BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY
Shaun King (activist)
Shaun King
Born Jeffery Shaun King
September 17, 1979 (age 36)
Franklin County, Kentucky, U.S.
Nationality American
Alma mater Morehouse College
Occupation
Writer activist entrepreneur pastor
Movement Black Lives Matter
Spouse(s) Rai King
Children 5
Parent(s) Naomi Fleming[1]
Jeffery Shaun King (born September 17, 1979) is an American writer and civil rights activist. He is noted for his use of social media to promote religious, charitable, and social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement. He is the senior justice writer for the New York Daily News. Previously, he was a contributing writer for Daily Kos.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Activism
3.1 Tamir Rice fundraising
4 Personal life
4.1 High school assault
4.2 Questions regarding race
Early life
King was raised in Versailles, Kentucky, and later attended Morehouse College, a private historically black men's college in Atlanta, Georgia, where he majored in History.[2] Midway through his education he had to take a medical leave.[3] Upon his return, he was named an Oprah Winfrey Scholar by Morehouse. Oprah scholars are provided scholarship support to cover their costs and are required to maintain their grade point average and do community service.[4]
King's community service was fulfilled by tutoring and mentoring students at Franklin Lebby Stanton Elementary School in Atlanta.[2] After graduation in 2002, King was a research assistant for Morehouse history professor, Alton Hornsby Jr.[5]
Career
After graduation, King was a high school civics teacher for about a year and then became a motivational speaker for Atlanta's juvenile justice system.[6] He was then a pastor at Total Grace Christian Center in DeKalb County, Georgia.[7] In 2008, King founded a church in Atlanta, Georgia called "Courageous Church". He made use of social media to recruit new members and was known as the "Facebook Pastor".[6][8]
In March 2010, while still a pastor, he founded aHomeinHaiti.org as a subsidiary of Courageous Church and used eBay and Twitter to raise $1.5 million to send tents to Haiti after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria was a spokesperson for the campaign.[9] This inspired him to launch TwitChange.com, a charity auction site. Twitchange held Twitter charity auctions on eBay where celebrities offered to retweet winning bidders' tweets in exchange for support of a particular charity. One campaign raised funds to build an orphanage in Bonneau, Haiti.[10][11][12][13] In 2010, TwitChange won the Mashable Award for "Most Creative Social Good Campaign".[14][15]
In 2012, King resigned from the Courageous Church citing personal stress and disillusionment.[16] That same year he and web designer Chad Kellough founded HopeMob.org,[17] a charity site that used voting to select a particular person's story and then raise money for that story until its goal was met. The money went to the organization that provided what the person's needs, not to the person individually. After one goal was met, the next story in line would then get funds raised.[18] HopeMob initially raised funds to build their platform in January 2012 on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Their campaign raised about $125,000[19]
In 2014, he and two co-inventors, Ray Lee and Vincent Tuscano, were awarded U.S. patent 8,667,075, "System and method for implementing a subscription-based social media platform". This patent was filed by the startup he founded @Upfront.[20][21][22]
In 2015, he wrote the self-help book The Power of 100.[23]
On October 2, 2015, the New York Daily News announced that it was hiring King to the new position of senior justice writer, where he will focus on reporting and commentary on social justice, police brutality and race relations.[24]
Activism
King has written extensively about incidents in the Black Lives Matter movement, gaining prominence during the events following the shooting of Michael Brown. King wrote an article analyzing the Brown crime scene, and argued that the evidence suggested that officer Darren Wilson's life was not in danger during the shooting.[25]
King became a contributing blogger for the politically liberal website the Daily Kos in September 2014.[26] His contributions to the website have centered around civil rights issues and violence in Ferguson, Missouri and Charleston, South Carolina as well as allegations of police brutality toward the black community.[27] In August 2015, he launched Justice Together, an organization to identify police brutality and lobby local politicians for change.[28]
King announced that he will leave the Democratic party after the 2016 election due to allegations of corruption and lack of neutrality in the Democratic party during the primaries.[29]
Tamir Rice fundraising
King has raised money for multiple causes including the Tamir Rice shooting, and various incidents where the Black Lives Matter movement has been involved. Through the fund-raising website, YouCaring.com, King raised $60,000 for Rice's family. Rice, a 12-year-old resident of Cleveland, Ohio, was killed in 2014 by two Cleveland city policemen after they responded to a complaint "of a male black sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people."[30][31][32]
After learning the child had not been buried as of five months after the shooting, and the child's mother had moved into a homeless shelter,[33] he started the fund to assist the Rice family; however, family attorney Timothy Kucharski stated in May 2015 that neither he nor the Rice family had heard of King or the fundraiser, nor had they received any money.[34][35] The money raised was then seized by the court and placed into Tamir Rice's estate instead of being freely available to the family. King and the Rice family's new legal counsel, Benjamin Crump, then started a second charity drive with the proceeds going directly to the family. An additional $25,000 was raised.[35][36]
Personal life
King grew up in Versailles, Kentucky[37] and attended Huntertown Elementary School[38] and Woodford County High School.[39] He is married with five children.[16] Three of his children are biological with his wife and two are by custody and adoption. He has had foster children, nieces and nephews stay with him.[28][40] King is the biological son of a Caucasian mother and an African-American father[6][15] and has written extensively about his experiences as a biracial person.
