The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership by Al Sharpton Page A

there—don’t go,” I said into Michael’s ear.
    “What do you mean?” he asked me.
    “Don’t move,” I said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because you don’t want the picture everybody sees the first time you come back and are in public to be of you on the stage boogying and dancing and moonwalking. You came to mourn James. Don’t get up there with the band.”
    “OK,” he said, nodding his head. “But I want to see the body one more time.”
    So we stood up and walked over to the casket. The family all gathered around. Michael leaned over and gave James a tender kiss, saying his final good-bye. When I got up to do the eulogy, I talked in the beginning about Michael, how much he looked up to James and the standard of music they had created. Then I asked Michael to say a few words. This was the statement that went around the world, Michael’s reintroduction to the public.
    “James Brown is my greatest inspiration,” Michael said. “Ever since I was a small child, no more than six years old, my mother would wake me no matter what time it was, if I was sleeping, no matter what I was doing, to watch the television to see the master at work. And when I saw him move, I was mesmerized. I never saw a performer perform like James Brown. And right then and there, I knew that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, because of James Brown. James Brown, I shall miss you, and I love you so much and thank you for everything.”
    No matter how high he had ascended, Michael never stopped looking up to his inspiration, the man who provided him with the guideposts for his greatness. That’s the way it is with our idols—a part of us always sees them perched up high on that pedestal where we place them. Michael became bigger commercially than James ever was, became the King of Pop, but James was always his hero, his guidepost.
    Nobody else sitting in the audience at that funeral understood better than Michael the pain that James Brown endured, the pressures that led James to make some of the bad moves in his life. Only people who have walked the same path truly understand each other. As I watched Michael lean down and kiss James in that casket, I knew he understood James’s battles with drugs and his battles in his personal life, because Michael understood the pain of going into any city and having tens of thousands of people pay to see you but not to have anybody in your life who you feel really loves you. It is a hauntingly lonely and complex life, one that only a handful of people truly understand. But you have to walk the path to know. I understand the pain of great civil rights leaders trying to do things that are noble but knowing tomorrow’s paper is going to call them opportunists and hustlers, knowing they are really giving much more than they’ll ever get.
    But I also know that this role is the one I signed up for, just as James and Michael knew there would be collateral pain as they strove for greatness. As you watch those who came before you, you gain valuable lessons and insights about what awaitsyou. It is a necessary exercise for all of us, to understand the price we must pay for the path we choose.
    James and Michael were arguably the two individuals who most defined black music, one historically and the other commercially, bringing it to a level of success never before seen. But both of them ended up in the same place, disgraced, one sent to prison and the other fighting prison, both battling the establishment. But both of them always upheld the standard. And that standard, that excellence that emanated from the black church and black culture, that striving to be perfect, is what we need in the current generation of musical artists. It is missing, and its lack is felt like a hole in all of our hearts. That’s all I’m saying to these artists: You are better, you have more excellence and genius than these corporate entities making money off you think you have. All they care about is your moneymaking