The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership (23 page)

In America, it feels as if our leaders have become captives of petty politics and superficial obsessions. Where are the great leaders with gravity, who could rise above all of the nonsense, the playing to the cheap seats, and really raise significant issues? The world is undergoing rapid change. For the first time in 5,000 years, there’s no pharaoh in Egypt, Libya
is changed, Syria is changed. We need leaders to deal with all that change in the world, all these places striving and dying for democracy and inclusion, for leaders who can rise above the petty and the personal and keep the big picture in mind. That means putting aside party differences if the well-being of the American people is at stake. That means fighting the extremists in your midst and always keeping open the lines of communication with the other side.

B
efore I fought against the recording industry and its exploitation of hip-hop, I worked closely with the Jackson family on the Victory Tour in 1984. I heard that some of the black concert promoters who had invested in the Jacksons earlier in their careers couldn’t get any dates on the tour. I told the Jackson family that they had to give dates to the people who helped make them. Katherine and Joe Jackson agreed. Michael said he would give dates to some of these promoters, but they had to make sure they got the whole community involved—and he told me I needed to go on the road with them, because he didn’t trust the promoters to do it.

So with the Victory Tour, my crew coordinated the whole community piece by making sure community organizations in every city got free tickets for the kids and that the venue was
hiring black contractors to do things such as food and beverage. Michael also gave scholarships to local kids.

After the tour, Michael and I became very close friends. He leaned on me for counsel, for spiritual guidance, and for friendship, especially when he was going through his most difficult trials. I might get a knock on my door in the middle of the night. I’d open the door, and the most famous entertainer in the world would be standing on my stoop, wanting to talk. That’s how Michael was—impulsive, unpredictable, and incredibly private.

I had one of the most surprising and memorable fights of my life against the music industry at Michael’s side. It started one night in the summer of 2002 at the Apollo Theater, where Bill Clinton and the Democratic National Committee were having a big fund-raiser. Michael was one of the guest artists, the first time in decades he had returned to the Apollo. I got there late and stood in the back, watching Michael perform one of his songs. As I was about to leave, an assistant traveling with me told me that one of Michael’s guys wanted to speak to me. But I had somewhere else to go; I think I had to give a speech. I arranged to come to Michael’s hotel later that evening.

So at about eleven thirty that night, I went to the Palace and called up to Michael’s room. I sat there in his suite, waiting, and from behind me, I heard, “Sharpton!” Michael always let you know when he was walking into a room. He didn’t waste any time telling me what was on his mind.

“These people are trying to take my catalog,” he said. “It’s racist, and it’s wrong!”

“Michael, what are you talking about?” I asked him.

He went on to tell me how he felt that Sony and Tommy Mottola, the president of the company at the time, were trying to take his assets, the vast music catalog—including all of the Beatles’ songs—that he co-owned with Sony. I was sitting there watching him get all worked up.

“Michael, you and I go way back, but are you really going to fight this if I get involved?” I asked. “It really is wrong. Historically, they’ve done this to black
and
white musicians. But I don’t want to get out there, and you don’t—”

“No, I’m down, and I want to make a show, Reverend Sharpton,” he said, interrupting me.

So I told him about visiting James Brown in jail—I knew James was one of his idols. I told him I saw what record companies had done to artists like James over the years, that they treated the artists as property.

“You see yourself as a great artist, and you are, but they see you as property and a money machine—and when you don’t make money anymore, they don’t care about you and want to take back all their assets,” I said.

He was nodding.

“I tell you what. Johnnie Cochran and I are having a music summit in three weeks. There are going to be musicians there, rappers who couldn’t get their money, weren’t treated right. We’re going to address all these issues with the music industry. And piracy and all of that. Why don’t you come to that? If you say something public and join us, then I’ll believe you’re serious.”

“I’m gonna be there,” he said, nodding enthusiastically.

“OK, Michael,” I said.

