According to today’s Memphis Daily News:
The South’s Grand Hotel is trying to collect a grand sum of money it claims is owed by the Rev. Al Sharpton’s nonprofit civil rights group.
The Peabody hotel has filed a lawsuit in Shelby County Circuit Court against Sharpton’s National Action Network seeking payment of almost $70,300, plus more than $17,000 in attorney’s fees and other costs. The lawsuit, which puts the total close to $88,000, was filed Tuesday…
The Peabody was the site of the 2008 national convention of the National Action Network (NAN). Corporate sponsors included Abbott Laboratories, Allstate, American Honda, Anheuser-Busch (since acquired by InBev), Chase Foundation, Chrysler, Colgate-Palmolive, Continental Airlines, Entergy, FedEx, Ford, GM, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Pfizer, UPS Foundation and Wal-Mart.
Dr. Carl Horowitz of the NLPC staff attended as an uninvited observer. Colgate-Palmolive accepted a ‘corporate excellence’ award, which NLPC asked the company to repudiate. As previously detailed, the issue flared several weeks later at Colgate-Palmolive’s annual meeting when NLPC President Peter Flaherty confronted Chairman Rueben Mark and CEO Ian Cook. Under prodding from Flaherty, Cook specified that Colgate-Palmolive provided $50,000 for the convention.
In 2009, the NAN convention was held in New York City where Sharpton handed out “Keepers of the Dream” awards. No corporation was identified from the podium or in the program as getting an award. Yet, a full-page Colgate-Palmolive ad in the same program read:
Colgate-Palmolive is honored to be named Corporation of the Year by the National Action Network at the 11th Annual Keepers of the Dream Awards.
The financial improprieties that have plagued Sharpton’s career are detailed in a new NLPC Special Report titled Mainstreaming Demagoguery: Al Sharpton’s Rise to Respectability by Dr. Carl Horowitz.