Roy Innis dead at 82

The conservative civil rights leader died Sunday in New York.

A tall and muscular enigma wrapped in a conundrum, Mr. Innis was noted for being a compelling speaker at the podium but otherwise mild-mannered — except when he wasn’t. He knocked Al Sharpton out of a chair and onto the floor during a TV debate, and he clobbered a white supremacist who called him an Uncle Tom on a Geraldo Rivera TV show.

“He believed in self-reliance, humility and the courage to fight for expanded opportunities, not for dependence on welfare,” said Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state and a domestic policy adviser to the Trump transition team. “He wasn’t a pacifist, as Al Sharpton and others found out.”

His initial support for black separatism evolved into a libertarian conservatism not remotely shared by other famous U.S. civil rights leaders. He had headed the Congress of Racial Equality since being elected its national chairman in 1968.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.