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Al Sharpton

Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (born October 3, 1954) is an American civil rights and social justice activist, Baptist minister, radio talk show host, and TV personality, who is also the founder of the National Action Network civil rights organization. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidential election. He hosts a weekday radio talk show, Keepin' It Real, which is nationally syndicated by Urban One, and he is a political analyst and weekend host for MSNBC, hosting PoliticsNation.

Sharpton is known for making various controversial and incendiary comments over his career. He has been accused of making homophobic, antisemitic and racially insensitive remarks as well as inciting incidents of violence. In 1987 he was highly active in publicizing the Tawana Brawley accusation in the media; the allegation was later proved to be false.

Early life
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. was born in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, to Ada (née Richards) and Alfred Charles Sharpton Sr. Shaprton has Cherokee roots. He preached his first sermon at the age of four and toured with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

In 1963, Sharpton's father left his wife to have a relationship with Sharpton's half-sister. Ada took a job as a maid, but her income was so low that the family qualified for welfare and had to move from middle class Hollis, Queens, to the public housing projects in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Sharpton graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, and attended Brooklyn College, dropping out after two years in 1975. In 1972, he accepted the position of youth director for the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. Between the years 1973 and 1980 Sharpton served as James Brown's tour manager.

Activism
In 1969, Sharpton was appointed by Jesse Jackson to serve as youth director of the New York City branch of Operation Breadbasket, a group that focused on the promotion of new and better jobs for African Americans.

In 1971, Sharpton founded the National Youth Movement to raise resources for impoverished youth.

Bernhard Goetz
Bernhard Goetz shot four African-American men on a New York City Subway train in Manhattan on December 22, 1984, when they approached him and tried to rob him. At his trial Goetz was acquitted of all charges except for carrying an unlicensed firearm. Sharpton led several marches protesting what he saw as the weak prosecution of the case. Sharpton and other civil rights leaders said Goetz's actions were racist and requested a federal civil rights investigation. A federal investigation concluded the shooting was due to an attempted robbery and not race.

Howard Beach
On December 20, 1986, three African-American men were assaulted in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens by a mob of white men. The three men were chased by their attackers onto the Belt Parkway, where one of them, Michael Griffith, was struck and killed by a passing motorist.

A week later, on December 27, Sharpton led 1,200 demonstrators on a march through the streets of Howard Beach. Residents of the neighborhood, who were overwhelmingly white, yelled racial epithets at the protesters, who were largely black. A special prosecutor was appointed by New York Governor Mario Cuomo after the two surviving victims refused to co-operate with the Queens district attorney. Sharpton's role in the case helped propel him to national prominence.

Bensonhurst
On August 23, 1989, four African-American teenagers were beaten by a group of 10 to 30 white Italian-American youths in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. One Bensonhurst resident, armed with a handgun, shot and killed 16-year-old Yusef Hawkins.

In the weeks following the assault and murder, Sharpton led several marches through Bensonhurst. The first protest, just days after the incident, was greeted by neighborhood residents shouting "Niggers go home" and holding watermelons to mock the demonstrators.

Sharpton also threatened that Hawkins's three companions would not cooperate with prosecutor Elizabeth Holtzman unless her office agreed to hire more black attorneys. In the end, they cooperated.

In May 1990, when one of the two leaders of the mob was acquitted of the most serious charges brought against him, Sharpton led another protest through Bensonhurst. In January 1991, when other members of the gang were given light sentences, Sharpton planned another march for January 12, 1991. Before that demonstration began, neighborhood resident Michael Riccardi tried to kill Sharpton by stabbing him in the chest. Sharpton recovered from his wounds, and later asked the judge for leniency when Riccardi was sentenced.

National Action Network
In 1991, Sharpton founded the National Action Network, an organization designed to increase voter education, to provide services to those in poverty, and to support small community businesses. In 2016, Boise Kimber, an associate of Sharpton and a member of his NAN national board, along with businessman and philanthropist Don Vaccaro, launched Grace Church Websites, a non-profit organization that helps churches create and launch their own websites.

Crown Heights riot
The Crown Heights riot began on August 19, 1991, after a car driven by a Jewish man, and part of a procession led by an unmarked police car, went through an intersection and was struck by another vehicle causing it to veer onto the sidewalk where it accidentally struck and killed a seven-year-old Guyanese boy named Gavin Cato and severely injured his cousin Angela. Witnesses could not agree upon the speed and could not agree whether the light was yellow or red. One of the factors that sparked the riot was the arrival of a private ambulance, which was later discovered to be on the orders of a police officer who was worried for the Jewish driver's safety, removed him from the scene while Cato lay pinned under his car. After being removed from under the car, Cato and his cousin were treated soon after by a city ambulance. Caribbean-American and African-American residents of the neighborhood rioted for four consecutive days fueled by rumors that the private ambulance had refused to treat Cato. During the riot black youths looted stores, beat Jews in the street, and clashed with groups of Jews, hurling rocks and bottles at one another after Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, was stabbed and killed by a member of a mob while some chanted "Kill the Jew", and "get the Jews out".

Sharpton marched through Crown Heights and in front of the headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, shortly after the riot, with about 400 protesters (who chanted "Whose streets? Our streets!" and "No justice, no peace!"), in spite of Mayor David Dinkins' attempts to keep the march from happening. Some commentators felt Sharpton inflamed tensions by making remarks that included "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house." In his eulogy for Cato, Sharpton said, "The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident...It's an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights...Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid...All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'. Pay for your deeds."

In the decades since, Sharpton has conceded that his language and tone "sometimes exacerbated tensions" though he insisted that his marches were peaceful. In a 2019 speech to a Reform Jewish gathering, Sharpton said that he could have "done more to heal rather than harm". He recalled receiving a call from Coretta Scott King at the time, during which she told him "sometimes you are tempted to speak to the applause of the crowd rather than the heights of the cause, and you will say cheap things to get cheap applause rather than do high things to raise the nation higher".

Freddy's Fashion Mart
In 1995 a black Pentecostal Church, the United House of Prayer, which owned a retail property on 125th Street, asked Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant who operated Freddie's Fashion Mart, to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store called The Record Shack. Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction of The Record Shack,  in which he told the protesters, "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."

On December 8, 1995, Roland J. Smith Jr., one of the protesters, entered Harari's store with a gun and flammable liquid, shot several customers and set the store on fire. The gunman fatally shot himself, and seven store employees died of smoke inhalation. Fire Department officials discovered that the store's sprinkler had been shut down, in violation of the local fire code. Sharpton claimed that the perpetrator was an open critic of himself and his nonviolent tactics. In 2002, Sharpton expressed regret for making the racial remark "white interloper" but denied responsibility for inflaming or provoking the violence.

Amadou Diallo
In 1999, Sharpton led a protest to raise awareness about the death of Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea who was shot dead by NYPD officers. Sharpton claimed that Diallo's death was the result of police brutality and racial profiling. Although all four defendants were found not guilty of any crimes in the criminal trial, Diallo's family was later awarded $3 million in a wrongful death suit filed against the city.

Tyisha Miller
In May 1999, Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and other activists protested the December 1998 fatal police shooting of Tyisha Miller in central Riverside, California. Miller, a 19-year-old African-American woman, had sat unconscious in a locked car with a flat tire and the engine left running, parked at a local gas station. After her relatives had called 9-1-1, Riverside Police Department officers who responded to the scene observed a gun in the young woman's lap, and according to their accounts, she was shaking and foaming at the mouth, and in need of medical attention. When officers decided to break her window to reach her, as one officer reached for the weapon, she allegedly awoke and clutched her firearm, prompting several officers to open fire, hitting her 23 times and killing her. When the Riverside County district attorney stated that the officers involved had erred in judgement but committed no crime, declining to file criminal charges against them, Sharpton participated in protests which reached their zenith when protestors spilled onto the busy SR 91, completely stopping traffic. Sharpton was arrested for his participation and leadership in these protests. Sharpton referred to the special prosecutor, attorney general Bob Abrams, as "Mr. Hitler".

Vieques
In 2001, Sharpton was jailed for 90 days on trespassing charges while protesting against U.S. military target practice exercises in Puerto Rico near a United States Navy bombing site. Sharpton was held in a Puerto Rican lockup for two days and then imprisoned at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, on May 25, 2001. He was released on August 17, 2001.

Ousmane Zongo
In 2002, Sharpton was involved in protests following the death of West African immigrant Ousmane Zongo. Zongo, who was unarmed, was shot by an undercover police officer during a raid on a warehouse in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Sharpton met with the family and also provided some legal services.

Sean Bell
On November 25, 2006, Sean Bell was shot and killed in the Jamaica section of Queens, New York, by plainclothes detectives from the New York Police Department in a hail of 50 bullets. The incident sparked fierce criticism of the police from the public and drew comparisons to the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo. Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial in 2008 on charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment but were found not guilty.

On May 7, 2008, in response to the acquittals of the officers, Sharpton coordinated peaceful protests at major river crossings in New York City, including the Brooklyn Bridge, the Queensboro Bridge, the Triborough Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the Holland Tunnel, and the Queens–Midtown Tunnel. Sharpton and about 200 others were arrested for blocking traffic and resisting police orders to disperse.

Dunbar Village
On March 11, 2008, Sharpton held a press conference to highlight what he said was unequal treatment of four suspected rapists in a high-profile crime in the Dunbar Village Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida. The suspects, who were young black men, were arrested for allegedly raping and beating a black Haitian woman at gunpoint. The crime also involved forcing the woman to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son.

At his press conference Sharpton said that any violent act toward a woman is inexcusable but he felt that the accused youths were being treated unfairly because they were black. Sharpton contrasted the treatment of the suspects, who were held without bail, with white suspects involved in a gang rape—which he claimed was equivalent to the Dunbar Village attack—who were released after posting bond.

Reclaim the Dream commemorative march
On August 28, 2010, Sharpton and other civil rights leaders led a march to commemorate the 47th anniversary of the historic March on Washington. After gathering at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., thousands of people marched five miles to the National Mall.

Tanya McDowell
In June 2011, Sharpton spoke at a rally in support of Tanya McDowell, who was arrested and charged with larceny for allegedly registering her son for kindergarten in the wrong public school district using a false address. She claimed to spend time in both a Bridgeport, Connecticut, apartment and a homeless shelter in Norwalk, where her son was registered.

