Sonny Abubadika Carson, who died December 20, 2002 at Veteran Affairs Medical
Center in Manhattan, rose from the era of Brooklyn street gangs, through the civil rights movement, to become a pillar of
the black nationalist community.
Carson, who fought in the Korean war with the 82nd Airborne division and was believed to
be at least in his late sixties, had been hospitalized in a coma since September. His death was due to complications arising
from two heart attacks.
A controversial figure, self-described as "insistent, consistent, and resistant," Carson
was demonized in the media for using what some described as racially polarizing tactics, specifically boycotts such as the
one he organized against Korean merchants in Flatbush. He was an ex-convict who fought for the voting rights of fellow ex-prisoners
while his past misdeeds and convictions were used to cast a cloud over his intentions. Although hailed by community groups,
he has been repeatedly referred to in the context of his sensationalized remarks about being "anti-white" instead of his many
everyday contributions to Problem solving in his neighborhood.
Carson was Brooklyn's Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey, a man of the people who never forgot
where he came from because he practically never left. After an eye-opening encounter during the Korean War in which an enemy
soldier asked him why he, as a black man, was fighting for a country that wouldn't let him drink water in Mississippi, Carson
returned home, spent a period of time with CORE, and sparked the debate over parental control of public education that still
rages to this day with the challenge of the school system in Ocean Hill-Brownsville. During the '80s, Carson was instrumental
in the Days of Outrage protests against police brutality and was a cornerstone of the city's Black Solidarity Day demonstrations.
Immortalized in an autobiography, The Education of Sonny Carson, and a film of the same
name that was a graphic expose of police brutality at the time of its release in 1974, Carson worked tirelessly for self-determination
by "kidnapped Africans in America" in their own neighborhoods. He did not favor compromise, and although Carson was more of
a man of action than of words, he never failed to speak his mind and as a result was labeled a troublemaker by his critics.
One black nationalist mantra speaks of freedom fighters and revolutionaries dying for the
people, but in contrast Carson lived for the people, and whether or not one agreed with his methods, Carson was motivated
by genuine love and concern for the well-being of the brothers and sisters, young and old, with whom he shared a common background.
One would only have to spend a day at his basement office at Restoration Plaza to grasp
the pivotal role that Carson played in the sociopolitical economy of Bedford-Stuyvesant and, by extension, the black community
at large. Carson was the elder statesman, the tribal counselor, and the warrior king adorned, staff in hand, in regal Afrocentric
garments as he held court and weighed in on matters from the most trivial of domestic affairs to issues of great import to
the black diaspora.
Carson, a district judge and founding member of the Republic of New Afrika, was deeply involved
in the African Burial Ground project and recently participated in Emancipation Day ceremonies in Ghana, returning the bones
of his runaway slave ancestor, navy sailor Samuel Carson, to the land of one of his greatest inspirations, Kwame Nkrumah,
the father of modern Ghana. Along with his Committee to Honor Black Heroes, one of the many institutions that he helped create,
Carson oversaw the renaming of Brooklyn streets after noteworthy African Americans, and when his health failed, he was in
the process of fighting to rename Brooklyn's Fulton Street in tribute to Harriet Tubman. He was a stalwart supporter of slave
reparations, helped establish both Medgar Evers College and the Restoration Plaza, which houses his office, and brought about
the Black Men's Movement Against Crack, a direct-action initiative to shut down crack houses during the peak years of the
drug epidemic. Carson was also instrumental in the creation of the December 12th Movement, an organization of African Americans
and allies who fight against institutional racism. The December 12th Movement was named for a historic 1987 protest in Newburgh,
New York, against police brutality.
Sonny Carson was also the father of Lumumba "Professor X" Carson of X-Clan/Blackwatch
Movement fame who passed away Mar 17, 2006.
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