High school assault
One of his experiences in high school was what he considered a hate crime assault.[11] King stated a "dozen rednecks" had beaten him and the injuries caused him to miss a portion of two years of high school due to multiple spinal surgeries.[6] The detective who investigated the case in 1995 described King's injuries as "minor". The associated police report noted that the incident revolved around a fight involving a student who defended his girlfriend after being allegedly threatened by King. The report did not indicate the incident was racially motivated. There is no mention of a "hate crime" either with local police or with the FBI.[41] A band teacher, two fellow students from King's high school, as well as King's wife, posted their recollection of the event to Facebook, backing King's account.[42][43][44] The police report from the incident describes King's injuries as minor with only one other student identified as being involved.[42] Keith Broughton, the investigating detective, said he interviewed six witnesses put forth by the school's principal, including a teacher who broke up the fight.[42] All of them described it as a one-on-one altercation.[42] An unnamed family member told CNN's Don Lemon that the fight was because King was a white guy dating a black girl.[45] A number of other eyewitnesses have described the assault as clearly being motivated by King being perceived as black, describing how he was routinely attacked with racial slurs because of his curly black hair.[43]
Questions regarding race
In August 2015, Breitbart News Network writer Milo Yiannopoulos questioned King's biracial identity based on information from King's birth certificate which lists Naomi Fleming and Jeffrey Wayne King as Shaun King's parents, both of whom are white.[1] King said that the man listed on his birth certificate is not his biological father, and that his mother has told him his biological father is a light-skinned black man.[42][46] King and his supporters expressed concern that such questions were an attempt to distract from the Black Lives Matter movement.[45][47]
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Shaun King
Born Jeffery Shaun King
September 17, 1979 (age 36)
Franklin County, Kentucky, U.S.
Nationality American
Alma mater Morehouse College
Occupation
Writer activist entrepreneur pastor
Movement Black Lives Matter
Spouse(s) Rai King
Children 5
Parent(s) Naomi Fleming[1]
Jeffery Shaun King (born September 17, 1979) is an American writer and civil rights activist. He is noted for his use of social media to promote religious, charitable, and social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement. He is the senior justice writer for the New York Daily News. Previously, he was a contributing writer for Daily Kos.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Activism
3.1 Tamir Rice fundraising
4 Personal life
4.1 High school assault
4.2 Questions regarding race
Early life
King was raised in Versailles, Kentucky, and later attended Morehouse College, a private historically black men's college in Atlanta, Georgia, where he majored in History.[2] Midway through his education he had to take a medical leave.[3] Upon his return, he was named an Oprah Winfrey Scholar by Morehouse. Oprah scholars are provided scholarship support to cover their costs and are required to maintain their grade point average and do community service.[4]
King's community service was fulfilled by tutoring and mentoring students at Franklin Lebby Stanton Elementary School in Atlanta.[2] After graduation in 2002, King was a research assistant for Morehouse history professor, Alton Hornsby Jr.[5]
Career
After graduation, King was a high school civics teacher for about a year and then became a motivational speaker for Atlanta's juvenile justice system.[6] He was then a pastor at Total Grace Christian Center in DeKalb County, Georgia.[7] In 2008, King founded a church in Atlanta, Georgia called "Courageous Church". He made use of social media to recruit new members and was known as the "Facebook Pastor".[6][8]
In March 2010, while still a pastor, he founded aHomeinHaiti.org as a subsidiary of Courageous Church and used eBay and Twitter to raise $1.5 million to send tents to Haiti after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria was a spokesperson for the campaign.[9] This inspired him to launch TwitChange.com, a charity auction site. Twitchange held Twitter charity auctions on eBay where celebrities offered to retweet winning bidders' tweets in exchange for support of a particular charity. One campaign raised funds to build an orphanage in Bonneau, Haiti.[10][11][12][13] In 2010, TwitChange won the Mashable Award for "Most Creative Social Good Campaign".[14][15]
In 2012, King resigned from the Courageous Church citing personal stress and disillusionment.[16] That same year he and web designer Chad Kellough founded HopeMob.org,[17] a charity site that used voting to select a particular person's story and then raise money for that story until its goal was met. The money went to the organization that provided what the person's needs, not to the person individually. After one goal was met, the next story in line would then get funds raised.[18] HopeMob initially raised funds to build their platform in January 2012 on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter. Their campaign raised about $125,000[19]
