Robert "Sonny" Carson facts for kids

Robert "Sonny" Carson (also known as Mwlina Imiri Abubadika; May 22, 1936 – December 20, 2002), was a U.S. Army Korean War veteran, racial civil rights activist, and community leader in Brooklyn, New York. Carson was known for political organizing and coordinating public protests of the school systems in African-American communities in New York during the 1960s and 70s. He wrote a 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.

Biography

Robert Carson Jr. was born on May 22, 1936 in Orangeburg, 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.

Kidnapping conviction

In 1974, Carson was convicted of kidnapping. The kidnapping charges, as the New York Times explained, "stemmed from what the defense represented as an attempted citizen's arrest of two other men who had twice robbed a black‐owned hotel in Brooklyn's Bedford‐Stuyvesant section." Carson was incarcerated for 15 months in the Sing Sing prison.

Protesting police brutality

In the 1980s, Carson organized a number of demonstrations protesting police brutality.

Death

A few months before December 2002, Carson suffered two heart attacks and became comatose. He was admitted to the Manhattan Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where he remained until his death on December 20, 2002, at the age of 66.