Al Sharpton Should Apologize to the Duke Lacrosse Team!

Aug. 2007

After Don Imus, Al Sharpton needs to make nice with the Duke Lacrosse team.

What a double standard we now have created in our country: the only intolerance that is tolerable is essentially against people of white backgrounds. The Duke Lacrosse players involved in allegations of rapping a black stripper have been exonerated and cleared of all charges, the victims of an overzealous prosecutor. However, let us not forget that they were railroaded long before they had their day in court no more so than by black civil rights activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Both, you may recall, swarmed shock jock Don Imus for using racially insensitive language to got him fired. Where is that Sharpton apology to the Duke Lacrosse team?

• When the three lacrosse players accused of sexually assaulting an exotic dancer were declared innocent, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said the Duke University students were victims of a "rush to accuse" by a "rogue prosecutor."

• But Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong was far from the only one pointing fingers at Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans.

• The wild accusations of the lacrosse players' guilt began within weeks of police finding the dancer passed
out drunk in her car in the early hours of March 14, 2006.

• Crystal Gail Mangum, then a 27-year-old single mother and escort-service worker who attended North Carolina Central University, told them she had been raped, sodomized and beaten while working a party at 610 North Buchanan Blvd., a house rented by the three captains of Duke's lacrosse team.

• By March 24, although the victim had not been able to identify any of the accused and it had been revealed that she'd made a false claim of rape as a teenager, Nifong ordered DNA swabs from the 46 white lacrosse players.

• On April 10, it was revealed that no DNA matches had been made with the players. But then: On April 15, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition stepped in, offering to pay Mangum's college tuition. "Our organization is committed . . . to provide for her the scholarship money to finish school so she will never again have to stoop that low to survive," he told The Associated Press.

• Al Sharpton told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly on April 19 - the day after the first two players were charged - "There is a lot of racism that's in the air.

Get the Full Scoop

Victims of a Witch Hunt
Many Tormentors in Duke Students' Year Of Smear
By Lisa Keys

Our Take

We can no longer tolerate a double standard. Everyone is deserving of equal justice when it comes to heinous allegations. You can’t have it both ways. Al Sharpton should apologize to the Duke Lacrosse players. They have been found innocent of the crime for which they were accused and of racism by implication.

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