Word: sharptons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Black Students Association invited Sharpton as a political leader of the Black community and as a role model to inspire young Blacks to become involved in politics. Yet a brief look at Sharpton's political career indicates that his example is hardly worthy of emulation...
...Sharpton--who is currently in the midst of a campaign for the U.S. Senate--first became a significant player in New York City race politics during the infamous Tawana Brawley trial in 1987. Brawley, a young Black woman, had been found one summer night, lying in an alley, covered with excrement. She claimed to have been kidnapped four days earlier, held captive in the woods and repeatedly raped by several white males...
...Sharpton and two attorneys, Alton H. Maddox Jr. and C. Vernon Mason, took up the case. They did not let Brawley speak to a grand jury or with New York Attorney General Robert Abrams. When Brawley's mother was subpoenaed, Sharpton advised her not to testify and took her to a church for sanctuary...
Having paralyzed the justice system by silencing all of the witnesses, Sharpton, Maddox and Mason subsequently publicized a series of outlandish conspiracy theories, implicating the Ku Klux Klan, the Irish Republican Army, the Mafia and elected officials of Duchess County, NY in the crime. They viciously slandered public officials--including Attorney General Abrams, whom they branded a sexual pervert and compared to Adolf Hitler...
...Brawley affair was not an isolated event. Sharpton has repeatedly employed the same techniques: he searches out alleged victims of racial violence, designates himself as their spokesperson and does what he can to stir up racial tension...