SONNY CARSON
prominent Black nationalist
By Monica Moorehead
New York
Sonny Carson, an important figure in the Black nationalist
movement in New York City, passed away Dec. 20. Carson had been
in a coma since November after suffering two heart attacks
brought on by years of suffering from asthma. He was 66 years
old.
Carson, a Brooklyn native, became politicized while serving
in the Army during the 1950s. He wrote an autobiography that
reflected the life of painful survival that millions of Black
youths are still forced to endure today. This included gang
violence along with serving time for robbery in a juvenile
detention center.
Carson's life story was transformed into a major motion
picture in 1974 when blaxploitation films were popular. The
film was called "The Education of Sonny Carson," the same title
as his book.
Carson was one of a number of African American activists,
including Al Vann and Jitu Weusi, who was instrumental in
helping to launch the just struggle for community control of
the schools during the height of the Black liberation era in
the 1960s. This particular struggle began in 1967 in Ocean
Hill/Brownsville, a poor section of Brooklyn.
The right of Black parents and educators to determine how
public funds should be spent to educate Black children was a
defining issue in the right to self-determination of Black
people as an oppressed nation, not only locally but
nationally.
Weusi, presently an assistant principal in Brooklyn, says of
Carson, "He was my teacher... He was a giving person. If you
had a problem, he would be there to help you, sometimes to a
fault. He was always campaigning for our people."
After leaving the military in the 1950s until the late
1960s, Carson was the Brooklyn chairperson of the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE). He, along with others, eventually left
CORE because of deepening political conservatism on the part of
the leadership.
The racist establishment did everything they could to
silence Carson because of his deep hatred of racist repression.
During the theatrical release of "The Education of Sonny
Carson" in 1974, Carson was arrested on charges of kidnapping,
attempted murder and murder charges. He was convicted on the
kidnapping charge and spent 15 months in Sing Sing prison.
Elombe Brath, spokesperson for the Patrice Lumumba coalition
in New York, in response to racist attacks on Carson, stated,
"It was perhaps from these encounters (Ocean Hill/ Brownsville)
that so much about Sonny was distorted by the media through
selective quotes, the charges of him being anti-Semitic and
anti-white. What we can say for certain is that he was an
institution; a Black Nationalist who truly loved his people. He
possessed a strong sense of loyalty, and he often taught by
example."
Carson was outspoken whenever police brutality was exposed,
and also in the aftermath of the shootings of four Black
teenagers in the 1980s by racist Bernard Goetz. In explaining
why Africans buried in Manhattan should be re-interred in
Africa, Carson remarked, "Those are the bones of our ancestors,
and they need a proper burial in their homeland."
During the 1980s, Carson initiated the organization Black
Men against Crack to help bring attention to the genocidal
epidemic of crack cocaine that has destroyed countless lives in
the Black community.
In tribute to Carson's life dedicated to the liberation of
Black people, Viola Plummer, leader of the December 12 Movement
in Brooklyn, commented, "He never took a break from the fight
against oppression: vacation was not a word in his vocabulary.
Black self-determination was a constant in his life, and on
this he was uncompromising. Sonny was the quintessential
nationalist, who sincerely loved his people."
Quotes by Carson, Weusi, Plummer and Brath appeared
in the New York Amsterdam News, Dec. 27.
Reprinted from the Jan. 9, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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