George Zimmerman
Following the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, Sharpton led several protests and rallies criticizing the Sanford Police Department over the handling of the shooting and called for Zimmerman's arrest: "Zimmerman should have been arrested that night. You cannot defend yourself against a pack of Skittles and iced tea." Sean Hannity accused Sharpton and MSNBC of "rush[ing] to judgment" in the case. MSNBC issued a statement in which they said Sharpton "repeatedly called for calm" and further investigation. Following the acquittal of Zimmerman, Sharpton called the not guilty verdict an "atrocity" and "a slap in the face to those that believe in justice". Subsequently, Sharpton and his organization, National Action Network, held rallies in several cities denouncing the verdict and called for "Justice for Trayvon".

Eric Garner

After the July 2014 death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York, by a New York City Police Department officer, Daniel Pantaleo, Sharpton organized a peaceful protest in Staten Island on the afternoon of July 19, and condemned the police's use of the chokehold on Garner, saying that "there is no justification" for it. Sharpton had also planned to lead a protest on August 23, in which participants would have driven over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, then traveled to the site of the altercation and the office of District Attorney Dan Donovan This idea was scrapped in favor of Sharpton leading a peaceful march along Bay Street in Staten Island, where Garner died; over 5,000 people marched in the demonstration.

Barack Obama
In 2014, Glenn Thrush of Politico described Sharpton as an "adviser" to President Barack Obama and as Obama's "go-to man" on racial issues.

Ministers March for Justice
On August 28, 2017, the fifty-fourth anniversary of the March on Washington at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, Sharpton organized the Ministers March for Justice, promising to bring a thousand members of the clergy to Washington, D.C., to deliver a "unified moral rebuke" to President Donald Trump. Several thousand religious leaders were present, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that "President Trump has united us, after all. He brought together the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Jews."

George Floyd
At the funeral of George Floyd on June 4, 2020, Sharpton delivered a eulogy where he called for the four Minneapolis policemen involved in Floyd's murder to be brought to justice. He also criticized President Donald Trump for his talk about "bringing in the military" when "some kids wrongly start violence that this family doesn't condone" and that Trump has "not said one word about 8 minutes and 46 seconds of police murder of George Floyd". On April 20, 2021, with the conviction of Derek Chauvin for murdering George Floyd, Sharpton led prayer with the Floyd family in Minneapolis.

Kwanzaa and Hanukkah
In December 2022, taking a stand together against the increasing instances of racism and antisemitism in the United States, Sharpton, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Vista Equity Partners CEO and Carnegie Hall Chairman Robert F. Smith, Reverend Conrad Tillard, World Values Network founder and CEO Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and Elisha Wiesel joined to host 15 Days of Light, celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanzaa in a unifying holiday ceremony at Carnegie Hall. Sharpton said: "There is never a time more needed than now for Blacks and Jews to remember the struggle that we've gone through. You can't fight for anybody if you don't fight for everybody. I cannot fight for Black rights if I don't fight for Jewish rights ... because then it becomes a matter of self-aggrandizement rather than fighting for humanity. It's easy for Blacks to stand up for racism. It's easy for Jews to stand up to antisemitism. But if you want to really be a leader, you got to speak as a Black against antisemitism and antisemites, and you got to speak as a Jew against racism."

Tyre Nichols
At the funeral of Tyre Nichols on February 2, 2023, Sharpton delivered the eulogy for the service. He, alongside vice president Kamala Harris, called on lawmakers to approve the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and other police reforms.

Political views
In September 2007, Sharpton was asked whether he considered it important for the US to have a black president. He responded, "It would be a great moment as long as the black candidate was supporting the interest that would inevitably help our people. A lot of my friends went with Clarence Thomas and regret it to this day. I don't assume that just because somebody's my color, they're my kind. But I'm warming up to Obama, but I'm not there yet."

Sharpton has spoken out against cruelty to animals in a video recorded for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Sharpton is a supporter of equal rights for gays and lesbians and same-sex marriage. During his 2004 presidential campaign, Sharpton said he thought it was insulting to be asked to discuss the issue of gay marriage. "It's like asking do I support black marriage or white marriage.... The inference of the question is that gays are not like other human beings." Sharpton is leading a grassroots movement to eliminate homophobia within the Black church.

In 2014, Sharpton began a push for criminal justice reform, citing the fact that black people represent a greater proportion of those arrested and incarcerated in America.

In August 2017, Sharpton called for the federal government to stop maintaining the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., because Thomas Jefferson owned 600 slaves and had a sexually abusive relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. He said taxpayer funds should not be used to care for monuments to slave-owners and that private museums were preferable. He went on to elaborate: "People need to understand that people were enslaved. Our families were victims of this. Public monuments [to people like Jefferson] are supported by public funds. You're asking me to subsidize the insult to my family."

Sharpton is an opponent of the Defund the Police movement, charging that the idea is being pushed by "latte liberals" who were out of touch with the African-American community, and that black and poor neighbourhoods "need proper policing" to protect the inhabitants from higher crime rates.

Reputation
Sharpton's supporters praise "his ability and willingness to defy the power structure that is seen as the cause of their suffering" and consider him "a man who is willing to tell it like it is". Former Mayor of New York City Ed Koch, one-time foe, said that Sharpton deserves the respect he enjoys among black Americans: "He is willing to go to jail for them, and he is there when they need him." President Barack Obama said that Sharpton is "the voice of the voiceless and a champion for the downtrodden". A 2013 Zogby Analytics poll found that one quarter of African Americans said that Sharpton speaks for them.

His critics describe him as "a political radical who is to blame, in part, for the deterioration of race relations". Sociologist Orlando Patterson has referred to him as a racial arsonist, while liberal columnist Derrick Z. Jackson has called him the black equivalent of Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan. Sharpton sees much of the criticism as a sign of his effectiveness. "In many ways, what they consider criticism is complimenting my job," he said. "An activist's job is to make public civil rights issues until there can be a climate for change."

Tobacco industry funding
In 2021, Sharpton was criticized for leading a tobacco industry pushback against a proposed ban on the sale of menthol cigarettes using "cynically manipulative" arguments while his National Action Network accepted funding from tobacco companies.

Comments on Mormons
During 2007, Sharpton was accused of bigotry for comments he made in a debate with Christopher Hitchens on May 7, 2007, concerning presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his religion, Mormonism:

"As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation."

In response, a representative for Romney told reporters that "bigotry toward anyone because of their beliefs is unacceptable." The Catholic League compared Sharpton to Don Imus, and said that his remarks "should finish his career".

On May 9, during an interview on Paula Zahn NOW, Sharpton said that his views on Mormonism were based on the "Mormon Church's traditionally racist views regarding blacks" and its interpretation of the so-called "Curse of Ham". On May 10, Sharpton called two apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and apologized to them for his remarks and asked to meet with them. A spokesman for the Church confirmed that Sharpton had called and said that "we appreciate it very much, Rev. Sharpton's call, and we consider the matter closed." He also apologized to "any member of the Mormon church" who was offended by his comments. Later that month, Sharpton went to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he met with Elder M. Russell Ballard, a leader of the Church, and Elder Robert C. Oaks of the Church's Presidency of the Seventy.

Racial and homophobic comments
On February 13, 1994, Sharpton told a student audience at Kean University in New Jersey: "White folks was in the caves while we was building empires," he said. "We built pyramids before Donald Trump even knew what architecture was. We taught philosophy and astrology [sic] and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it." Sharpton defended his comments by saying that the term "homo" was not homophobic; however, he added that he no longer uses the term. At the same lecture, he said, "Do some cracker come and tell you, 'Well my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,' you better hold your pocket. That ain't nothing to be proud of, that means their forefathers was crooks."

On one occasion in 1992, he derided moderate black politicians close to the Democratic Party as "cocktail sip Negroes" or "yellow niggers".

Tawana Brawley rape case
On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl, was found smeared with feces, lying in a garbage bag, her clothing torn and burned and with various slurs and epithets written on her body in charcoal. Brawley claimed she had been assaulted and raped by six white men, some of them police officers, in the town of Wappinger, New York.

Attorneys Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason joined Sharpton in support of Brawley. A grand jury was convened; after seven months of examining police and medical records, the jury found "overwhelming evidence" that Brawley had fabricated her story. Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason had accused the Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones, of racism and of being one of the perpetrators of the alleged abduction and rape. The three were successfully sued for defamation, and were ordered to pay $345,000 in damages, with the jury finding Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, Maddox for two, and Mason for one. Sharpton refused to pay his share of the damages; it was later paid by a number of black business leaders including Johnnie Cochran.

Sharpton said in 2007 that if he had it to do over again, he might have not attacked Pagones personally, but would otherwise have handled the Brawley case the same way. He added: "I disagreed with the grand jury on Brawley. I believed there was enough evidence to go to trial. Grand jury said there wasn't. Okay, fine. Do I have a right to disagree with the grand jury? Many Americans believe O. J. Simpson was guilty. A jury said he wasn't. So I have as much right to question a jury as they do. Does it make somebody a racist? No! They just disagreed with the jury. So did I."

Work as FBI informant
Sharpton said in 1988 that he informed for the government in order to stem the flow of crack cocaine into black neighborhoods. He denied informing on civil rights leaders.

In 2002, HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel aired a 19-year-old FBI videotape of an undercover sting operation showing Sharpton with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin American drug lord. During the discussion, the undercover agent offered Sharpton a 10% commission for arranging drug sales. On the videotape, Sharpton mostly nods and allows the FBI agent to do most of the talking. No drug deal was ever consummated, and no charges were brought against Sharpton as a result of the tape.

In April 2014, The Smoking Gun obtained documents indicating that Sharpton became an FBI informant in 1983 following Sharpton's role in a drug sting involving Colombo crime family captain Michael Franzese. Sharpton allegedly recorded incriminating conversations with Genovese and Gambino family mobsters, contributing to the indictments of several underworld figures. Sharpton is referred to in FBI documents as "CI-7".

Summarizing the evidence supporting that Sharpton was an active FBI informant in the 1980s, William Bastone, the Smoking Gun's founder, stated: "If he (Sharpton) didn't think he was an informant, the 'Genovese squad' of the FBI and NYPD officials sure knew him to be an informant. He was paid to be an informant, he carried a briefcase with a recording device in it, and he made surreptitious tape recordings of a Gambino crime family member 10 separate times as an informant. He did it at the direction of the FBI, he was prepped by the FBI, was handed the briefcase by the FBI and was debriefed after the meetings. That's an informant." Sharpton disputes portions of the allegations.

