Percy Sutton

Percy Sutton

Template:TOCnestleft Percy Ellis Sutton was a prominent Harlem politician. He was a Tuskegee Airman and intelligence officer during World War II, a man pushed north by the Jim Crow diaspora, a civil rights activist jailed in the prisons of the South, and a lawyer to Malcolm X. He fought to open City University to blacks.

In time, he became a grandee in the most sophisticated and influential black political club in New York City.

And he turned himself into a businessman, some days walking from bank to bank to bank in search of loans. He became a millionaire, owner of what were at one time the city’s two most influential black radio stations, the WBLS hit-maker on FM (107.5) and the intensely, incessantly political WLIB (1190 AM).

With his pencil-thin mustache and slow-burning growl of a voice, he seemed to glory in the daily act of politics, whether shaking hands on 125th Street or telling stories to fifth graders at Public School 166 on the Upper West Side in the late ’60s.

Background

Born on November 24, 1920 in San Antonio, Texas, Sutton was the youngest of 15 siblings, 12 of whom survived. His father was born free, three years before the Emancipation Proclamation. Both parents were educators and business people. Sutton supported himself with odd jobs while attending three historically black colleges: Prairie View College, Hampton Institute, and Tuskegee Institute. He joined the United States Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet and served as an intelligence officer in World War II with the famous Tuskegee Airmen.

Beating

When he was 13, Percy Sutton endured a traumatic experience that drove him inexorably into the fight for racial equality. A police officer approached Sutton as the teen handed out NAACP pamphlets. “N—–, what are you doing out of your neighborhood?” he asked before beating the youth.

New York

After being honorably discharged in 1945, Sutton earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School and passed the New York bar in 1950. He then returned to the military as a trial judge advocate.

In 1953, Sutton left the military and, with his brother, Oliver Sutton, and George Covington, set up a law partnership. For many years, Percy Sutton was the attorney for Malcolm X. After Malcolm's death, Sutton continued to represent the Shabazz family, when needed, without cost. The Sutton and Covington law firm, always socially conscious, handled many cases without cost.

Sutton was elected President of the New York NAACP in 1961 and participated in, and gave leadership to, many civil rights demonstrations and protests. He helped to integrate the Greyhound Bus Station lunch counter in Montgomery, Alabama in 1961.

The Sutton firm handled the cases of more than 200 defendants arrested in the South during the 1963-64 civil rights marches. Sutton was also elected to two terms as president of the New York office of the NAACP.

Politics

Sutton’s early political efforts were not too successful. But after 11 years (1953-1964) of losing elections, Sutton was elected a New York State Assemblyman in 1964.

Sutton quickly emerged as spokesman for its 13 black members. His charisma and eloquence led to his selection as Manhattan borough president in 1966, completing the term of Constance Baker Motley, who was appointed federal judge.

Two years later, Sutton announced a run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Jacob Javits, although he pulled out of the Democratic primary to back Paul O'Dwyer.

As an Assemblyman, Sutton was a major supporter of the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Another initiative of his was the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (S.E.E.K.) program, which, today, enables thousands of disadvantaged students to gain a college education.

In 1966, the New York City Council chose Sutton to become Manhattan Borough President. Re-elected in his own right by an overwhelming majority, he was, for 11 years (1966-77), the highest elected African American official in the state.

Business

In 1971, Sutton founded the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation, which purchased and developed radio stations WLIB-AM and WBLS-FM; making them the first black-owned stations in New York City. In 1981, Sutton rescued from bankruptcy the world famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem. He created the nationally syndicated television show, “It’s Showtime at the Apollo,” and operated the theater until 1991.

In 1995 and 1996, Sutton represented the United States as a business delegate to the Group of Seven (G-7) Nations meeting on Telecommunications and High Technology in Brussels, and the G-7 developing nations Intelligence Technology Conference in South Africa, respectively.

Texas communist roots

In 2007, Texas Communist Party USA member John Stanford was honored at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas.

I appreciate what Laura Codina and the Coordinadoras of Fuerza Unida, Petra Mata and Viola Cásares, said, but in all honesty I have to say that whatever I've been able to accomplish has been built on the legacy of Communists here in San Antonio, Texas before me.

In October of last year there was a symposium held at the Tamiment Library of New York University on "James and Esther Jackson, the American Left and the Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement." James Jackson was a big influence in my life. At the symposium Percy Sutton, former Manhattan borough president, spoke of his long association with and appreciation of the Jacksons. This began in San Antonio where Sutton grew up in a family of twelve, half of whom became Communists.The six Suttons; Emma Tenayuca and John Inman, both of whom were chairs of the Communist Party of Texas; Hattie Mae Inman, who raised a family and was an inspiration to others while bedridden with five types of cancer; Manuela Soliz Sager and her husband James Sager; Luisa Moreno, and many more -- these are people to whom I'm indebted. I think this honor belongs to them also. And to my wife, Jo, whose support enabled me to be involved in struggles for peace and justice.

