Duke and Durham don't deserve Al Sharpton

Today's Durham Herald Sun reports:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the New York City-based civil-rights activist, may visit Durham in the next few days to speak out on allegations that a black woman was raped last month by members of Duke University's lacrosse team.

As of Thursday afternoon, Sharpton hadn't scheduled a visit. But he had been invited to make the trip by "local community members and pastors," said Rachel Noerdlinger, the minister's spokeswoman.

Noerdlinger said Sharpton's travel plans "are just being shaped" and that the proposed trip to Durham was "under strong consideration."

It was not clear Thursday who in Durham has asked Sharpton to consider the trip south. …

One activist, the Rev. Carl Kenney, said he'd placed a call to Sharpton and would urge the minister to stay out of the situation for now.

The H-S said Durham’s Mayor, Bill Bell, “voiced skepticism” about a possible Sharpton visit:

"What would be the purpose of his visit?" the mayor said. "But it's a free country. People can go where they want to go, if they've got the means to get there."

Bell has repeatedly urged calm and encouraged everyone to let the investigation and any legal proceedings take their course.

Sharpton has some Duke and Durham admires. One, activist Bill Cherry, is quoted in The H-S story :

”(Sharpton’s) a great person, and he's not out there seeking fame and fortune," Cherry said. "Same with Jesse. These guys move around the country trying to put out fires, not start them. Since it's [already in] the national spotlight, they come in and talk about it and try to calm folk down."

Put out fires? Calm folk?

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby has done what few journalists seem willing to do: remind us of Sharpton’s career. Jacoby calls it "at least as vile as David Duke’s." Here’s some of Jacoby’s reminding:

1987: Sharpton spreads the incendiary Tawana Brawley hoax, insisting heatedly that a 15-year-old black girl was abducted, raped, and smeared with feces by a group of white men. He singles out Steve Pagones, a young prosecutor. Pagones is wholly innocent -- the crime never occurred -- but Sharpton taunts him: "If we're lying, sue us, so we can . . . prove you did it."

Pagones does sue, and eventually wins a $345,000 verdict for defamation. To this day, Sharpton refuses to recant his unspeakable slander or to apologize for his role in the odious affair.

1991: A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and antisemitic 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.

1995: 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 as "traitors" and "Uncle Toms." Some protesters shout, "Burn down the Jew store!" and simulate striking a match. "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.

If Sharpton were a white skinhead, he would be a political leper, spurned everywhere but the fringe.

But far from being spurned, he is shown much deference. Democrats embrace him. Politicians court him. And journalists report on his comings and goings while politely sidestepping his career as a hatemongering racial hustler

Those horrific events are part of Shapton's long, odious career. I'd add shameful but Sharpton and his supporters and apologists don't know the meaning of that word.

Duke and Durham don’t deserve Al Sharpton.

You can read Jacoby’s column here and another he’s written on Sharpton’s career here.

Trackback: Just One Minute, Signifying Nothing.