Sharpton is alleged to have secretly recorded conversations with black activists in the 1980s regarding Joanne Chesimard (Assata Shakur) and other underground black militants. Veteran activist Ahmed Obafemi told the New York Daily News that he had long suspected Sharpton of taping him with the bugged briefcase.

Tax issues
In 1993, Sharpton pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for failing to file a state income tax return. Later, the authorities discovered that one of Mr. Sharpton's for-profit companies, Raw Talent, which he used as a repository for money from speaking engagements, was also not paying taxes, a failure that continued for years.

On May 9, 2008, the Associated Press reported that Sharpton and his businesses owed almost $1.5 million in unpaid taxes and penalties. Sharpton owed $931,000 in federal income tax and $366,000 to New York, and his for-profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owed another $176,000 to the state.

The Internal Revenue Service sent subpoenas to several corporations that had donated to Sharpton's National Action Network. Sharpton countered the investigative actions with a charge that they reflected a political agenda by United States agencies.

On September 29, 2010, Robert Snell of The Detroit News reported that the Internal Revenue Service had filed a notice of federal tax lien against Sharpton in New York City in the amount of over $538,000. Sharpton's lawyer asserts that the notice of federal tax lien relates to Sharpton's year 2009 federal income tax return, the due date of which has been extended to October 15, 2010, according to the lawyer. However, the Snell report states that the lien relates to taxes assessed during 2009.

According to The New York Times, Sharpton and his for-profit businesses owed $4.5 million in state and federal taxes as of November 2014.

Personal life
In 1971 while touring with James Brown, Sharpton met future wife Kathy Jordan, who was a backing singer. Sharpton and Jordan married in 1980. The couple separated in 2004. In July 2013, the New York Daily News reported that Sharpton, while still married to his second wife (Kathy Jordan), now had a self-described "girlfriend", Aisha McShaw, aged 35, and that the couple had "been an item for months.... photographed at elegant bashes all over the country". McShaw, the Daily News reported, referred to herself professionally as both a "personal stylist" and "personal banker".

Sharpton is an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.

Religion
Sharpton was licensed and ordained a Pentecostal minister by Bishop F. D. Washington at the age of nine or ten. After Bishop Washington's death in the late 1980s, Sharpton became a Baptist. He was re-baptized as a member of the Bethany Baptist Church in 1994 by the Reverend William Augustus Jones and became a Baptist minister.

During 2007, Sharpton participated in a public debate with atheist writer Christopher Hitchens, defending his religious faith and his belief in the existence of God.

Assassination attempt
On January 12, 1991, Sharpton escaped serious injury when he was stabbed in the chest in the schoolyard at P.S. 205 by Michael Riccardi while Sharpton was preparing to lead a protest through Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, New York. The intoxicated attacker was apprehended by Sharpton's aides and handed over to police, who were present for the planned protest.

In 1992, Riccardi was convicted of first-degree assault. Sharpton asked the judge for leniency when sentencing Riccardi. The judge sentenced Riccardi to five to 15 years in jail, and he served ten years in prison being released on parole on January 8, 2001.

Sharpton, although forgiving his attacker and pleading for leniency on his behalf, filed suit against New York City alleging that the many police present had failed to protect him from his attacker. In December 2003, he finally reached a $200,000 settlement with the city just as jury selection was about to start.

Indirect connection to Strom Thurmond
In February 2007, genealogist Megan Smolenyak discovered that Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

The Sharpton family name originated with Coleman Sharpton's previous owner, who was named Alexander Sharpton.

Political campaigns
Sharpton has run unsuccessfully for elected office on multiple occasions. Of his unsuccessful runs, he said that winning office may not have been his goal, saying in an interview: "Much of the media criticism of me assumes their goals and they impose them on me. Well, those might not be my goals. So they will say, 'Well, Sharpton has not won a political office.' But that might not be my goal! Maybe I ran for political office to change the debate, or to raise the social justice question." Sharpton ran for a United States Senate seat from New York in 1988, 1992, and 1994. In 1997, he ran for Mayor of New York City. During his 1992 bid, he and his wife lived in a home in Englewood, New Jersey, though he said his residence was an apartment in Brooklyn.

On December 15, 2005, Sharpton agreed to repay $100,000 in public funds he received from the federal government for his 2004 presidential campaign. The repayment was required because Sharpton had exceeded federal limits on personal expenditures for his campaign. At that time, his most recent Federal Election Commission filings (from January 1, 2005) stated that Sharpton's campaign still had debts of $479,050 and owed Sharpton himself $145,146 for an item listed as "Fundraising Letter Preparation — Kinko's".

In 2009, the Federal Election Commission announced it had levied a fine of $285,000 against Sharpton's 2004 presidential campaign team for breaking campaign finance rules during his bid for President.

Sharpton said in 2007 that he would not enter the 2008 presidential race.

Television appearances

Sharpton has made cameo appearances in the movies Cold Feet, Bamboozled, Mr. Deeds, and Malcolm X. He also has appeared in episodes of the television shows New York Undercover, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Girlfriends, My Wife and Kids, Rescue Me and Boston Legal. He hosted the original Spike TV reality television show I Hate My Job, and an episode of Saturday Night Live. He was a guest on Weekends at the DL on Comedy Central and has been featured in television ads for the Fernando Ferrer campaign for the New York City mayoral election, 2005. He also made a cameo appearance by telephone on the Food Network series, The Secret Life Of . . ., when host Jim O'Connor expressed disbelief that a restaurant owner who'd named a dish after Sharpton actually knew him.

In 1988, during an appearance on The Morton Downey Jr. Show, Sharpton and Congress of Racial Equality National Chairman Roy Innis got into a heated argument about the Tawana Brawley case and Innis shoved Sharpton to the floor.

In 1999, Sharpton appeared in a documentary about black nationalism hosted by Louis Theroux, as part of the 'Weird Weekends' series.

During the 2005 Tony Awards, Sharpton appeared in a number put on by the cast of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Broadcast hosting
In June 2005, Sharpton signed a contract with Matrix Media to produce and host a live two-hour daily talk program, but it never aired. In November 2005, Sharpton signed with Radio One to host a daily national talk radio program, which began airing on January 30, 2006, entitled Keepin It Real with Al Sharpton.

On August 29, 2011, Sharpton became the host of PoliticsNation, the MSNBC show which originally aired weeknights during the 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time hour. In October 2015 the program was moved to Sunday mornings, one hour per week. He continues to be a regular contributor to Morning Joe.

Books
Sharpton has written or co-written four books, Go and Tell Pharaoh, with Nick Chiles, Al on America, The Rejected Stone: Al Sharpton and the Path to American Leadership, and Rise Up: Confronting a Country at the Crossroads.

title: Al Sharpton


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Thin Lizzy

Thin Lizzy are an Irish hard rock band formed in Dublin in 1969. Thin Lizzy initially consisted of bass guitarist, lead vocalist and principal songwriter Phil Lynott, drummer Brian Downey, guitarist Eric Bell and organist Eric Wrixon, although Wrixon left after a few months. Bell left at the end of 1973 and was briefly replaced by Gary Moore, who himself was replaced in mid-1974 by twin lead guitarists: Scott Gorham, who remained with the band until their break-up in 1983, and Brian Robertson, who remained with the band until 1978 when Moore re-joined. Moore left a second time and was replaced by Snowy White in 1980, who was himself replaced by John Sykes in 1982. The line-up was augmented by keyboardist Darren Wharton in 1980. The singles "Whiskey in the Jar" (1972), "The Boys Are Back in Town" (1976) and "Waiting for an Alibi" (1979) were international hits, and several Thin Lizzy albums reached the top ten in the UK. The band's music reflects a wide range of influences, including blues, soul music, psychedelic rock and traditional Irish folk music, but is generally classified as hard rock or sometimes heavy metal.

Lynott led the group throughout their fourteen-year recording career of twelve studio albums, writing or co-writing almost all the band's material. He was the first Black Irishman to achieve commercial success in the field of rock music. Thin Lizzy featured several guitarists throughout their history, with Downey and Lynott as the rhythm section, on the drums and bass guitar. As well as being multiracial, the band drew their early members not only from both sides of the Irish border but also from both the Catholic and Protestant communities during The Troubles.

After Lynott's death in 1986, various incarnations of the band emerged over the years based initially around guitarists Gorham and Sykes, though Sykes left the band in 2009. Gorham later continued with a new line-up including Downey. In 2012, Gorham and Downey decided against recording new material as Thin Lizzy so a new band, Black Star Riders, was formed to tour and produce new releases. Thin Lizzy have since reunited for occasional concerts.

Rolling Stone magazine describes the band as distinctly hard rock, "far apart from the braying mid-70s metal pack". AllMusic critic John Dougan has written that "As the band's creative force, Lynott was a more insightful and intelligent writer than many of his ilk, preferring slice-of-life working-class dramas of love and hate influenced by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and virtually all of the Irish literary tradition."

Pre-formation
Two of the founding members of Thin Lizzy, bass guitarist and vocalist Phil Lynott and drummer Brian Downey, met while at school in Dublin in the early 1960s. Lynott, born on 20 August 1949 in West Bromwich, England, to an Irish mother Philomena (1930–2019) and Guyanese father Cecil Parris (1925–2010), was brought up in Dublin from the age of three. Downey was born on 27 January 1951 in Dublin. Lynott joined local band the Black Eagles as vocalist in 1963, and Downey was recruited as drummer in 1965. In 1967, Lynott was asked to join Skid Row by bass guitarist Brush Shiels, who brought teenage Belfast guitarist Gary Moore into the band early in 1968. After a disappointing television appearance in June 1969, Shiels fired Lynott, although they remained on good terms and Shiels subsequently taught Lynott to play bass guitar. Lynott then formed Orphanage with Downey on drums after Downey's previous band, Sugar Shack, had split.

Guitarist Eric Bell, born in Belfast on 3 September 1947, began his career playing in local bands such as the Deltones, Shades of Blue and the Bluebeats, and the last incarnation of Them to feature Van Morrison, between September and October 1966. Bell then moved to Dublin and joined Irish showband the Dreams, but left in 1969 with a view to forming a rock band. An acquaintance of Bell's, Belfast organist Eric Wrixon, also a former member of Them, had also moved to Dublin and joined the showband circuit, but had similar plans to progress towards rock music.

