Sammy Davis did this, back when there was REAL discrimination, when black people weren't even allowed to watch at the same Vegas shows as white people. He went from sleeping in segregated hotel rooms to sleeping in the main buildings with everybody else, and he did it 40 years ago in the face of actual violence and bigotry. By the time he was in his heyday and most popular, the hard-core bigotry in the US was history.
Bill Cosby went from small time venues to TV, to big theaters to being a multimillionaire who has the political capital to turn right around and lecture the "black community" that they need to stop blaming the Man and start condemning their own druggy ways and moral-less rap music, but of course, that never even blips on Sharpton's radar, because that is a call to work hard and gain respect of everyone not because of the color of your skin but because you make your own way in the world by your own hard work. And Sharpton lives off the dispair of others.
Both these men came though the hard times by showing us that black people were just...people. They destroyed the false gods of race hate by being the best they could be, not by rhyming fancy words and grabbing their crotch. They won fame by hard work, not by being flat out crazy and wearing one glove. They were performers; Micheal Jackson was far less...he was only a celebrity.
I still think Richard Pryor did more for race relations, because he made whites and blacks laugh at each other, and with each other.
Oh, he was more than a celebrity. He was a pedophile who made that acceptable....to some—Not anyone who had any sense of morality.