Rev. Al Sharpton and Joel Klein

Reverend Al Sharpton is the President of the National Action Network (NAN) and one of America’s most-renowned civil rights leaders. Whether it was his noteworthy run for President of the United States in 2004 or his use of passive resistance and non-violent civil disobedience, Rev. Sharpton has had an irrefutable impact on national politics because of his strong commitment to equality and progressive politics.

As the head of one of the most well-known civil rights organizations that has over forty chapters and affiliates across the United States, Rev. Sharpton has been applauded by both supporters and non-supporters for challenging the American political establishment to be inclusive to all people regardless of race, gender, class or beliefs.

Ever since his surrogate father, the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, told him, “you can’t set your sights on nothing little…you got to go for the whole hog,” Rev. Sharpton has been doing just that. He was born on October 3, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York, and began his ministry at the unusually early age of four. He preached his first sermon at that age at Washington Temple Church of God & Christ in Brooklyn where he was licensed by the legendary Bishop F. D. Washington at age nine to be a minister in that denomination. He likewise started his civil rights career very young. At age 13, he was appointed, by Reverends Jesse Jackson and William Jones, the youth director of New York’s SCLC Operation Breadbasket (founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.). At age 16, Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement Inc. which organized young people around the country promoting voter registration, cultural awareness and job training programs.

Rev. Sharpton was educated in public schools in New York and attended Brooklyn College. He was later presented with an honorary degree from A.P. Clay Bible College.

In 1991, Sharpton founded the National Action Network a broad-based, progressive civil rights organization which he still heads. From 1994 to 1998, Rev. Sharpton served as Director of the Ministers Division for the National Rainbow Push Coalition under Rev. Jesse Jackson while still serving as the head of NAN. Upon the death of Bishop Washington in the late 80s, Rev. Sharpton became a Baptist, and in 1994, he was re-baptized as a member of the Bethany Baptist Church by Rev. William Jones.

Rev. Sharpton has rejuvenated the Civil Rights movement while raising the bar for political participation for people of color. In 1999, when a young unarmed African immigrant was gunned down in the vestibule of his home by four New York City police officers, Sharpton led 1,200 people in the civil disobedience protest arrest. The throngs that followed him to jail in this protest included former mayors, congressman and religious and community leaders across racial, ethnic and political lines.

Rev. Sharpton’s platforms against racial profiling and police brutality has reached an international audience, and his work on human rights issues has taken him to Sudan, Israel, Europe and further, where he has formed alliances with international peace activists across the world.

But perhaps his most significant international visit was his sojourn to Vieques, Puerto Rico in 2001. Sharpton and three Latino elected officials from New York visited Vieques to protest the U.S. Naval bombing exercises on the island, a practice that has endured for over 60 years. After visiting with hundreds of Puerto Rican citizens who have suffered physical and mental infirmities as a result of the bombing exercises, Sharpton and the other members of the “Vieques Four” led the protest at the U.S. Naval Base in Puerto Rico. They were subsequently arrested, tried several weeks later and sentenced to 40 to 90 days – Sharpton received the longest sentence – in federal prison for their protests. While Sharpton was in jail, he fasted, losing eighty pounds, and even managing to influence the local mayoral election. Because of the stand that the “Vieques Four” took that summer, President George W. Bush addressed the issue and ordered the Navy to end their exercises in 2003.

Rev. Sharpton is a member of Bethany Baptist Church in his native Brooklyn neighborhood where the late William A. Jones, Jr., was the Pastor. Rev. Sharpton still preaches throughout the United States and abroad on most Sunday’s, and averages eighty formal sermons a year. Rev. Sharpton says his religious convictions are the basis for his life. In addition to continuing to run NAN, Rev. Sharpton hosts a talk show on Syndication One that broadcasts in 40 markets, five days a week, and he hosts “Sharptalk” on TV One-- a national cable show based in a barber shop setting.

Rev. Al and Kathy Jordan Sharpton have two daughters, Dominique and Ashley.




Joel I. Klein became New York City schools chancellor in July 2002 after serving in the highest levels of government and business. As Chancellor, he oversees more than 1,500 schools with 1.1 million students, 136,000 employees, and a $21-billion operating budget.

When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed Mr. Klein, a graduate of New York City public schools, as the first Chancellor of the newly-reorganized Department of Education, he called the new Chancellor “a true leader who never shies away from the tough and sometimes controversial decisions that are necessary to implement change.”

Mr. Klein’s comprehensive education reform program, Children First, is transforming the nation's largest public school system into a system of great schools. The first steps of the reform effort included ending social promotion in third, fifth, seventh, and eighth grades; creating a wide array of academic supports for struggling students; establishing new supports for parents, including putting a parent coordinator in nearly every school; and expanding small schools and charter schools to provide more high-quality educational options for students. The second phase of Children First involved restructuring the system, changing how schools are operated and supported, and giving principals greater control over how they run their schools while holding them accountable for results. These initiatives have made a real difference for New York City students -- achievement is up, students and families have more and better choices, schools are safer, and principals are more empowered.

Before Mr. Klein became Chancellor, he was chairman and chief executive officer of Bertelsmann, Inc., and chief U.S. liaison officer to Bertelsmann AG from January 2001 to July 2002. Bertelsmann, one of the world’s largest media companies, has annual revenues exceeding $20 billion and employs more than 76,000 people in 54 countries.

From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Klein was assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division. Serving one of the longest tenures ever as head of the 700-lawyer division, Klein led landmark cases against Microsoft, WorldCom/Sprint, Visa/Mastercard, and General Electric, prevailing in a large majority of cases. Mr. Klein was widely credited with transforming the antitrust division into one of the Clinton Administration’s greatest successes. He also served as Acting Assistant Attorney General and as the antitrust division’s principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General. His appointment to the U.S. Justice Department came after Klein served two years (1993-95) as deputy counsel to President William J. Clinton.

Mr. Klein entered the Clinton administration after 20 years of public and private legal work in Washington, D.C. He began his career as a law clerk, first to Chief Judge David Bazelon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (1973-74), and then to Justice Lewis Powell on the United States Supreme Court (1974-75). He next worked at a public interest law firm, the Mental Health Law Project (1975-76). For the following five years, he was an associate and partner at the law firm of Rogovin, Stern & Huge (1976-81).

Mr. Klein joined two colleagues to start their own law firm, Onek, Klein & Farr, in 1981. His practice focused heavily on healthcare and constitutional litigation. He also specialized in appellate advocacy, winning 9 out of 11 cases in which he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. This work covered a wide range of substantive areas including antitrust law, health law, civil rights, statutory interpretation, and constitutional law.

Active in community service work, Mr. Klein has participated in Big Brothers, served as chairman of the board of the Green Door, a pioneer community-based treatment program for mentally ill residents of the District of Columbia, and as treasurer of the World Federation for Mental Health. He was a member of a U.S. Department of State delegation in 1991 to examine issues of psychiatric abuse in the Soviet Union. He has also served on the board of several non-profit organizations, including the National Symphony Orchestra Association.

Mr. Klein has had a long-standing interest in educational issues. During a leave of absence from law school in 1969, he studied at New York University’s School of Education and later taught math to sixth-graders at a public school in Queens. Mr. Klein has served as a visiting and adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and has published several articles in both scholarly and popular journals.

Mr. Klein was born in New York City on October 25, 1946. He attended the city’s public schools and graduated from William Cullen Bryant High School in 1963. He then received his BA from Columbia University, from which he graduated magna cum laude/Phi Beta Kappa in 1967. Mr. Klein went on to earn his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1971, again graduating magna cum laude. He is married to Nicole Seligman.