Early years (1969–1972)
In December 1969, Bell and Wrixon met by chance in a pub in Dublin and found that they shared similar ideas of forming a band, and decided to visit the Countdown Club where they saw Lynott and Downey perform with Orphanage. Lynott was not playing bass guitar at this time, but Bell was particularly impressed by Downey, and introduced himself to Lynott and Downey during a break. When Bell asked if they would consider forming a band together, Downey was initially sceptical, but both men were aware of Bell's musical reputation. They agreed that night on condition that Lynott play bass guitar as well as sing, and that the band would perform some of Lynott's compositions. Bell later said, "From there on in we were a band." Wrixon was also included as organist in the as yet unnamed band, making the initial line-up a quartet. The following week, Lynott visited Bell at his flat and played him recordings of some of his own songs. Bell was impressed: "They were so good. I knew right away I could put my guitar style into them."

The band started to attract attention in the Irish music press almost immediately, as the band began rehearsals in January 1970. On 1 January, New Spotlight magazine announced that Bell and Wrixon were to be a part of a new band. By early February, the press had begun to question the delay in any public announcement of the "Bell-Lynott supergroup". The name Thin Lizzy was announced to the press on 18 February. The name came from a robot character in The Dandy called Tin Lizzie, which they adjusted to Thin Lizzy as a playful reference to the local Dublin accent, in which "thin" would be pronounced as "t'in". For some of their early gigs, the band were mistakenly promoted as "Tin Lizzy" or "Tin Lizzie". The group's first gig was at a school hall in Cloghran, near Dublin Airport, in 1970, though sources vary on the date from 16 February, 19 February, and 20 February.

In July 1970, the band released a single, "The Farmer"/"I Need You", on EMI with the B-side written by John D'ardis, who owned Trend Studios where the single was recorded. The single sold just 283 copies and is now a collectors' item. Wrixon left the band before the single's release, meaning there was a greater share of income for the three remaining members. He moved to mainland Europe before returning to Belfast, rejoining his old band, Them. Wrixon died on 13 July 2015.

By the end of the year, Thin Lizzy were signed to Decca Records by their manager, Brian Tuite, and they travelled to London in January 1971 to record their debut album, Thin Lizzy. The album sold moderately well, but did not chart in the UK despite airplay and support from influential DJs John Peel and Kid Jensen.

Around March 1971, the band permanently relocated to London, before the release of the unsuccessful "New Day" EP in August. Despite poor sales, Decca agreed to finance the band's second album Shades of a Blue Orphanage, released in March 1972. Like the previous LP, the songs were filled with Lynott's personal anecdotes and references to his life in Dublin and the people he knew there. Musically the style was Celtic, with little warning of the hard rock direction that the band were to take in the future. This album also did not chart in the UK.

In mid-1972, Thin Lizzy were asked to record an album of Deep Purple covers. Vocals and keyboards were handled by members of another band, Elmer Fudd, and a few instrumental tracks composed by the band were also included, including Bell playing the traditional "Danny Boy" in the style of Jimi Hendrix. The album was issued as being by Funky Junction, with no mention of Thin Lizzy. It was released as Funky Junction Play a Tribute to Deep Purple in January 1973.

"Whiskey in the Jar" (1972–1974)

In late 1972, the band embarked upon a high-profile tour of the UK with Slade, who were enjoying a string of hit singles at the time, and Suzi Quatro. Around the same time, Decca released Thin Lizzy's version of a traditional Irish ballad, "Whiskey in the Jar", as a single. The band was angry at the release, feeling that the song did not represent their sound or their image, but the single topped the Irish chart, and reached No. 6 in the UK in February 1973, resulting in an appearance on Top of the Pops. It also charted in many countries across Europe. However, the follow-up single, "Randolph's Tango", was a return to Lynott's more obscure work, and it did not chart outside Ireland.

The band's next album, Vagabonds of the Western World, was released in September 1973 following strong airplay in the UK, but again failed to chart. The accompanying single "The Rocker" also found little success outside Ireland, and the momentum gained from their hit single was lost.

Towards the end of 1973, Eric Bell began to feel constricted with the changing style of the group, which left less room for free-form jamming and had people wanting the band to create a follow-up hit to "Whiskey in the Jar". Matters came to a head during a gig on New Year's Eve 1973 at Queen's University Belfast, where he walked off stage halfway through the show and had to be persuaded to finish the set. The next day, he quit the group, and was immediately replaced by ex-Skid Row guitarist Gary Moore to help finish the tour. Moore stayed until April 1974; the band recorded three songs with him in that time, including the version of "Still in Love with You" that was included on the fourth album Nightlife. He left the group after being concerned about his health and struggling to compete with Lynott for control, and formed Colosseum II with Jon Hiseman.

With the departure of Moore, Lynott decided to expand the line-up with two guitarists, and recruited two new members to complete a tour of Germany in May 1974. These were ex-Atomic Rooster and Hard Stuff guitarist John Cann, and Berlin-born Andy Gee, who had played with Peter Bardens and Ellis. This lineup proved to be temporary, as Lynott and Cann did not get on personally, and Gee was under contract to another record label. The tour was ended early when a disillusioned Downey quit the band, and had to be begged to reconsider, at a time when Thin Lizzy's contract with Decca was coming to an end.

Auditions were held for new members, and Lynott and Downey eventually settled on 18 year old Glaswegian guitarist Brian Robertson, and Californian Scott Gorham. The new line-up gelled quickly, dropped most of the old songs when they played live, and secured a new record deal with Phonogram, but the resulting album Nightlife was a disappointment for the band due to its soft production and underdeveloped style. Robertson described Ron Nevison's production as "pretty naff" and Gorham said the record was "ridiculously tame". Like the previous three albums, it failed to chart, selling around 10,000 copies.

"The Boys Are Back in Town" (1975–1977)

In early 1975, Thin Lizzy toured the United States for the first time, in support of Bob Seger and Bachman–Turner Overdrive (BTO). When BTO toured Europe later in the year to support their hit single "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet", Thin Lizzy again accompanied them on what was a very high-profile tour. They then recorded the Fighting album, which became the first Thin Lizzy album to chart in the UK, reaching No. 60, although the singles still did not chart. Opening with Seger's "Rosalie", the album showed the first real evidence of the twin guitar sound that would lead the band towards their greatest successes, particularly with the dual harmonies of "Wild One" and both guitarists' soloing on "Suicide".

After a successful multi-band tour in support of Status Quo, the band recorded the album Jailbreak, which proved to be their breakthrough record. Released on 26 March 1976, it featured the worldwide hit "The Boys Are Back in Town" which reached No. 8 in the UK, and No. 12 in the US, their first charting record in that country. The album also charted well on both sides of the Atlantic, reaching No. 10 in the UK and No. 18 in the US, and the follow-up single, "Jailbreak", also performed well. The twin guitar sound had been fully developed by this time and was in evidence throughout the album, particularly on the hit single, and other tracks such as "Emerald", "Warriors" and "Cowboy Song". The album is considered to have financially secured the band, not only enabling them to survive and continue, but also be able to feel the freedom needed to be able to experiment with higher concept thought and Lynott's more lyrically challenging pieces that the group went on to pen. Thin Lizzy toured the US in support of various bands such as Aerosmith, Rush and REO Speedwagon, and they planned to tour there again in June 1976, this time with Rainbow. However, Lynott fell ill with hepatitis and the tour was cancelled, which set them back a few months.

While Lynott was ill, he wrote most of the following album, Johnny the Fox. The album was recorded in August 1976 and the sessions began to reveal tensions between Lynott and Robertson; for example, there was disagreement over the composition credits of the hit single "Don't Believe a Word". Lynott was still drawing on Celtic mythology and his own personal experiences for lyric ideas, which dominated Johnny the Fox and the other albums of Thin Lizzy's successful mid-1970s period. The tour to support the album was very successful and there were further high-profile TV appearances, such as the Rod Stewart BBC TV Special.

An important tour of the US in December 1976 had to be cancelled when Brian Robertson's hand was injured by a broken bottle during a fight at The Speakeasy Club in London, the night before the band were due to fly. Robertson maintains that, contrary to reports at the time, he was not drunk and had only gone to the venue for a meal. Lynott was angry and replaced Robertson with Gary Moore for another tour of the States in January–April 1977, this time supporting Queen. The tour was a success and Lynott asked Moore to stay on, but he returned to his previous band, Colosseum II. Robertson had not been sacked but was unsure of his position and made plans to start another band with Jimmy Bain of Rainbow. Before the American tour, Lynott had also invited Irish guitarist Jimi Slevin to "try out a few things" with Thin Lizzy, prompting speculation that the ex-Skid Row member could replace Robertson.

Thin Lizzy flew to Canada in May 1977 as a trio to record Bad Reputation, with Gorham handling all the guitar parts. A month into the sessions, at Gorham's urging, Robertson joined them, in his own words, "as a session player" and in Lynott's words, "as a guest". Robertson added lead guitar tracks to three songs as well as rhythm guitar and keyboards, and was officially reinstated in July. The album was released in September and sold well, reaching No. 4 in the UK, after a successful single, "Dancing in the Moonlight (It's Caught Me in Its Spotlight)". Also in 1977, Thin Lizzy headlined the Reading Festival, and played Dalymount Park on 21 August.

"Live and Dangerous" (1978)
In 1978, Thin Lizzy released their first live album Live and Dangerous. There is some disagreement over just how much of the album is actually recorded live – producer Tony Visconti claimed that the only parts that were not overdubbed were the drums and the audience. However Brian Robertson has disputed this, saying that he had refused Lynott's request to re-record a guitar solo, and that the only overdubs were backing vocals and some guitar parts by Gorham. He added, "It's just not true. The only reason we said that it was recorded all over was obviously for tax reasons... so everything that Visconti claims is bollocks." Gorham concurs, stating that he attempted to re-record a solo but could not recreate the live sound, adding, "I re-did one rhythm track and a few backing vocals. But that's it." The album was a huge success, reaching No. 2 in the UK, and was ranked as the best live album of all time by Classic Rock magazine in 2004.

