"Sharpton first earned national notoriety for promoting the false claims of Tawana Brawley, a black teenager who in 1987 alleged she had been abducted and raped by a gang of white youths."
Brawley said she was raped by "white cops."
"Sharpton inflamed a race riot over the incident, but a New York grand jury found no evidence of any crime against Brawley and it is now widely acknowledged that she concocted the allegation. Steve Pagones, a prosecutor whom Sharpton blamed for the false incident, won a $345,000 verdict against Sharpton for defamation."
I'm not familiar with the "race riot" the writer mentioned, and I've read entire books on the Brawley case (most notably, Outrage). While it's possible I'm wrong, note that the author provides no specifics that could be confirmed or disconfirmed.
A January 16, 2003, column by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe recounted Sharpton's involvement in the infamous 1991 Crown Heights riots. Jacoby described the episode as follows:
"A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and anti-Semitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the 'diamond merchants' - code for Jews - with 'the blood of innocent babies' on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, 'No justice, no peace.' A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting 'Kill the Jews!' and stabbed to death."
Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death by Lemrick Nelson Jr. only hours after Josef Lifsh accidentally killed Gavin Cato and seriously injured little Angela Cato. The accident and the murder occurred on the same night, days before Gavin's funeral. This is really bad for Jeff Jacoby, who is usually the model of rigorous reporting.
Jacoby noted that Sharpton's racial arson campaign continued in 1995 with the Freddy's Fashion Mart fiasco:
"When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. 'We will not stand by,' he warns malignantly, 'and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.' Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed. 'We're going to see that this cracker suffers,' says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno."
My understanding is that Fred Harari, the owner of Freddie's, was simply the front man for the United House of Prayer, and had no say in the matter; United House of Prayer ORDERED him to throw out the African record store owner. And Morris Powell's follower, Roland Smith Jr. aka Abubunde Mulocko, shot more than four people (though he murdered a total of seven, between shooting and immolating them), but at least one of his shooting victims survived.
I can see you have studied Sharpton a good deal.
Do you know if he actually said these words I posted above (Question mark key doesn't work at the moment)
"We will not stand by ...and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."