Via Vanity Fair:
The Reverend Al Sharpton has been many things to many people: a firebrand, an opportunist, an inspiration, a joke. Today, with race once again roiling America’s conscience, he is arguably the country’s most influential civil-rights leader. As Sharpton reflects on his five-decade battle, the presidential election, his role as a political power broker, and the controversies he can’t shake, Suzanna Andrews learns about the anger that created and nearly consumed him.