The permanent departure of Robertson occurred some time after a gig in Ibiza on 6 July 1978, the disagreements with Lynott having reached a breaking point. (Robertson then teamed up with Jimmy Bain to front their new band, Wild Horses.)

The return of Gary Moore (1978–1979)
Lynott replaced Robertson with Gary Moore again, and around this time the band loosely joined forces with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols, and also with Chris Spedding and Jimmy Bain, to form The Greedy Bastards, who played a small number of gigs playing a varied selection of songs. In this way Lynott was able to align his band with the punk movement and avoid being tagged as a 'dinosaur' as many other 1970s rock bands had been. Other occasional members of The Greedy Bastards included Bob Geldof and Pete Briquette of the Boomtown Rats.

In August the band began another tour of the US, followed by a trip to Australia and New Zealand. Brian Downey did not accompany them, having contracted pneumonia and preferring to spend some time in Ireland. He was replaced for the tour by American drummer Mark Nauseef. On their return, Downey rejoined the band and at the beginning of 1979 they recorded Black Rose: A Rock Legend in Paris. The sessions were marked by the increasing drug habits of Lynott and Gorham, and the general presence of drugs around the band. This also showed in the subject matter on the album, in songs such as "Got to Give It Up". Celtic influences remained, however, particularly in the album closer "Róisín Dubh", a seven-minute medley of traditional Irish songs given a twin guitar rock veneer. Two singles, "Waiting for an Alibi" and "Do Anything You Want To", were successful, and the album reached No. 2 in the UK. A third, moderately successful single, "Sarah" was Lynott's ode to his new-born daughter.

However, on 4 July 1979, after playing their Day on the Green set in Oakland, Gary Moore abruptly left Thin Lizzy in the middle of another tour. Years later, Moore said he had no regrets about walking out, "but maybe it was wrong the way I did it. I could've done it differently, I suppose. But I just had to leave." He subsequently pursued his solo career, releasing several successful albums. He had collaborated with Lynott and Downey on his 1978 album Back on the Streets and the hit single "Parisienne Walkways" before leaving Thin Lizzy, and in 1985 he and Lynott teamed up again on the UK No. 5 single "Out in the Fields". Gary Moore died of a heart attack in Estepona, Spain on 6 February 2011, aged 58.

After Moore's departure, Thin Lizzy continued the tour for a few nights as a trio before Lynott brought in Midge Ure to replace him on a temporary basis. Ure had prior plans to join Ultravox, but had co-written a song, "Get Out of Here", with Lynott on Black Rose: A Rock Legend, and agreed to help Thin Lizzy complete their touring commitments. He also contributed guitar parts for The Continuing Saga of the Ageing Orphans, a compilation album of remixed and overdubbed versions of Eric Bell-era tracks. On their return to the UK, the band were to headline the Reading Festival for the second time on 25 August 1979, but had to cancel due to the disruption within the line-up.

Before a tour of Japan beginning in September, Lynott decided to bring in another guitarist, Dave Flett, who had played with Manfred Mann's Earth Band, to enable Ure to switch to playing keyboards where necessary. The tour was completed successfully, but the line-up now contained two temporary members, and Lynott was spending a lot of time on projects outside Thin Lizzy, including composing and producing material for other bands, as well as putting together his first solo album, Solo in Soho. Lynott also reactivated The Greedy Bastards, who released a one-off Christmas single, "A Merry Jingle", in December 1979 as simply The Greedies. With the group now composed of Lynott, Gorham and Downey with Sex Pistols Jones and Cook, the single reached No. 28 in the UK.

Later years and break-up (1980–1983)
While Lynott searched for a permanent guitarist, he and the other members of Thin Lizzy, past and present, worked on Solo in Soho which was released in April 1980, and the next Thin Lizzy album, Chinatown. Lynott got married on 14 February, and his wife gave birth to a second daughter in July. Dave Flett had hoped to be made a permanent member of Thin Lizzy but Lynott chose Snowy White, who had played with Pink Floyd and Peter Green. Midge Ure was still acting as a temporary keyboard player at gigs during early 1980, but was replaced by Darren Wharton in April, shortly after White joined the band. Wharton was only 18 at the time and was initially hired on a temporary basis. This new line-up completed the Chinatown album between short tours, and two singles were released from it. The first, "Chinatown", reached No. 21 in the UK, but the second, "Killer on the Loose", reached the top 10 amid much adverse publicity due to the ongoing activities of serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, known as "The Yorkshire Ripper".

Chinatown was finally released in October 1980, and reached No. 7 in the UK, but by this time Thin Lizzy albums were not even reaching the top 100 in the US. After a successful tour of Japan and Australia, the band undertook what was to be their final tour of the US in late 1980. At the beginning of 1981, Lynott began work on his second solo album, using Thin Lizzy members among a large group of backing musicians. Around the same time, the band were recording material for the next Thin Lizzy album, and as before, the sessions seemed to merge to the extent that musicians were not always sure which album they were working on. Producer for the Thin Lizzy sessions, Chris Tsangarides, stated, "The feeling of confusion was in the air in that sometimes nobody knew if they were working on a Phil solo record or a Lizzy album." Snowy White had previously felt that, as a member of Thin Lizzy, he should have been paid as a session player to appear on Lynott's solo recordings.

In April 1981, the band's first 'greatest hits' album was released, and The Adventures of Thin Lizzy reached No. 6 in the UK, although a stand-alone single, "Trouble Boys", only reached No. 53, the band's worst chart placing since 1975. According to White and Wharton, Lynott was the only person who wanted to release it, and nobody else liked the song. "Trouble Boys" had even been pencilled in as the title for the new album, but the single's chart failure resulted in the song being dropped from the album and the title changed to Renegade. One highlight for the band at this time was headlining the first-ever Slane Castle concert on 16 August, with support from Kirsty MacColl, Hazel O'Connor and U2.

Lynott's second solo album, The Philip Lynott Album, was delayed until 1982 while Renegade was completed and released in November 1981. Renegade was not successful, only reaching No. 38 in the UK and No. 157 in the US. A single, "Hollywood (Down on Your Luck)", also flopped, although it did reach No. 24 on the US Mainstream Rock chart. Only two songs from the album were written solely by Lynott, with the other members of the band contributing more to the compositions. Both Gorham and Wharton have since stated their dissatisfaction with some of the songs, such as "Angel of Death", "Fats" and "Mexican Blood". Wharton was omitted from the band photos on the back of the record sleeve, despite the fact that he was by this time a permanent member of the band. "It hurt me a great deal", he later said.

Thunder and Lightning

The beginning of 1982 was marred by both Downey and Gorham having to take breaks from the European tour to recover from personal problems. Downey was involved in a fight in a nightclub in Denmark in February, and Gorham was suffering from drug-induced exhaustion. Downey missed five concerts, and was replaced by Mark Nauseef again for three of them, and by Mike Mesbur of support band The Lookalikes for the other two. In March, Gorham collapsed and returned home; eight concerts were performed as a quartet and six others were postponed.

Later in the year, Lynott went on a solo tour and released his second solo album, which did not sell particularly well. Snowy White left the band in August 1982, having tired of the disorganised schedules and Lynott's drug problems, although by his own admission he was too restrained and quiet to fit in well with his more raucous bandmates. White went on to achieve top ten chart success in the UK with his single "Bird of Paradise" in 1983. Long-time co-manager Chris O'Donnell also left at this time, later stating, "A once-brilliant band was turning to crap before my very eyes."

Lynott wanted to find a replacement for White before starting to record the next album, which would turn out to be the band's last. By September 1982, after some unsuccessful rehearsals with Dutch guitarist Adrian Vandenberg, he had settled on John Sykes who had been a member of Tygers of Pan Tang, and he co-wrote the first single from the album, "Cold Sweat", although the rest of the album had already been written. Thunder and Lightning was released in March 1983, and was much more successful than its predecessor, reaching No. 4 in the UK. Sykes' presence had rejuvenated the band musically, the composing credits were evenly shared, and the style had grown much heavier, veering towards heavy metal.

The tour to support the album was to be a farewell tour, although Lynott was not convinced that this would be the end of the band. Sykes wanted to continue, although Gorham had had enough. The tour was successful, and some concerts were recorded to compile a live album. Partway into the tour, many of Thin Lizzy's past guitarists were invited onstage to contribute to some of the songs they had originally recorded, the only exception being Snowy White. The album was released in October 1983 as Life, which included an older performance of "Renegade" featuring White, and reached No. 29 in the UK. The tour continued while two more singles were released, the last of them, "The Sun Goes Down", only reaching No. 52 in August. Lynott also undertook another solo tour, accompanied by Downey and Sykes, under the name of The Three Musketeers.

After a difficult leg of the tour in Japan, where some members of the band had difficulty obtaining heroin, Thin Lizzy played their final UK concert before their break-up at the Reading Festival on 28 August 1983, which was eventually released in 1992 as their BBC Radio One Live in Concert album. The last concert came in Nuremberg on 4 September, at the Monsters of Rock festival, after which the band members went their separate ways.

Post-Thin Lizzy projects, Lynott's death, and tributes (1985–1996)
Before the end of 1983, Lynott formed a new band called Grand Slam, but they were never able to secure a contract with a record company and split by the beginning of 1985. Sykes and Downey initially agreed to be a part of the band, but Sykes joined Whitesnake and Downey also changed his mind. Lynott began to focus more on his solo career and enjoyed a No. 5 hit single "Out in the Fields" with Gary Moore in May 1985. The song, composed by Moore, was taken from his solo album Run for Cover featuring various contributions from Lynott. Lynott's solo efforts did not fare so well, and his last single, "Nineteen", only reached No. 76 in the UK.

Before his death, Lynott was planning a third solo album, and had spoken to Downey about a possible reformation of Thin Lizzy around March 1986, possibly with Gorham and Sykes, and had booked studio time for January of that year. "Phil asked Brian Downey and I to re-form Thin Lizzy and we both agreed," recalled guitarist Robin George, on whose album Dangerous Music Lynott had played. "We made some recordings in the studio in his back garden in the house at Kew during December [1985]. It went absolutely great… Unfortunately, the cassette of our material failed to resurface after his death. It was the only copy. It was such a shame as Phil was vibed up about the new Lizzy."

