Civil rights icon Al Sharpton cast doubt on Kyle Rittenhouse's tearful testimony in his own murder trial and decried the circumstances surrounding the killing of Ahmaud Arbery during a stop Thursday morning in Cincinnati.
Sharpton, an activist, politician, and minister who founded the National Action Network, was the keynote speaker at the 38th annual convention of the National Coalition of Black Meeting Professionals held downtown at the Hyatt Regency Cincinnati.
During his address, Sharpton suggested Rittenhouse dramatized his testimony Wednesday in his trial for shooting and killing two men and wounding a third during a protest against police brutality last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Rittenhouse “sat through the whole trial taking notes and watching everything but got on the stand yesterday and all of a sudden broke down and cried,’’ Sharpton said incredulously. "Now, I can’t say he was insincere, but I can say that I’ve seen actresses have the same kind of weeping he had.’’
Sharpton, who has campaigned for voters' rights and other issues in the Cincinnati area, also commented on the case of three white men on trial in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was chased and gunned down by armed residents of a South Georgia neighborhood.
"Sitting behind the (Arbery) family and the three men that killed him reminded me no matter how much progress we've made, we still have Blacks who can't jog through streets in Georgia without being killed,'' said Sharpton, who attended the Arbery trial Wednesday.
Sharpton said he brought up the Rittenhouse and Arbery trials to underscore continued racial and civil unrest in the country despite nationwide protests last year, and to encourage the meeting professionals to seek out convention cities where leaders are advocating for social justice and racial equality.
"We don't even have to go back in history to last year,'' he told the audience. "Right now. This is the climate that you will be gathering and bringing meetings together in. To ignore the climate and context is bad for your business.''
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