Ada took a job as a maid, but her income was so low that the family qualified for welfare and had to move from middle class Hollis, Queens, to the public housing projects in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.

[20] In 1969, Sharpton was appointed by Jesse Jackson to serve as youth director of the New York City branch of Operation Breadbasket,[20] a group that focused on the promotion of new and better jobs for African Americans.

[31] In 1991, Sharpton founded the National Action Network, an organization designed to increase voter education, to provide services to those in poverty, and to support small community businesses.

One of the factors that sparked the riot was the arrival of a private ambulance, which was later discovered to be on the orders of a police officer who was worried for the Jewish driver's safety, removed him from the scene while Cato lay pinned under his car.

[38] Sharpton marched through Crown Heights and in front of the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, shortly after the riot, with about 400 protesters (who chanted "Whose streets?

Although all four defendants were found not guilty of any crimes in the criminal trial, Diallo's family was later awarded $3 million in a wrongful death suit filed against the city.

Miller, a 19-year-old African-American woman, had sat unconscious in a locked car with a flat tire and the engine left running, parked at a local gas station.

After her relatives had called 9-1-1, Riverside Police Department officers who responded to the scene observed a gun in the young woman's lap, and according to their accounts, she was shaking and foaming at the mouth, and in need of medical attention.

When the Riverside County district attorney stated that the officers involved had erred in judgement but committed no crime, declining to file criminal charges against them, Sharpton participated in protests which reached their zenith when protestors spilled onto the busy SR 91, completely stopping traffic.

[57][58] In 2001, Sharpton was jailed for 90 days on trespassing charges while protesting against U.S. military target practice exercises in Puerto Rico near a United States Navy bombing site.

[63] On March 11, 2008, Sharpton held a press conference to highlight what he said was unequal treatment of four suspected rapists in a high-profile crime in the Dunbar Village Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida.

[64] At his press conference Sharpton said that any violent act toward a woman is inexcusable but he felt that the accused youths were being treated unfairly because they were black.

[65] In June 2011, Sharpton spoke at a rally in support of Tanya McDowell, who was arrested and charged with larceny for allegedly registering her son for kindergarten in the wrong public school district using a false address.

[69] Subsequently, Sharpton and his organization, National Action Network, held rallies in several cities denouncing the verdict and called for "Justice for Trayvon".

[82] In December 2022, taking a stand together against the increasing instances of racism and antisemitism in the United States, Sharpton, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Vista Equity Partners CEO and Carnegie Hall Chairman Robert F. Smith, Reverend Conrad Tillard, World Values Network founder and CEO Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and Elisha Wiesel joined to host 15 Days of Light, celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in a unifying holiday ceremony at Carnegie Hall.

[92] In 2014, Sharpton began a push for criminal justice reform, citing the fact that black people represent a greater proportion of those arrested and incarcerated in America.

[97] Former Mayor of New York City Ed Koch, one-time foe, said that Sharpton deserves the respect he enjoys among black Americans: "He is willing to go to jail for them, and he is there when they need him.

[101] Sociologist Orlando Patterson has referred to him as a racial arsonist,[102] while liberal columnist Derrick Z. Jackson has called him the black equivalent of Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan.

[116] On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl, was found smeared with feces, lying in a garbage bag, her clothing torn and burned and with various slurs and epithets written on her body in charcoal.

[121] Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason had accused the Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of racism and of being one of the perpetrators of the alleged abduction and rape.

The three were successfully sued for defamation, and were ordered to pay $345,000 in damages, with the jury finding Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two, and Mason for one.

Sharpton allegedly recorded incriminating conversations with Genovese and Gambino family mobsters, contributing to the indictments of several underworld figures.

Veteran activist Ahmed Obafemi told the New York Daily News that he had long suspected Sharpton of taping him with the bugged briefcase.

Later, the authorities discovered that one of Mr. Sharpton's for-profit companies, Raw Talent, which he used as a repository for money from speaking engagements, was also not paying taxes, a failure that continued for years.

[134] On September 29, 2010, Robert Snell of The Detroit News reported that the Internal Revenue Service had filed a notice of federal tax lien against Sharpton in New York City in the amount of over $538,000.

[139][140] In July 2013, the New York Daily News reported that Sharpton, while still married to his second wife (Kathy Jordan),[141] now had a self-described "girlfriend", Aisha McShaw,[142] aged 35, and that the couple had "been an item for months.... photographed at elegant bashes all over the country".

[144][146] During 2007, Sharpton participated in a public debate with atheist writer Christopher Hitchens, defending his religious faith and his belief in the existence of God.

[165] He also has appeared in episodes of the television shows New York Undercover, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Girlfriends, My Wife and Kids, Rescue Me and Boston Legal.

He was a guest on Weekends at the DL on Comedy Central and has been featured in television ads for the Fernando Ferrer campaign for the New York City mayoral election, 2005.

[169] In June 2005, Sharpton signed a contract with Matrix Media to produce and host a live two-hour daily talk program, but it never aired.