Lynott died in hospital in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 4 January 1986, aged 36, having suffered from internal abscesses, pneumonia and septicaemia, brought on by his drug dependency, which led to multiple organ failure.

On 17 May, Thin Lizzy reformed for the Self Aid concert, with a line-up of Gary Moore, Downey, Gorham, Wharton and Bob Daisley on bass. Bob Geldof and Moore handled most lead vocals, though various singers got onstage for "Whiskey in the Jar". A compilation album, Soldier of Fortune, was released in 1987, and also that year, the "Vibe for Philo" tribute concert in Lynott's memory was organised by Dublin DJ and promoter Smiley Bolger, which continues on an annual basis on the anniversary of Lynott's death.

The remaining members of Thin Lizzy did not work together until the recording of the single "Dedication" in October 1990, when a rough demo of Lynott's called "Guiding Light" was worked into a finished song to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his death. The song dated from the Grand Slam days and had been originally written with guitarist Laurence Archer. Modern recording techniques were used to replace the guitar and drum tracks with new work by Downey and Gorham. Gary Moore had agreed to participate as well, but ultimately did not do so. The song charted in the UK at No. 35 during early 1991, and No. 2 in Ireland, and featured on another greatest hits compilation album, Dedication: The Very Best of Thin Lizzy, released in February of that year, which reached No. 8 in the UK album chart. However, a follow-up reissue of "The Boys Are Back in Town" only reached No. 63 in the UK, although it peaked at No. 16 in Ireland.

Following this, numerous small reunion projects began to appear. In 1991, a line-up featuring Robertson and Downey performed with Bobby Tench on lead vocals, ex-Grand Slam member Doish Nagle on guitar and Doug Brockie on bass. They toured Ireland briefly with a series of "An Evening of Thin Lizzy" concerts. In August 1994, Downey, Bell, Robertson and Wharton held a tribute concert in Wolverhampton, together with tribute bands Limehouse Lizzy, Ain't Lizzy and Bad Habitz. Another version of Thin Lizzy was formed later that year by John Sykes (now also performing lead vocals) with Downey, Gorham and Wharton, and with bass parts played by Marco Mendoza, who had played with Sykes in Blue Murder from 1991 to 1993. The tour was advertised as a tribute to Phil Lynott. This line-up also played at the Vibe for Philo gig on 4 January 1996, with a number of other notable musicians including Eric Bell, Midge Ure, Brush Shiels, Henry Rollins, and Joe Elliott and Rick Savage from Def Leppard. Boxer Steve Collins also performed, reciting the lyrics to "Warriors". Brian Robertson was absent due to injury.

In 1994, a collection of Thin Lizzy tracks from the BBC Radio 1 Peel Sessions was released, and yet another compilation album was brought out in 1996, called Wild One: The Very Best Of Thin Lizzy. This was successful, although it did not feature the title track, "Wild One".

On 20 August 1996, Rude Awakening bassist Robert Ryder held "A Celebration of the Life of Philip Lynott" at the Palace in Hollywood, California, at the request of Lynott's mother, Philomena, to commemorate both Phil Lynott's birthday and the tenth year of his death. Philomena Lynott, her partner Dennis Keeley, and Smiley Bolger (Ireland's Vibe for Philo promoter) were flown to Los Angeles by Ryder to make a personal appearance at the show. It featured concert performances by Rude Awakening, Billy Sheehan, Rudy Sarzo, John Norum, Carmine Appice, Phantom Blue, Soma, producer Roy Z and his band the Tribe of Gypsies, Mark Ferrari, Oslo, Bang Tango, Stash, Iron Cross and Irish singer-songwriter Mark Dignam.

1996–2010: John Sykes era

In 1996 John Sykes decided to reactivate Thin Lizzy, presenting the band as a tribute to Phil Lynott's life and work. He decided to take on the role of lead vocals himself in the absence of Lynott, and persuaded Scott Gorham, Brian Downey and Darren Wharton to return to the fold. To complete the line-up, Marco Mendoza continued in Lynott's role as bass player. They received criticism for using the Thin Lizzy name without Lynott being present, but the band only played hits from Thin Lizzy's back catalogue, and did not compose any new material.

In 1997, Tommy Aldridge filled in on drums when Brian Downey was unable to, and became a full member when Downey left shortly thereafter. This line-up remained stable through to 2000, when the group recorded a live album, One Night Only. The band went on to tour the US playing clubs in early 2001, but Wharton had already left the band by the time of the tour. From 2000 to 2003, Mendoza toured with Ted Nugent, and with Whitesnake in 2004. Sykes released two solo albums during 2002–03, while Gorham worked with his band 21 Guns. Thin Lizzy performed sporadically during this period, recruiting some musicians for single tours, such as bass guitarist Guy Pratt for the Global Chaos Tour of 2003.

Wharton later stated that Thin Lizzy would have been better suited to playing fewer concerts, in bigger venues. He also felt that after the experience of fronting his own band Dare, it was not satisfying enough to play keyboards behind Gorham and Sykes. Sykes said that all the previous Thin Lizzy members were welcome to play with Thin Lizzy at any time.

In 2004, Thin Lizzy worked together again, with Sykes and Gorham bringing in ex-Angel bassist Randy Gregg, and drummer Michael Lee, who had played with Robert Plant and The Cult among others. They toured in North America in both the winter and then the summer as special guests of Deep Purple. This line-up proved temporary however, with Mendoza returning in 2005, and Aldridge returning in 2007. There were no plans for a new album though Thin Lizzy continued to tour. At the London Hammersmith Apollo concert of 13 December 2007, the line-up was Sykes, Gorham, Aldridge and Francesco DiCosmo on bass.

Sykes stated that Thin Lizzy was now "more of a tribute thing" and that it would be wrong to record new material under that name. He added that while the existing band members might record together, it would not be as Thin Lizzy. In 2007, Gorham said that Lynott still received the biggest cheer of the night at concerts, and that the current Thin Lizzy was not active simply for money. "We'd stop if we thought we were just going through the motions... I think that has a lot to do with the songs – if they were inferior, then maybe we would have got tired of it all. But they're not and we haven't," he said. In January 2011, Gorham maintained that Lynott would have approved of the continuation of the band: "He worked long hours and travelled thousands of miles to get it to a certain level. There's no way he would have said 'No-one should play those songs again.'"

Thin Lizzy, along with support band The Answer, were to support AC/DC at stadium shows in England, Ireland and Scotland at the end of June 2009, but these appearances were cancelled after drummer Aldridge broke his collarbone in an accident. On 30 June, the band's website confirmed that Sykes had left Thin Lizzy and all shows for the rest of 2009 were cancelled or postponed. Gorham stated that he would announce Thin Lizzy's future plans shortly. In a statement, he said, "It's been a very tough time of late for myself and the band, firstly with drummer Tommy Aldridge's injury and now the subsequent decision for John and the rest of the group to go their separate ways. I can only apologise to everyone who has supported us over the years, but we will be back up to full speed soon."

2010–2021: Ricky Warwick era and Black Star Riders

In September 2009, Gorham began to assemble a new version of Thin Lizzy, and in May 2010 a new line-up was announced. Joining Gorham was original drummer Brian Downey, long-standing keyboardist Darren Wharton, Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell, and singer Ricky Warwick from The Almighty, while Marco Mendoza returned to fill the bass guitar role. Ex-Lizzy guitarist Brian Robertson was asked if he wanted to participate but had previous commitments to his own solo career. In addition to a full UK and European tour beginning in January 2011, the band initially announced a concert for 4 January at the O2 Arena in Dublin, which was in conflict with the 2011 "Vibe for Philo". The tour itself started on 6 January at the Music Hall Aberdeen in the UK, with the band finishing the tour in The Olympia, Dublin on 17 February 2011, having cancelled the O2 show.

In April 2011 the band announced that Vivian Campbell would be leaving Thin Lizzy amicably to rejoin Def Leppard after one final gig on 28 May. He was replaced by Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus. On 28 August, it was announced that Damon Johnson of Alice Cooper's band would be replacing Fortus for Thin Lizzy's tour of the US with Judas Priest. Fortus returned to tour with Guns N' Roses for the rest of the year, and Johnson has since replaced Fortus permanently.

In March 2011, Gorham told Billboard.com that Thin Lizzy may record a new album in the future, saying, "That's the No. 1 question we're getting from people – are we gonna record some new material? The fans seem to trust this line-up, and I don't blame them. We've kind of jumped this emotional hurdle together. Ricky's writing some fucking killer lyrics, and with the kind of talent that's in Thin Lizzy now I think we can pull off a really cool set of tunes. At least it's something that we can think about now, where before it wasn't on the table." On 25 June 2012, Thin Lizzy were in the studio recording new material, although it was not clear how many songs would be recorded or released.

On 10 October 2012, Thin Lizzy announced that the new material would not be released under the Thin Lizzy name, but would be released under a different name in due course. According to Gorham, this was "out of respect to Phil Lynott and the legacy he created", though he confirmed that the new material would feature the classic Thin Lizzy sound. Ricky Warwick announced that the group would cease regular touring as Thin Lizzy at the end of 2012, but that this did not necessarily mean they would never play as Thin Lizzy again.

On 20 December 2012, Gorham revealed that the new material would be recorded under the name of Black Star Riders, and that Downey and Wharton had chosen not to participate in the new band project. Downey had decided to take a break from touring, and Wharton would be working on his own band Dare, and a film project. In March 2013, the band toured Australia under the Thin Lizzy name, with Downey and Wharton, as the opening act on a triple bill with Mötley Crüe and Kiss. Gorham stressed that Thin Lizzy would still perform together occasionally: "We'll still go out as Thin Lizzy. There are still certain big festivals that we will do. Thin Lizzy is still on the horizon, we will still go out and do that but in the meantime we have Black Star Riders that we are going to concentrate on also."

On 19 January 2016, the band revealed a "half dozen or so" dates in mid-2016 and early 2017 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the release of Jailbreak and the 30th anniversary of Lynott's death. Two festival dates were initially confirmed: the Ramblin' Man Fair in Maidstone, Kent on 23 July 2016 – at which Midge Ure once again joined them on stage – and the Rock Legends Cruise in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on 19–23 January 2017. The lineup for these shows was to be Gorham, Warwick, Johnson and Wharton with Motörhead drummer Mikkey Dee initially confirmed as standing in for Downey. Further dates were announced soon afterwards, at the Monsters of Rock shows in Germany on 17 and 18 June 2016, in Barcelona on 17 July, and the Skogsröjet Festival in Sweden on 6 August. On 19 April it was announced that Dee would not be participating after all, and that Judas Priest drummer Scott Travis would be taking Downey's place for all shows except Sweden on 6 August, when Europe drummer Ian Haugland played. Also, Aerosmith bass guitarist Tom Hamilton was confirmed as Thin Lizzy's bassist for these shows.

