Robert "Sonny" Carson (also known as Mwlina Imiri Abubadika;[1] May 22, 1936[2] – December 20, 2002), was a U.S. Army Korean War veteran, racial civil rights activist, and community leader in Brooklyn, New York.
Carson was known for political organizing and coordinating public protests of the school systems in African-American communities in New York during the 1960s and 70s.
The kidnapping charges, as the New York Times explained, "stemmed from what the defense represented as an attempted citizen's arrest of two other men who had twice robbed a black‐owned hotel in Brooklyn's Bedford‐Stuyvesant section.
[2] In the 1980s Carson became an advocate against drug use,[2] founding a group called "Black Men's Movement Against Crack".
[2] Carson organized the controversial Family Red Apple boycott of Korean-American owned stores in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in 1990.
Carson was investigated by the FBI, under the suspicion that he violated the civil rights of the Korean shopkeepers.
His protest philosophy considered disrupting social order to draw attention to the plight of African-Americans.
He was admitted to the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he remained until his death on December 20, 2002, at the age of 66.