Harlem Democratic Party

David Dinkins rose through the Democratic Party organization in Harlem and became part of an influential group of African-American politicians that included Percy Sutton, Basil Paterson, Denny Farrell, and Charles Rangel. As an investor, Dinkins was one of fifty African American investors who helped Percy Sutton found Inner City Broadcasting Corporation in 1971.

National Coalition to Fight Inflation and Unemployment

April 16, 1975, Percy Sutton, Manhattan Borough president, was on the Current List of Sponsors of the Communist Party USA front National Coalition to Fight Inflation and Unemployment.

Drastic Cutback in Military Spending

A brochure announcing a National Conference for a Drastic Cutback in Military Spending, to be held on April 5-6, 1975, at the LaSalle Hotel, Chicago, was printed by the National Conference on Military Spending Organizing Committee, of 156 Fifth Avenue, Room 716, NYC, NY, 10010. The printing Bug was that of the CPUSA's Prompt Press, 209.

Sponsors included Percy E. Sutton, Manhattan Borough President.

Jackson "Money man"

The Expert Red, Feb. 1985, page 15

Percy Sutton was reportedly a "money man" during Jesse Jackson's 1984 run for the US Presidency.

The Obama connection

In a televised interview in 2008 on New York's all news cable channel, NY1, 88-year-old Percy Sutton, a former borough president of Manhattan and a credible mayoral candidate in 1977, made some interesting revelations about his links to the young Obama.

Sutton told NY1 reporter Dominic Carter on the show "Inside City Hall": "I was introduced to (Obama) by a friend who was raising money for him." He asked Sutton to write a letter in support of Obama's application to Harvard Law School.

"The friend's name is Dr. Khalid al-Mansour,(formerly Donald Warden, mentor of Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton and his associate, Bobby Seale) from Texas," Sutton said. "He is the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men. He told me about Obama."

Sutton recalled that al-Mansour said that "there is a young man that has applied to Harvard. I know that you have a few friends up there because you used to go up there to speak. Would you please write a letter in support of him?" Sutton did.

According to Newsmax columnist Kenneth Timmerman, "At the time, Percy Sutton, a former lawyer for Malcolm X and a former business partner of al-Mansour, says he (al-Mansour) was raising money for Obama's graduate school education, al-Mansour was representing top members of the Saudi Royal family seeking to do business and exert influence in the United States."

a November 1979 column by TV commentator and respected Chicago Tribune columnist Vernon Jarrett with the title "Will Arabs Back Ties To Blacks With Cash?"

The late Vernon Jarrett was the father-in-law of Valerie Jarrett, who would go on to become what Miele calls "the consigliere of the Obama White House." Mr. Jarrett was a colleague and one of the best friends of Frank Marshall Davis, the former Chicago journalist and lifelong communist who moved to Hawaii in the late 1940s and years later befriended Stanley and Madelyn Dunham and their daughter Stanley Ann, mother of Barack Obama.

Davis is known to have taken an active role in the rearing of young Obama from the age of 10 until he turned 18 and left Hawaii for his first year at Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979. That was the same year al-Mansour was seeking Arab financial support for students such as Obama.

Vernon Jarrett's column details how al-Mansour told him about a proposal he made to OPEC Secretary-General Rene Ortiz regarding a program to spend "$20 million per year for 10 years to aid 10,000 minority students each year, including blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, Asians and native Americans."

These minority students would then migrate through the political system promoting Palestinian and radical Islamist causes. Al-Mansour told Jarrett that the program had been endorsed by Ortiz and other OPEC administrators.

Symposium on James and Esther Jackson

On October 28, 2006, an event entitled "James and Esther Jackson, the American Left and the Origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement" was held at the Tamiment Library of New York University. Three panels of academics and activists delivered papers illuminating the lives of the James Jackson and his wife Esther Jackson, their co-workers and the struggles in which they participated that helped shape developments in the United States from the late 1930s to the present. Angela Davis, David Levering Lewis, Percy Sutton, Pete Seeger, Michael Nash, Jean Carey Bond, Michael Anderson, Maurice Jackson and Charlene Mitchell delivered papers and spoke at the event. Sam Webb, Debbie Amis Bell and Daniel Rubin were among the estimated 250 individuals who attended the event.

Mentored Eric Holder

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at the funeral of one of his mentors, civil rights leader Percy Sutton, January 6, 2010 at Riverside Church in New York City. Thousands mourned the legendary civil rights attorney and media owner Percy Sutton who died December 26 at the age of 89.

Speaking to the people gathered in the church's pews, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called Sutton "one of the nation's true heroes."

"I admired, respected and worked for him," Attorney General Eric Holder said of Sutton who died on Dec. 26, 2009 in Manhattan at the age of 89. . "The opportunities given to my generation were paid for by his."

References

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