After the shows were completed, Gorham confirmed that extended Thin Lizzy tours were probably a thing of the past, but that the band would continue to perform in one-off events. He stated, "To kill it off stone dead I think would be the wrong thing." Four further shows were announced for 2019 in the UK, Spain and Belgium. Troy Sanders of Mastodon was recruited to replace Hamilton on bass guitar for these shows.

In September 2021, Gorham left Black Star Riders as the band were planning a "very heavy" touring schedule to promote their upcoming fifth album. Warwick stated, "He will be looking to put Thin Lizzy back out on the road from 2022 onwards with a busy schedule." Gorham made a statement complimenting the band and thanking the fans, and confirmed Warwick's position in Thin Lizzy, adding, "Regarding Thin Lizzy concerts in 2022 – this is currently in the planning stages and I will make sure to let you know of our progress regarding line-ups and dates." In late 2022, Gorham temporarily rejoined Black Star Riders' touring lineup and took part in a tenth anniversary tour of the UK in February 2023. Shortly before the tour began, Warwick spoke of Gorham's intentions for Thin Lizzy: "I know he's working on some stuff for later in the year, so I'm sure when it's all put in place I'll get a call."

Other Thin Lizzy releases and tributes
A boxed set of four CDs of Thin Lizzy material was released in December 2001 as Vagabonds, Kings, Warriors, Angels. It contained all of the band's major hits, and included some rare songs, such as the first single "The Farmer", and single B-sides. In 2004 and 2006, two further greatest hits compilations were released, with 2004's double CD Greatest Hits climbing to No. 3 in the UK album chart.

On 19 August 2005, Gary Moore staged a concert at the Point Theatre, Dublin, promoted as "The Boy Is Back in Town". The concert was staged to mark the unveiling of a bronze statue of Lynott on Dublin's Harry Street in the city centre. The performance also featured Brian Downey, Eric Bell, Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham, and included many classic Lizzy songs, such as "Whiskey in the Jar", "Still in Love With You", "Cowboy Song", "Emerald" and "The Boys Are Back in Town". A DVD of the concert was released as One Night in Dublin: A Tribute to Phil Lynott.

On 8 September 2008, a 15-track album UK Tour '75 was released featuring the band performing at Derby College on 21 November 1975. The album includes a 20-page booklet of previously-unseen photos, liner notes written by Brian Downey and extra material of the band jamming during their soundcheck.

In March 2009, VH1 Classic Records issued the band-authorised Still Dangerous: Live At The Tower Theatre Philadelphia, 1977, a live CD recorded on the Bad Reputation tour. It was produced by Gorham and Glyn Johns, and Johns also mixed the record. It reached no. 98 in the UK chart. Gorham has suggested there will be further archival releases in the future.

On 24 January 2011, Universal Music issued remastered and expanded editions of Jailbreak, Johnny the Fox and Live and Dangerous. Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox are double CD editions with the second disc containing outtakes, BBC session recordings and newly remixed versions of select album tracks. Live and Dangerous was a three-disc set, consisting of two CDs and a DVD. The former contains the original album plus two bonus tracks, recorded on the same tour and originally released on the Killers Live EP in 1981, while the DVD features a 1978 live performance from the Rainbow Theatre, recorded for television but never broadcast. Previous CD editions of Live and Dangerous were single discs.

Universal followed this with remasters of Bad Reputation, Black Rose and Chinatown, and in early 2012, Nightlife and Fighting. Finally, Renegade and Thunder and Lightning were remastered and re-released in 2013.

Style and legacy
Lynott became known for his aggressive, rhythmic approach to bass playing, using an attacking style with a pick to strum eighth notes or triplets. As a lyricist, Lynott drew from his personal experiences growing up in Dublin and from Celtic literature. His songs featured a variety of themes and characters, from working-class stories to tales from Celtic culture. Lynott's style of singing also set him apart from other hard rock musicians of the day, utilizing a seemingly casual sense of off-the-beat phrasing "closer to folk or jazz."

From 1974, Thin Lizzy switched from using one lead guitarist to two. This twin lead guitar style was later refined and popularised in the mid-1970s by bands like Judas Priest, and later by the emerging new wave of British heavy metal groups such as Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. Iron Maiden covered the song "Massacre" from Thin Lizzy's Johnny the Fox album, and released it on their 1988 single "Can I Play with Madness". A cover of "Cowboy Song" appears on Sound of White Noise (1993) by Anthrax as a bonus track on the album's Japanese and Australian releases, and as a B-side on some singles of "Only" and "Black Lodge".

Thin Lizzy are also a major inspiration for modern heavy metal bands such as Metallica, Alice in Chains, Mastodon and Testament. Metallica have covered "Whiskey in the Jar" multiple times in honour of their former bassist Cliff Burton, who died in a bus accident in 1986. Thin Lizzy were one of Burton's favourite bands, and Lynott had a major influence on him as a bass player. In 2004, Robert Smith, lead singer of The Cure, commented that he had seen Thin Lizzy "probably 10 times over two years", and that "the actual sound of them live was so empowering, it was better than drinking." Alternative rock group The Hold Steady have also cited Thin Lizzy as an influence. Thin Lizzy are referred to in Belle and Sebastian's 2003 song, "I'm a Cuckoo".

Guns N' Roses cited the band as an influence. Lead singer Axl Rose was a fan of the band, and the tattoo that inspired the skull cross cover of Appetite for Destruction was a reference to Thin Lizzy.

Members
Current members
 * Scott Gorham – guitars, backing vocals (1974–1983, 1996–)
 * Darren Wharton – keyboards, co-lead and backing vocals (1981–1983, 1996–2000, 2010–)
 * Ricky Warwick – lead vocals, occasional guitars (2010–)
 * Damon Johnson – guitars, backing vocals (2011–)
 * Scott Travis – drums, percussion (2016–)
 * Troy Sanders – bass guitar, backing vocals (2019–)

Discography

 * Thin Lizzy (1971)
 * Shades of a Blue Orphanage (1972)
 * Vagabonds of the Western World (1973)
 * Nightlife (1974)
 * Fighting (1975)
 * Jailbreak (1976)
 * Johnny the Fox (1976)
 * Bad Reputation (1977)
 * Black Rose: A Rock Legend (1979)
 * Chinatown (1980)
 * Renegade (1981)
 * Thunder and Lightning (1983)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Thin Lizzy


text:
Chi (letter)

Chi (uppercase Χ, lowercase χ; χῖ) is the twenty-second letter of the Greek alphabet.

Ancient Greek
Its value in Ancient Greek was an aspirated velar stop (in the Western Greek alphabet: /ks/).

Koine Greek
In Koine Greek and later dialects it became a fricative (/) along with Θ and Φ.

Modern Greek
In Modern Greek, it has two distinct pronunciations: In front of high or front vowels ( or ) it is pronounced as a voiceless palatal fricative, as in German ich or like some pronunciations of "h" in English words like hew and human. In front of low or back vowels (, or ) and consonants, it is pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative, as in German ach or Spanish j. This distinction corresponds to the ich-Laut and ach-Laut of German.

Transliteration
Chi is romanized as $\langlech\rangle$ in most systematic transliteration conventions, but sometimes $\langlekh\rangle$ is used. In addition, in Modern Greek, it is often also romanized as $\langleh\rangle$ or $\langlex\rangle$ in informal practice.

Greek numeral
In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 600.

Xi
In ancient times, some local forms of the Greek alphabet used the chi instead of xi to represent the /ks/ sound. This was borrowed into the early Latin language, which led to the use of the letter X for the same sound in Latin, and many modern languages that use the Latin alphabet.

Cyrillic
Chi was also included in the Cyrillic script as the letter Х, with the phonetic value /x/ or /h/.

International Phonetic Alphabet
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨ꭓ⟩ represents a voiceless uvular fricative.

Chiasmus
Chi is the basis for the name literary chiastic structure and the name of chiasmus.

Symbolism
In Plato's Timaeus, it is explained that the two bands that form the soul of the world cross each other like the letter Χ. Plato's analogy, along with several other examples of chi as a symbol occur in Thomas Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658).

Chi or X is often used to abbreviate the name Christ, as in the holiday Christmas (Xmas). When fused within a single typeface with the Greek letter rho, it is called the Chi Rho and used to represent the person of Jesus Christ.

Mathematical chi
These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.

Math and science
In statistics, the term chi-squared or \chi^2 has various uses, including the chi-squared distribution, the chi-squared test, and chi-squared target models.

In algebraic topology, Chi is used to represent the Euler characteristic of a surface.

In neuroanatomy, crossings of peripheral nerves (such as the optic chiasm) are named for the letter Chi because of its Χ-shape.

In chemistry, the mole fraction and electronegativity may be denoted by the lowercase \chi.

In physics, \chi denotes electric or magnetic susceptibility.

In rhetoric, both chiastic structure (a literary device) and the figure of speech Chiasmus derive from their names from the shape of the letter Chi.

In mechanical engineering, chi is used as a symbol for the reduction factor of relevant buckling loads in the EN 1993, a European Standard for the design of steel structures.

In graph theory, a lowercase chi is used to represent a graph's chromatic number.

In analytic number theory, chi is used for the Dirichlet character.

title: Chi (letter)


text:
Phi

Phi (uppercase Φ, lowercase φ or ϕ; ϕεῖ pheî ; Modern Greek: φι fi ) is the twenty-first letter of the Greek alphabet.

In Archaic and Classical Greek (c. 9th to 4th century BC), it represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, which was the origin of its usual romanization as $\langleph\rangle$. During the later part of Classical Antiquity, in Koine Greek (c. 4th century BC to 4th century AD), its pronunciation shifted to a voiceless bilabial fricative, and by the Byzantine Greek period (c. 4th century AD to 15th century AD) it developed its modern pronunciation as a voiceless labiodental fricative. The romanization of the Modern Greek phoneme is therefore usually $\langlef\rangle$.