I gave him the date, but when I walked out of that suite and closed the door behind me, I said to myself that I probably wouldn’t hear from Michael for another three years. I didn’t even tell Johnnie about it. I didn’t tell anybody. And Johnnie and Michael were close, since Johnnie had represented Michael during the trial for the first child-molestation charges.

On the Friday night before the Monday summit, I was at home in Brooklyn when the phone rang.

“Sharpton!” I heard on the other end when I answered. “Where we at in the morning?”

“In the morning? What are you talking about, Michael?”

“I’m here!” he said. “You said to come.”

“Michael, the conference is on Monday.”

“Oh, I thought it was tomorrow,” he said. “I’m here.”

“You’re where?”

“I’m staying out by the Newark Airport. I’m not at the Palace,” he said.

I came up with another idea. “I tell you what, Michael. We have rallies every Saturday morning. I know you don’t get up, ’cause you entertainers get up late. But we have rallies broadcast live on the radio. You ought to come by the rally and tell everybody you’re going to be there on Monday.”

“What’s the address?” he said. “I want to be there.”

Again, I said to myself,
Yeah, right. Michael won’t show
.

So I had other things on my mind the next morning when I got up to the House of Justice on 145th Street in Harlem, a NAN
property where we still hold rallies every week that are broadcast on the radio. When I got there, there was press everywhere. I asked my publicist, Rachel Noerdlinger, what was going on.

“Michael put out to the media that he’s going to be at the rally,” she said.

I shook my head. “Y’all know Michael won’t even get up in time!” I said. I looked at her again. “He really said that?”

She nodded. It must have been true, because the place was surrounded by cameras. I went into my office. Normally, we go on the radio at nine
A.M.,
and I speak at ten. About a half hour later, a long black limousine pulled up, and Michael stepped out. I couldn’t believe it; he actually came. I was really stunned. I went down to get him; he followed me upstairs to my office. He had his hairstylist with him, and right away, he was in my mirror, styling his hair.

“Michael, we’re live on the radio. I got to go out and speak, come on!”

But he wasn’t done yet. He never stopped being a perfectionist. It reminded me so much of James Brown. I remembered the nights James would perform three-hour shows, go into the dressing room, wash his hair, put it in rollers, and sit under the hair dryer for forty-five minutes. I’d be sitting there at three in the morning, begging him, “Mr. Brown, we’re only going to the hotel, going to sleep, getting up, and flying to the next city. Ain’t nobody gonna see you but the guy at the desk at the hotel.”

“Rev, if you’re going to be a star, you have to look like a star all the time,” he’d say. “You always have to look like somebody people would pay to see.”

It used to drive me crazy. I was thinking about that as I stood there watching Michael comb out his hair in my mirror, with the crowd outside, waiting.

The typical NAN rallies would be about 200 to 300 people, a mixture of black church folk, black activists, union members, and some hard-core black nationalists who work with us because of shared goals—even though they don’t agree with our tactics. I was up on the stage, looking at some of the hard-core nationalists I’d actually heard call Michael a sellout or say Michael was trying to be white, ridiculing him, talking bad about him bleaching his skin.

But when Michael walked up onto that stage, they were all screaming: “Michael!!!”

It was like an instant metamorphosis. I was stunned. I couldn’t believe these were the same folks. David Paterson, the future governor, who would come to the rallies, was on the stage with us. The crowd was steadily getting larger, especially after I announced on the radio that Michael Jackson was at the rally and was going to be at the summit. By the time we were done, the crowd had surged to close to 1,000.

I introduced Michael and brought him to the mic. Like any speaker, he started to get a sense of the crowd. He decided he wanted to address the accusations he’d heard over the years that he was a sellout.

“I know I’m black, and I’m proud of who I am,” he said.

People in the crowd were literally crying now. This was Michael Jackson, the biggest pop artist in the history of the world, in Harlem at our headquarters, saying he was proud to
be black. And then he took a left turn and said, “But Tommy Mottola is a devil.”

I knew Mottola, a Bronx guy who had been instrumental in starting the careers of quite a few black musicians and who had been married at one point to Mariah Carey. I had never detected any hints of devilishness, but Michael clearly had a different experience with him.