In 2014, he and two co-inventors, Ray Lee and Vincent Tuscano, were awarded U.S. patent 8,667,075, "System and method for implementing a subscription-based social media platform". This patent was filed by the startup he founded @Upfront.[20][21][22]
In 2015, he wrote the self-help book The Power of 100.[23]
On October 2, 2015, the New York Daily News announced that it was hiring King to the new position of senior justice writer, where he will focus on reporting and commentary on social justice, police brutality and race relations.[24]
Activism
King has written extensively about incidents in the Black Lives Matter movement, gaining prominence during the events following the shooting of Michael Brown. King wrote an article analyzing the Brown crime scene, and argued that the evidence suggested that officer Darren Wilson's life was not in danger during the shooting.[25]
King became a contributing blogger for the politically liberal website the Daily Kos in September 2014.[26] His contributions to the website have centered around civil rights issues and violence in Ferguson, Missouri and Charleston, South Carolina as well as allegations of police brutality toward the black community.[27] In August 2015, he launched Justice Together, an organization to identify police brutality and lobby local politicians for change.[28]
King announced that he will leave the Democratic party after the 2016 election due to allegations of corruption and lack of neutrality in the Democratic party during the primaries.[29]
Tamir Rice fundraising
King has raised money for multiple causes including the Tamir Rice shooting, and various incidents where the Black Lives Matter movement has been involved. Through the fund-raising website, YouCaring.com, King raised $60,000 for Rice's family. Rice, a 12-year-old resident of Cleveland, Ohio, was killed in 2014 by two Cleveland city policemen after they responded to a complaint "of a male black sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people."[30][31][32]
After learning the child had not been buried as of five months after the shooting, and the child's mother had moved into a homeless shelter,[33] he started the fund to assist the Rice family; however, family attorney Timothy Kucharski stated in May 2015 that neither he nor the Rice family had heard of King or the fundraiser, nor had they received any money.[34][35] The money raised was then seized by the court and placed into Tamir Rice's estate instead of being freely available to the family. King and the Rice family's new legal counsel, Benjamin Crump, then started a second charity drive with the proceeds going directly to the family. An additional $25,000 was raised.[35][36]
Personal life
King grew up in Versailles, Kentucky[37] and attended Huntertown Elementary School[38] and Woodford County High School.[39] He is married with five children.[16] Three of his children are biological with his wife and two are by custody and adoption. He has had foster children, nieces and nephews stay with him.[28][40] King is the biological son of a Caucasian mother and an African-American father[6][15] and has written extensively about his experiences as a biracial person.
High school assault
One of his experiences in high school was what he considered a hate crime assault.[11] King stated a "dozen rednecks" had beaten him and the injuries caused him to miss a portion of two years of high school due to multiple spinal surgeries.[6] The detective who investigated the case in 1995 described King's injuries as "minor". The associated police report noted that the incident revolved around a fight involving a student who defended his girlfriend after being allegedly threatened by King. The report did not indicate the incident was racially motivated. There is no mention of a "hate crime" either with local police or with the FBI.[41] A band teacher, two fellow students from King's high school, as well as King's wife, posted their recollection of the event to Facebook, backing King's account.[42][43][44] The police report from the incident describes King's injuries as minor with only one other student identified as being involved.[42] Keith Broughton, the investigating detective, said he interviewed six witnesses put forth by the school's principal, including a teacher who broke up the fight.[42] All of them described it as a one-on-one altercation.[42] An unnamed family member told CNN's Don Lemon that the fight was because King was a white guy dating a black girl.[45] A number of other eyewitnesses have described the assault as clearly being motivated by King being perceived as black, describing how he was routinely attacked with racial slurs because of his curly black hair.[43]
Questions regarding race
In August 2015, Breitbart News Network writer Milo Yiannopoulos questioned King's biracial identity based on information from King's birth certificate which lists Naomi Fleming and Jeffrey Wayne King as Shaun King's parents, both of whom are white.[1] King said that the man listed on his birth certificate is not his biological father, and that his mother has told him his biological father is a light-skinned black man.[42][46] King and his supporters expressed concern that such questions were an attempt to distract from the Black Lives Matter movement.[45][47]
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