Roy Innis, a polarizing civil rights icon who famously tussled with the Rev. Al Sharpton and a white supremacist on TV talk shows, has died. He was 82.
Innis died Sunday at a New York City hospital. The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to the Washington Post.
Innis led the Congress of Racial Equality for more than four decades — espousing a conservatism that was reviled by left-leaning activists.
He transformed CORE from a multiracial group known for pushing nonviolent social change, to a black nationalist organization that resisted integration.
Innis decried affirmative action and loudly opposed busing as a strategy to combat segregation in schools.
A National Rifle Association board member, he also drew the condemnation of other black activists by arguing that gun control was “meant to deprive you of your freedom.”
Innis traced his hardline views to the murders of two of his sons — 13-year-old Roy Innis Jr., who was fatally shot while playing outside in 1968, and 26-year-old Alexander Innis, who was gunned down in 1982 in an apparent robbery.
“After the murders of my sons I did not want other parents to go through what I went through,” Innis told Newsday in 1993.
“My sons were not killed by the KKK or David Duke. They were murdered by young, black thugs. I use the murder of my sons by black hoodlums to shift the problems from excuses like the KKK to the dope pushers on the streets.”
Innis’ fiery activism led to a rupture in CORE and set him up for a memorable showdown in 1988 with a 34-year-old civil rights leader named Al Sharpton.
A joint appearance on “The Morton Downey Jr. Show” to discuss the discredited rape claims of Tawana Brawley exploded in violence.
Innis, a former amateur boxer, called out his adversary for what he called “shenanigans,” and Sharpton responded by blasting the claim as a “lot of crap.”
A shouting match ensued, then Innis shoved Sharpton to the floor as the studio audience went wild.
That same year, Innis sparred with a white supremacist on the Geraldo Rivera show.
“I’m sick and tired of Uncle Tom here, sucking up and trying to be a white man,” White Aryan Resistance Youth member Tom Metzger said of Innis.
Innis stood up and began choking Metzger — setting off a melee that ended with a white supremacist breaking Rivera’s nose with a roundhouse punch.
Sharpton, for one, appears to have buried the hatchet.
“Condolences to the family of Roy Innis who passed,” Sharpton tweeted Tuesday.
“We were adversaries on issues but respected each other.”
Wayne LaPierre, a longtime Innis friend and CEO of the National Rifle Association, also paid tribute to the longtime CORE national chairman.
“Roy got up every day and followed his conscience on what he thought was right, and if that led him to collide with political correctness, he was willing to take the heat,” LaPierre told The Washington Times.
Born on the island of Saint Croix, Innis and his mother moved to Manhattan where he attended Stuyvesant High School.
After a two-year stint in the Army, he studied chemistry at the City College of New York and then worked as a chemist at Montefiore Hospital and the Vick Chemical Company.
He joined CORE in the early 1960s — and rose quickly through the ranks as his views shifted sharply to the right.
Innis’ two bids for public office both ended in defeat.
He lost to incumbent Rep. Major Owens (D-N.Y.) in 1986 and suffered a primary defeat to Mayor Dinkins in 1993.
Innis, who once claimed to have been married “more than once and fewer times than Elizabeth Taylor,” is survived by nine children, two sisters and numerous grandchildren.
