The Public Life and Private Doubts of Al Sharpton
In The Washington Post, Eli Saslow profiles the Reverend Al Sharpton, focusing on how and why Sharpton rose to national prominence. “Sharpton’s ascension had come at a time of incremental battles against more subtle and persistent strands of societal racism” than the blatant discrimination of the 1950s and 60s, Saslow writes. That Sharpton fights a different fight than did Martin Luther King, Jr., undermines his lifelong desire become a leader in King’s mold. “We come after a generation that was movement motivated,” Sharpton tells a protégé one night. “They started with nothing and took down apartheid, and what have we done so far that compares to that? That bothers me. That haunts me.”