The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership Read Online Free PDF

dire.
    Muhammad Ali told me that at the end of his career, in the ring, he could see the opening against his opponent, but he couldn’t move his fist fast enough to get there. That’s the sign it’s time to bow out, although too many fighters are not willing to act on it. But if you don’t act, you might wind up on your back, your legacy forever tarnished. It’s so enticing to try to hold on, to give it one more shot. But what you’ve got to thinkabout is how hard it was for you to get there. Do you really want to undermine all that work, all those years of blood and sweat you poured into making your name mean something? I saw guys wind up on their backs, and I don’t want to be that guy. But if you see me slipping, losing my ability to get to that opening, like Ali, then do me a favor—slide me a note to let me know that it might be time to quit it. But please, be kind.

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NEVER REST ON YOUR LAURELS
    N o matter how high you soar, how many accolades you collect, maybe the most important lesson to hold close can be summarized with few words: Don’t rest on your laurels.
    I came to see the importance of this lesson by closely watching Dr. William Jones. When I was twelve years old, my pastor, Bishop Washington, knowing of my interest in social justice, introduced me to Dr. Jones, who was a lion in the black New York religious community. Dr. Jones was a deep thinker with a fire in his belly for social justice and a hunger to help the poor and oppressed. He was head of the 5,000-member Bethany Baptist Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the son and the grandson of Baptist preachers, an academic theologian with degrees from the University of Kentucky and Crozer Theological Seminary, the same institution that helped mold Dr. King. As the New York chairman of Operation Breadbasket, the economicdevelopment arm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Dr. Jones was the kind of preacher I aspired to be. In Reverend Jones I found a psychic fit, a leader who wanted to get out there and confront authority on behalf of his people.
    Reverend Jones died the same year as James Brown, in 2006, removing two great influences from my life in rapid succession. But Reverend Jones told me something a year before he passed that will always stay with me.
    He said, “Alfred, I only fear three things.”
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    “I fear God, I fear living past my mourners, and I fear drowning in shallow waters,” he said, his booming voice filling his office.
    He saw the quizzical look on my face and kept going.
    “I don’t want to be so old that when I die, there’s nobody around who knew my glory. I still want to be relevant when I die. And I don’t want to have scaled the oceans, beaten the whales, outrun the sharks, and then come into the shallow water around the kids playing in the sandbar and drown in the shallow waters.”
    He turned to me with a look that was almost haunting. “You’re on your way now; you will make your mark in history,” he said. “But watch out for the shallow water. Don’t go out on some shallow foolishness.”
    Examples abound in popular culture of leaders brought down by indiscretions, usually connected to sex or money—from Rev. Jimmy Swaggart to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford,from Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to Rep. Anthony Weiner. Leaders who soiled years of accomplishment with carelessness, recklessness, and extremely poor judgment.
    It’s a powerful lesson, because once you ascend to a certain level, the temptation is always there to relax, to get sloppy. You’re thinking, Oh, boy, I can have fun now . And then you find yourself gasping for air in that shallow water. Next thing you know, you’ve undone decades of hard work.
    If you ever find yourself flailing about in shallow water, you must remember the first step to saving yourself and getting back on track: Stand up.

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BE AUTHENTIC
    I am powerfully reminded of the need to be authentic, to be real , every time