Freddy’s Fashion Mart was a Harlem boutique owned by a long-time Harlem businessman who happened to be Jewish. Freddy’s owner rented space in a building on 125th Street. The building belonged to a black church.
In 1995, the building’s owners decided to raise the rents on the business tenants. It’s not an uncommon thing to do - many landlords have and continue to do this across Manhattan and across the country. But, because they couldn’t afford the rent increase, several businesses, including some black-owned ones, were forced to move. The man who would be king, the Reverend Al Sharpton, decided to protest this - not by deriding the church elders, the landlords of the building, but by loudly denouncing the Jewish owners of Freddy’s Fashion Mart.
He insisted that Freddy’s owners were bloodsuckers and white interlopers who were forcing the other tenants out of the building to further their own “racist” agenda.
A short time later, a man entered Freddy’s and told all the black people present, patrons and employees alike, to leave. Once they did, the same man firebombed the place, killing all inside - including a black security guard who was trapped by the flames.
Reverend Sharpton insisted he was blameless in the affair, and that the “incident” was nothing more than a tenant/landlord dispute gone awry. But we should know better than that. The firebombing and murder of those people would not have taken place but for the Sharpton’s rhetoric.
Wow..A black building owner raises the rent on a Jewish store owner,causing the Jewish guy to move. And AL blames the Jewish guy. And then a black guy firebombs the Jewish guys shop, killing a black guy.
Al Walks away from the whole thing without doing a minute of jail time. And the community is out one business and the jobs that goes along with it. And the blacks treat Al as a leader and a protector of their race.
Must be nice to be a black Rev. Cause pain and suffering in the black community and get paid for it. Maybe Al is a white klan member in black face.