Sonny Carson
| Robert "Sonny" Carson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Robert Carson May 22, 1936 South Carolina |
| Died | December 20, 2002 (aged 66) New York City, New York |
| Other names | Sonny Carson, Mwlina Imiri Abubadika |
| Occupation | Political activist |
| Known for | The December 12th Movement, The Family Red Apple Boycott |
| Children | 1 |
Robert "Sonny" Carson (also known as Mwlina Imiri Abubadika) (May 22, 1936 — December 20, 2002), was a U.S. Army Korean War Veteran, civil rights activist, and community leader in Brooklyn New York. Carson was mostly known for his political organizing, and his coordination of public demonstrations in protest of the poor education standards students were subjected to in New York during the 1960s and 70s. He is also known for his popular autobiography, The Education of Sonny Carson (1972), which was made into a 1974 film. Carson is the father of hip-hop artist Professor X.
Robert Carson was born in 1936 in South Carolina, but moved to Brooklyn as a child. In his youth, Carson joined a street gang called the Bishops. Carson was arrested after robbing a Western Union messenger and was sent to a juvenile-detention center.
Carson fought in the Korean War with the 82nd Airborne Division, where he claimed to have met a Korean soldier who asked him, "Why would a black man fight for a country that would not let you drink from the same water fountain in Mississippi?" This pivotal question led Carson to become a community activist after returning to civilian life.
Following his return to civilian life, Carson enrolled in college, and for a period of time he returned to involvement in illegal activities. However, he soon began working for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and by 1967 he was the executive director of the Brooklyn CORE. He broke from the organization in 1968, stating that it had not done enough to help African-Americans.
Carson's later founded a group called the Committee to Honor Black Heroes.
In 1974, Carson was convicted of kidnapping. The kidnapping charges stemmed from Carson's and his codefendants' attempted citizen's arrest of two men that had previously robbed a hotel in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Carson was incarcerated for 15 months in the Sing Sing prison.
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