After he finished his speech, Michael wasn’t done. The freedom of fighting back was feeling good to him. He said, “Let’s march on Sony today!” The whole thing was surreal to me. Next thing I knew, Michael had rented a tour bus to bring all of us downtown to Sony’s headquarters. Even though it was closed on Saturday, it didn’t matter, because Michael had seemingly half the nation’s news media following him. Everybody in the free world would hear the message Michael was delivering on this day. We wound up in front of the Sony building with Michael leading the chants: “No Justice, No Peace!”

After that scene, Michael stuck around the city for two more days and went to the conference with Johnnie Cochran and me, making his case in front of a huge audience, which is what he wanted.

Over the next few years, Michael and I would talk periodically. When he went through the second trial, he watched the people around him abandon him. I’ll never forget one day when he had me visit him at Neverland, which was easily the most beautiful property I’ve ever seen in my life—the amusement park, the zoo, the ornate rooms, the gorgeous landscaping, a top-notch chef with twenty-four-hour, five-star-restaurant
service. I told Michael that if heaven was better than this, then I just had to go. We walked around, and he casually pointed to different locations on the property. “You see that spot over there, Sharpton?” I’d follow his finger, and he’d tell me some huge superstar had gotten married there. “He won’t even return my phone calls now,” Michael said. Then he’d say he loaned another big star a lot of money at some point, and he couldn’t even get the star on the phone.

Almost all the people Michael considered his friends walked away from him when he started fighting Sony, and then they sprinted away from him when he got indicted on the second child-molestation charges. One of the reasons I was and still remain loyal to the Jackson family was the integrity they showed during the trial. Every single day, Michael’s parents and all his siblings walked him into that court. I didn’t see any of those folks who, after he died, professed how much they loved Michael. Yet the family members these critics all claimed were robbing him were the only people who stood with Michael when everybody thought he was going to jail. At one time, he was the most popular entertainer in the world, but in the end, he wound up all alone except for the people with whom he had started his unbelievable journey.

One day during the trial, I turned on the television, and they were doing a piece on the type of jail cell Michael would be living in after his conviction. It killed me; they convicted the man before the trial was even over. I kept going on the news, saying the man was supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and that I didn’t believe the charges and neither
did his family. But nobody wanted to hear what I was saying. And then he got acquitted, and the public was shocked. But Michael was broken. He saw how all the people who claimed to love him could so quickly turn on him. He never got over that. He was so disgusted, so shaken, that he left the country and moved to Bahrain.

But his ordeal taught me a memorable lesson about friendship. Just as they say in the marriage vows—to have and to hold, for better or for worse—the same idea should apply to friendship. As I saw with Michael, it is during those times that could undoubtedly be considered “worse” when you most need the support of your true friends. Friendship is easy when things are going well. When you’re rolling in cash, you have more friends than you know what to do with. But let the cash dry up, some controversy or challenge enter your life, and the fake ones flee like rats escaping a sinking ship. It was a painful lesson for Michael to learn, but it’s a lesson that all of us have probably learned at some point in our lives. It’s a lesson that I saw with James Brown. Although he had long been seen as one of the most popular entertainers in the world, when he did three years in prison in the late ’80s, I was one of the few people who regularly visited him in jail. I could clearly see the agony and isolation that those years visited upon James.

This is a lesson that all of us should hold close to our hearts, so that we remember it well the next time one of our friends is in trouble. And if it helps you to remember, think about the loneliness and pain of the last days of Michael Jackson, the King of Pop.

I
’ve found myself preaching the funerals of many famous people. On these occasions, I know I have an elevated platform, because many people will be listening. When I preach a funeral, I’m preaching to the living, not to the deceased. I ask myself,
What elements of the deceased’s life can I use to challenge the living to forge a better life?
Because everyone who attends the home-going service has his or her own funeral scheduled; they just don’t know the date. So I try to frame the life of the person in the casket in a way that can help the life of those left behind.