describes in terms of colourful, popular and confrontational public action. In 1991 he founded the National Action Network, which he still leads, building it into a durable civil rights organisation with a Harlem headquarters and chapters nationally. Sharpton ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate, for mayor of New York City and, in 2004, for the Democratic presidential nomination. He later became a broadcaster, hosting the radio programme Keepin' It Real and television's PoliticsNation, carrying the protest tradition into daily media.

The record

• Also known as: Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr., Alfred Sharpton Jr., Rev. Al Sharpton, The Rev

Notes

Statistics: Born October 3, 1954, Brooklyn, New York (Britannica, updated September 29, 2026, accessed 2026-10-15); Britannica records preaching from age 4, the 1971 youth organisation, National Action Network founded 1991, and unsuccessful Senate, mayoral and 2004 presidential-nomination campaigns. The Jackson youth-director appointment is dated 1969 in HistoryMakers/EBSCO summaries; exact age descriptions vary across accounts and are not asserted beyond the appointment itself. · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — From boy preacher to institution builder: whatever verdicts listeners reach on individual campaigns, the National Action Network gave his activism an organisational life beyond any single protest. · Photo slot: CLEARED — Wikimedia Commons File:Al Sharpton by David Shankbone.jpg, David Shankbone, CC BY-SA 3.0, verified via Commons API 2026-10-15; direct URL https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Al_Sharpton_by_David_Shankbone.jpg; master in packet photos/.

Relationships

• Jesse Jackson Sr. — related to
  Jesse Jackson mentored the teenage Al Sharpton and appointed him youth director of the Brooklyn/New York branch of Operation Breadbasket in 1969, a formative post Sharpton and biographical accounts credit in his own telling of his start in activism.

Sources

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Al Sharpton" — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Al-Sharpton (primary source)
• The HistoryMakers, "Reverend Al Sharpton's Biography" — https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/reverend-al-sharpton

Record CTL-E-5386 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 2 sources (1 primary) · 1 mapped relationship · CTL research: PPL-001.
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