Who

Sharpton is a controversial minister, civil rights activist, radio host, TV talking head, political fundraiser, perpetual candidate for office, and style icon.

Backstory

Sharpton was a child superstar in his Brownsville neighborhood: He started preaching at age four and was an ordained Pentecostal minister by the time he'd turned 10. In 1971, at 14, he was appointed by Jesse Jackson as youth director of Jackson's Operation Breadbasket project; Sharpton formed his own youth organization, the National Youth Movement, a few years later.

Sharpton became a media fixture in the 1980s and emerged as one of the city's most outspoken political activists. He regularly led protests over police brutality and infamously supported Tawana Brawley, a teenager who (falsely) accused the police of abducting and raping her. In 1991, Sharpton founded the National Action Network to institutionalize his political/civil rights work. (He remains head of the group.) A year later, he tried his hand at running for office, finishing third in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. He mounted a second Senate campaign in 1994, failing to unseat Daniel Patrick Moynihan. In 1997, he aimed a bit lower, fielding a surprisingly strong (but still losing) candidacy for mayor, and in 2004 he made a brief but colorful run for the Democratic nomination for president.

Recently

Sharpton continues to insert himself into just about every race-related controversy in town. He was a vocal critic of the way the police handled the Sean Bell case and led protests against the NYPD. He helped bring down Don Imus in 2007 over the shock jock's racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. But he's been busy on other fronts as well. In 2004-5, he dabbled in reality TV as the host of I Hate My Job on Spike. (It was cancelled after seven episodes.) He currently has his own radio show on WTPS, and is a regular on political talk shows. He's believed to be planning another run for public office in the near future; some think he'll run for mayor when Michael Bloomberg's term is up, while others have speculated he may run yet again for president or the U.S. Senate.

Drama

Sharpton has been a controversial figure since he entered the public eye in the '80s following Tawana Brawley's accusations that she'd been raped by six police officers. A jury threw the case out (and Brawley's story, of course, was revealed to have been fabricated), but Sharpton accused the prosecutor in the case of being complicit in the alleged attack, and he was successfully sued for slander as a result. More than two decades later, Sharpton's role in the hoax continues to taint his reputation.

But plenty of other scandals have tarnished Sharpton. In 1989, he was indicted on 67 counts of tax fraud related to the National Youth Movement; he was later acquitted but eventually pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to file a New York State income tax return. In 1991, he was accused of inciting riots when he led a protest in Crown Heights after a motorcade carrying the Lubavitcher Rebbe ran over a young boy. Even though Sharpton has tried to adopt a less radical public profile in recent years, controversy still follows closely behind him. In 2005, he came under fire for being the spokesman for LoanMax, a high-interest auto loan company. He eventually resigned from the gig.

The look

These days, you'll find Sharpton in an elegant three-piece suit with his hair slicked back. In the old days, jogging suits, gold medallions, and a James Brown-inspired pompadour was the order of the day. That Sharpton's coiff paid homage to the Godfather of Soul was no accident. Sharpton briefly served as Brown's tour manager in the 1970s, and he presided over Brown's 2006 funeral.

Personal

Sharpton is divorced from Kathy Lee Jordan, a former backup dancer for James Brown; the couple separated in 2004 after Sharpton's presidential run. They have two daughters, Dominique and Ashley.

No joke

In 2007, a team of genealogists reported that Al Sharpton's ancestors had been slaves owned by relatives of none other than the late U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond, the legendary segregationist.