BET.com--Al Sharpton may have mellowed - but he still won't apologize for the Tawana Brawley debacle.
A quarter-century later after he whipped up racial tensions over the incendiary case, Sharpton still stands by a story that the courts of law and public opinion long ago ruled a hoax.
Pressed on CBS' "60 Minutes" to explain why he never apologized for accusations that proved false, Sharpton said, "I don't know that."
"I have thought about that a million times," Sharpton said. "I just don't believe they treated that case fair."
Back in 1987, 15-year-old Brawley claimed she had been abducted and raped for four days by a group of white men, at least one a cop. She was found in a garbage bag, covered in feces and charcoal-scrawled racial epithets.
Sharpton, a brash young activist and minister, took over publicity for Brawley and made inflammatory accusations of a massive cover up, naming an assistant district attorney as one of the rapists.
The case fell apart when the grand jury refused to indict, citing no physical evidence of rape and witnesses who saw Brawley when she was supposed to have been held captive.
Sharpton has moderated over the years - he ran for president in 2004, was recently embraced by President Obama in New York and these days is more likely to be battling the IRS than the KKK - but he has repeatedly refused to say he was wrong about Brawley.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Friday, May 20th 2011 at 12:50PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
