EXCLUSIVE: Dominique Sharpton, daughter of Rev. Al Sharpton, says she was 'born into' activism

Dominique Sharpton grew up visiting her father, the Rev. Al Sharpton, in jail. These days she visits him at his 30 Rockefeller Center television studio.

When she was a child, her dad warned her not to become an activist, but Dominique, 28, has done exactly what he discouraged, joining his National Action Network as a senior official.

She was a lead organizer of the Justice for All March in Washington, D.C., last weekend that demanded changes in the criminal justice system following the Eric Garner grand jury decision.

“I was pretty much born into this,” she said, sitting behind her dad’s desk at his Harlem headquarters. “Being the daughter of Rev. Al Sharpton, there’s tremendous pressure that comes along with just that.”

Dominique, who was born in Brooklyn and went to private school at Poly Prep and then studied acting at Temple University, has straddled different worlds her entire life.

She and her younger sister Ashley, who runs an entertainment agency, grew up surrounded by some of America’s most celebrated black political icons and entertainers. Their mother, Kathy Jordan Sharpton, was a back-up singer for James Brown when she met Sharpton, who at the time was Brown’s road manager. (Sharpton and Jordan separated in 2004.) The Rev. Jesse Jackson and boxing legend Don King are Dominique’s godfathers, while Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s wife, was her godmother.

Dominique has memories of Michael Jackson playing with her hair. A picture of Dominique with Oprah hangs on the wall.

But growing up Sharpton didn’t just mean hobnobbing with celebrities. Dominque and her sister also formed close ties to the families of victims of police brutality.“They’re like family with some of the most known cases,” Sharpton said. Both are close to Kadiatou Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo, who was killed by police in the Bronx in 1999, and Dominique has formed strong ties with the Garner family.

 

Dominique also transcended her father’s world and even gained the admiration of some of her father’s most bitter enemies.

Her best friend is Haley Swindal, former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner’s granddaughter.

“I’d go to Yankees games with Haley a lot and be in the owner’s box with Rudy Giuliani,” she said. “He calls me the Good Sharpton,” she laughed.

She also had to live with acrimonious attacks on her father.

“We couldn’t go to dinner without people coming up and saying, screw you, Al Sharpton,” she recalled. “It does something to you.”

And while she made headlines she could have done without in 2010 when her boyfriend, Latrell Peeks, was charged with misdemeanor assault for punching her in the mouth, Dominique has since found a more stable union with a Miami-based professor.

“My boyfriend Marcus Bright just got his PhD,” she said. “He and my dad talk, they go to dinner without me. This is new for me.”

Dominique has watched her father reinvent himself, from an obese and controversial preacher dressed in track suits to a skinny television host who wears double-breasted blazers and gives advice to President Obama.

She admits she misses the heavier version of her dad.

“I enjoyed the fat Sharpton because at least I could eat with him,” she said. “Now I feel self-conscious when we go to dinner and I’m eating. We’ll sometimes eat in private and then go to dinner with him and say we’re not hungry.”

Her main concern is that Sharpton doesn’t shed more pounds and endanger his health.

“We make sure he goes to the doctor,” she said. “I would love to see him eat a steak, you know, soon.”

When his daughters were young, Sharpton said he tried to shield them from the perils of his world.

When he was stabbed leading a protest in Bensonhurst in 1991 with the family of Yusuf Hawkins, a teenager who was killed by a white mob in the Brooklyn neighborhood, he told his daughters he was out of town. When 6-year-old Dominique discovered the truth in a magazine, she had an asthma attack and had to be hospitalized.

“She grew up with the trauma of knowing what I was about,” he said. “When she started doing acting, I was happy about that.”

Despite his reservations, he now enjoys working with his daughter.

“I love the fact that she believes in what I’m doing and she believes in the movement,” he said. “We spend a lot of time together. I call her for advice.”

Dominique, who had a few lines in the 2009 movie “Duplicity,” still harbors Hollywood dreams.

“I like my life right now but I’d love more acting projects,” she said. “I see these elements of life here that should be on the screen,” she said. “Maybe I will write about what we do — maybe a documentary or a play or a major motion picture.”

From watching her father over the years, she has learned it is always possible to reinvent yourself.

“To see him now, walking into 30 Rock with people walking up to him to get his autograph, it instills in us that anything we want to do we can do,” she said.