Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 01/02/07 7:11 pm:
'From the Outhouse to the White House '! Yeah, uhhhhh! Get up, now! Owwwww! Knock out this!

Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 01/02/07 8:27 pm:
tom,

Everything I read says Al was "born into a prosperous family." After becoming the "wonderboy preacher," touring with Mahalia Jackson and then becoming a tour manager for Brown in the 70's, I can see how he would relate to the Lear jet, but not the "we" of the back of the bus. Aside from his parent's divorce about all he's known has been comfort, connections, and stirring up crap. I really wish more blacks would wake up and question their 'leaders' and the insulting and inexcusable things they say.

Clarification/Follow-up by tomder55 on 01/03/07 1:35 pm:
Here is one source http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/020729fa_fact1 .

Admittedly this is Sharpton's narrative and I do not confirm the veracity .

James Brown was living in New York, in a Victorian mansion in Queens, surrounded by a moat and decorated each Christmas with black Santa Claus lawn sculptures, when he was introduced to Sharpton, in the late sixties. (He liked New York, he said, except for one thing. "No wholesome people," he said, although in those days New York was a better place for interracial romance than the South, where if you met "a brunette, a blonde, a redhead, you can't even write to her—they'd hang the letter when it gets there.") Sharpton was nineteen when they met again, an unknown, aspiring black activist, and Mr. Brown, whose firstborn son, Teddy, had just died in a car crash, took him under his wing. Sharpton, who came from a broken home, and whose strongest memories of his father were "that we used to stand in front of the Apollo and he'd bribe the guys so we could get up on line to see James Brown," said, "I became in effect, over the next decade, his surrogate son, and he was my surrogate father." Sharpton, who eventually married one of Mr. Brown's singers (Kathy Jordan, who was a backup on a recording of "Tennessee Waltz"), in turn introduced the Godfather to his third wife, and for many years the Reverend was a regular member of their entourage.

Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 01/03/07 2:46 pm:
Thanks tom. I liked this part:

Sharpton doesn't see much of his mentor these days, and when I asked Mr. Brown whether he would ever endorse Sharpton for elected office he said, "I would endorse his intent." But he said he no longer meddles with political endorsements, and he reminded me that, "being an ex-offender," he has never voted. At this point, he said, black people don't need leaders—"We need jobs"—and he'd told Sharpton as much. " 'You don't lead us, we know how to lead.' I said, 'We don't need that no more. That was all right when we didn't have the nerve and the ambition, but now you can be anything you want to be, so you your own leader.' " Besides, he said, "leaders become dictators."

Too bad Al didn't listen to his 'mentor.'