It may be that phi originated as the letter qoppa (Ϙ, ϙ), and initially represented the sound before shifting to Classical Greek. In traditional Greek numerals, phi has a value of 500 (φʹ) or 500,000 (͵φ). The Cyrillic letter Ef (Ф, ф) descends from phi.

Like other Greek letters, lowercase phi (encoded as the Unicode character ) is used as a mathematical or scientific symbol. Some uses require the old-fashioned 'closed' glyph, which is separately encoded as the Unicode character.

In lowercase
The lowercase letter φ (or its variant, ϕ or ɸ) is often used to represent the following:
 * The letter phi is commonly used in physics to represent wave functions in quantum mechanics, such as in the Schrödinger equation and bra–ket notation: $$\langle\phi|\psi\rangle$$.
 * The golden ratio $$\tfrac{1 + \sqrt{5}}{2} \approx$$ $1.618$... in mathematics, art, and architecture. (Its reciprocal, 1/φ, is $$\tfrac{ \sqrt{5} - 1}{2}$$ and is equal to φ - 1.)
 * Euler's totient function φ(n) in number theory; also called Euler's phi function.
 * The cyclotomic polynomial functions Φn(x) of algebra.
 * The number of electrical phases in a power system in electrical engineering, for example 1ϕ for single phase, 3ϕ for three phase.
 * In algebra, group or ring homomorphisms
 * In probability theory, $\varphi(x)=(2\pi)^{-\frac{1}{2}}e^{-\frac{x^2}{2}}$  is the probability density function of the standard normal distribution.
 * In probability theory, φX(t) = E[eitX] is the characteristic function of a random variable X.
 * An angle, typically the second angle mentioned, after θ (theta). It can denote:
 * The argument of a complex number.
 * The phase of a wave in signal processing.
 * In spherical coordinates, mathematicians usually refer to ϕ as the polar angle (from the z-axis). The convention in physics is to use ϕ as the azimuthal angle (from the x-axis).
 * One of the dihedral angles in the backbones of proteins in a Ramachandran plot
 * Internal or effective angle of friction.
 * In cartography and navigation, ɸ denotes latitude; likewise, in geodesy it denotes geodetic latitude.
 * In aircraft flight mechanics as the symbol for bank angle (sometimes represented with the letter theta, which is also used for pitch angle).
 * The work function of a surface, in solid-state physics.
 * A shorthand representation for an aromatic functional group in organic chemistry.
 * The fugacity coefficient in thermodynamics.
 * The ratio of free energy destabilizations of protein mutants in phi value analysis.
 * In combustion engineering, fuel–air equivalence ratio. The ratio between the actual fuel-air ratio to the stoichiometric fuel-air ratio.
 * In granulometry, sedimentology, and soil engineering, φ is a logarithmic unit of sediment grain size, defined such that a change of 1 φ in grain size corresponds to a factor of 2 in grain diameter.
 * A sentence in first-order logic.
 * The Veblen function in set theory.
 * Porosity in geology and hydrology.
 * Strength (or resistance) reduction factor in structural engineering, used to account for statistical variabilities in materials and construction methods.
 * The symbol for a voiceless bilabial fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet (using the form ɸ).
 * In philosophy, φ is often used as shorthand for a generic act. (Also in uppercase.)
 * In perceptual psychology, the phi phenomenon is the apparent motion caused by the successive viewing of stationary objects, such as the frames of a motion picture.
 * In linguistics, φ-features denote features such as case, number and gender in which adjectives and pronouns agree with nouns.
 * In lexical-functional grammar, the function that maps elements from the c-structure to the f-structure.
 * In ecology, site survival probability, or the probability that a species will continue to occupy a site if it was there the previous year.
 * The logo of La France Insoumise, a leftist French political party.
 * An abbreviation for the word bacteriophage
 * Mϕ is used as an abbreviation for the word macrophage

In uppercase
The uppercase Φ is used as a symbol for:
 * The golden ratio conjugate −0.618... in mathematics.
 * The cumulative distribution function (cdf) of standard normal distribution in statistics.
 * The magnetic flux and electric flux in physics, with subscripts distinguishing the two.
 * Quantum yield, the number of times a specific event occurs per photon absorbed by a system.
 * In philosophy, Φ is often used as shorthand for a generic act. (Also in lowercase.)
 * A common symbol for the parametrization of a surface in vector calculus.
 * In Lacanian algebra, Φ stands for the imaginary phallus and also represents phallic signification; −Φ stands in for castration.
 * The diameter symbol in engineering, ⌀, is often erroneously referred to as "phi", and the diameter symbol is sometimes erroneously typeset as Φ. This symbol is used to indicate the diameter of a circular section; for example, "⌀14" means the diameter of the circle is 14 units.
 * A clock signal in electronics is often called Phi or uses the symbol.
 * In emulsion and suspension science, Φ often denotes the volume fraction of the dispersed phase.
 * Archaically used in chemistry for phenyl group.

Computing
In Unicode, there are multiple forms of the phi letter:

In ordinary Greek text, the character U+03C6 φ is used exclusively, though this character has considerable glyphic variation, sometimes represented with a glyph more like the representative glyph shown for U+03C6 (φ, the "loopy" or "open" form), and less often with a glyph more like the representative glyph shown for U+03D5 (ϕ, the "stroked" or "closed" form).

Because Unicode represents a character in an abstract way, the choice between glyphs is purely a matter of font design. While some Greek typefaces, most notably those in the Porson family (used widely in editions of classical Greek texts), have a "stroked" glyph in this position, most other typefaces have "loopy" glyphs. This also applies to the "Didot" (or "apla") typefaces employed in most Greek book printing, as well as the "Neohellenic" typeface often used for ancient texts.

It is necessary to have the stroked glyph available for some mathematical uses, and U+03D5 GREEK PHI SYMBOL is designed for this function. Prior to Unicode version 3.0 (1998), the glyph assignments in the Unicode code charts were the reverse, and thus older fonts may still show a loopy form $$\varphi$$ at U+03D5.

For use as a phonetic symbol in IPA, Unicode has a separate code point U+0278, LATIN SMALL LETTER PHI, because only the stroked glyph is considered correct in this use. It typically appears in a form adapted to a Latin typographic environment, with a more upright shape than normal Greek letters and with serifs at the top and bottom.

In HTML/XHTML, the upper- and lowercase phi character entity references are  (Φ) and   (φ), respectively.

In LaTeX, the math symbols are  ($$\Phi\,\!$$),   ($$\phi\,\!$$), and   ($$\varphi\,\!$$).

The Unicode standard also includes the following variants of phi and phi-like characters:

title: Phi


text:
Upsilon

Upsilon (, ;  uppercase Υ, lowercase υ;  ýpsilon ) or ypsilon  is the twentieth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, Υʹ has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw.

Etymology
The name of the letter was originally just "υ" (y; also called hy, hence "hyoid", meaning "shaped like the letter υ"), but the name changed to "υ ψιλόν" u psilon 'plain υ' to distinguish it from οι, which had come to have the same pronunciation.

Pronunciation
In early Attic Greek (6th century BCE), it was pronounced (a close back rounded vowel like the English "long o͞o"). In Classical Greek, it was pronounced (a close front rounded vowel), at least until 1030. In Modern Greek, it is pronounced ; in the digraphs αυ and ευ, as or ; and in the digraph ου as. In ancient Greek, it occurred in both long and short versions, but Modern Greek does not have a length distinction.

As an initial letter in Classical Greek, it always carried the rough breathing (equivalent to h) as reflected in the many Greek-derived English words, such as those that begin with hyper- and hypo-. This rough breathing was derived from an older pronunciation that used a sibilant instead; this sibilant was not lost in Latin, giving rise to such cognates as super- (for hyper-) and sub- (for hypo-).

Upsilon participated as the second element in falling diphthongs, which have subsequently developed in various ways.

Correspondence with Latin Y

The usage of Y in Latin dates back to the first century BC. It was used to transcribe loanwords from Greek, so it was not a native sound of Latin and was usually pronounced or. The latter pronunciation was the most common in the Classical period and was used mostly by uneducated people. The Roman Emperor Claudius proposed introducing a new letter into the Latin alphabet to transcribe the so-called sonus medius (a short vowel before labial consonants), but in inscriptions, the new letter was sometimes used for Greek upsilon instead.

Four letters of the Latin alphabet arose from it: and U, Y and, much later, U|V and W. In the Cyrillic script, the letters U (У, у) and izhitsa (Ѵ, ѵ) arose from it.

In some languages, including German and Portuguese, the name upsilon (Ypsilon in German, ípsilon in Portuguese) is used to refer to the Latin letter Y as well as the Greek letter. In some other languages, the (Latin) Y is referred to as a "Greek I" (i griega in Spanish, i grec in French), also noting its Greek origin.

Usage

 * In particle physics the capital Greek letter ϒ denotes an Upsilon particle. Note that the symbol should always look like $$\,\Upsilon$$ in order to avoid confusion with a Latin Y denoting the hypercharge. This may be done either with a font such as FreeSerif or with the dedicated Unicode character U+03D2 ϒ.
 * Automobile manufacturer Lancia has a model called the Ypsilon. See Lancia Ypsilon.
 * In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the symbol ⟨ʋ⟩ is used to represent a labiodental approximant.
 * In astrophysics and physical cosmology, ϒ refers to the mass-to-light ratio.
 * In statistics, it is sometimes used instead of v or nu to indicate degrees of freedom

Similar appearance

 * A similar symbol Aries.svg (Unicode ♈ U+2648) is used for the astrological sign of Aries.

Symbolism
Upsilon is known as Pythagoras' letter, or the Samian letter, because Pythagoras used it as an emblem of the path of virtue or vice. As the Roman writer Persius wrote in Satire III: "and the letter which spreads out into Pythagorean branches has pointed out to you the steep path which rises on the right."

Lactantius, an early Christian author (ca. 240 – ca. 320), refers to this: "For they say that the course of human life resembles the letter Y, because every one of men, when he has reached the threshold of early youth, and has arrived at the place "where the way divides itself into two parts," is in doubt, and hesitates, and does not know to which side he should rather turn himself."

Character encodings

 * Greek Upsilon

 * Coptic Ua

 * Latin Upsilon

 * Mathematical Upsilon

These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.

title: Upsilon