Rev. Alfred Charles Sharpton is the founder of the National Action Network, a Civil Rights organization founded in 1991. NAN has more than 100 chapters across the country. He was born October 3, 1954, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and attended CUNY Brooklyn College. As a child, he was ordained to the Pentecostal church. Sharpton is known to be an outspoken and sometimes questionable political activist in the fight against racial prejudice and injustice.
Reverend Sharpton founded National Action Network in 1991 and headquartered the organization in Harlem while serving from 1993 to 1998 as director of the Minister’s Division for Reverend Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition. He is a talk show host of Politics Nation and a politician. Rev. Alfred Sharpton championed police reform and called for the elimination of unjust policies like Stop-and-Frisk.
He is also a champion for healthcare and education. He is known for advocating for the Exonerated Five in the Central Park jogger case. He is important because he is one of the prominent voices protesting against police treatment of black men, particularly during the Obama era. He is known for cases about George Zimmerman, Eric Garner, Amadou Diallo, and Sean Bell.
