Free Republic

As a mainstreamed reverend enjoys access at City Hall, community leaders recognize change; but some still nurse grudges.Two decades ago, Rev. Al Sharpton was the ultimate civic iconoclast, speaking what he called truth to power, organizing rallies and attacking the establishment on behalf of the oppressed. Today, he’s under fire for being too mainstream. Last summer, another prominent black voice, Cornell West, attacked the National Action Network founder in a radio interview as a too-complacent “house negro” of Barack Obama’s “plantation,” failing to hold the president accountable for drone strikes or talk about “Wall Street criminality.” And as he emerges...

NEW YORK (TRNS) – Members of New York City’s Democratic congressional delegation gathered outside Lower Manhattan’s Federal District Courthouse Monday to back a potential Department of Justice civil rights investigation of George Zimmerman over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. A report published last week by the Miami Herald revealed FBI investigators found little proof Zimmerman was driven by racism in Martin’s shooting, the legislators assembled Monday insisted his motives be subject to greater scrutiny. “We respect the jury’s verdict, but the state prosecutorial chapter has now been closed, and a new federal chapter has been opened.” said...

A man who was convicted in the stabbing of a Hasidic scholar in racial unrest that engulfed Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991 was stabbed early Sunday in Upper Manhattan, the police said. The man, Lemrick Nelson Jr., 35, was found unconscious on an exit ramp of the George Washington Bridge about 2 a.m., according to the Fire Department. He had a stab wound behind his ear, and an ice pick was found nearby. He was taken to Harlem Hospital Center in stable condition. Investigators were looking into whether Mr. Nelson had been attacked after a traffic dispute, the police said....

Twenty years after the 1989 murder of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins by a white mob in Bensonhurst, the Rev. Al Sharpton joined the victim’s family and friends at the Brooklyn cemetery where he is buried. ...Two years from now will mark the 20th anniversary of the murder of Jewish rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum during the Crown Heights riot – which Sharpton helped instigate. ... The Stiletto will have to wait another two years to learn how Sharpton plans to commemorate Rosenbaum’s murder, seeing as how he protested civil rights charges being brought against his killer. [NOTE: There was media bias...

NEW YORK - After three trials in 12 years, a black man was convicted Wednesday in the stabbing death of a Jewish scholar during a 1991 riot in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood that widened the city's racial divide and contributed to Rudolph Giuliani's election as mayor. Click on link on for rest of article.

'91 Suspect Admits: "I Killed Yankel" By John Marzulli NY DAILY NEWS Tuesday, April 29th, 2003 Lemrick Nelson did it. He now admits stabbing Yankel Rosenbaum during the 1991 Crown Heights riots - but insists he didn't target the Hasidic scholar because of his religion, Nelson's lawyer declared yesterday in Brooklyn Federal Court. "I stabbed somebody, but not because he was a Jew, 'cause I was drunk. I had been drinking," Nelson told his girlfriend about a year after the attack, his lawyer Richard Jasper said yesterday. The bombshell stabbing admission - and radical change in legal strategy - came...