Although Rev. Al Sharpton was planning to fly down to Alabama this week for his eldest brother’s funeral, he will remain in New York after traffic caused him to miss his flight, according to his social media.
Sharpton was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1964 to parents Al Sharpton, Sr. and Ada Sharpton.
Over the course of his life, he has become a prominent figure in the national civil rights movement.
In 1991, he 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.
He was to visit Alabama after the death of his brother, Thomas Glasgow. Details of his life and death were not immediately available.
Another of Sharpton’s Alabama relative, half-brother Kenneth Sharpton-Glasgow, in 2023 was sentenced 11 months in federal prison on charges of tax evasion and drug distribution.
He was released this July and has since continued working on his lifelong mission to fight for the voting rights of people with felony records.
But now he works with a new perspective, he told former AL.com.
“Paul in the Bible, he was in prison, and he wrote two-thirds of the New Testament,” he said. “Jesus went through prison and the crucifixion. Peter wrote a letter from prison. People in prison are people.”
