Pastor, Al Sharpton’s younger brother indicted for distributing cocaine
Alabama Pastor Kenneth Sharpton-Glasgow, the troubled younger half-brother of civil rights activist Al Sharpton, pleaded not guilty in federal court Wednesday to distributing cocaine with an unnamed suspect.
An indictment alleges that Glasgow, 56, who runs Kenny Sharpton-Glasgow Ministries International, distributed drugs over a period of time, WDHN reports. It did not specify how long the distribution continued. A hearing for the case against Glasgow is scheduled for March 2022.
Glasgow, from Dothan, has a checkered past with law enforcement, including a capital murder charge in 2018 that was eventually dropped.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Jamie Townes, a passenger in his car, shot a woman who had apparently stolen Townes’ vehicle, WAFF reported. Townes was charged with murder, and Glasgow was also charged under Alabama’s complicity law because he was driving when the shooting occurred.
Glasgow is the son of Sharpton’s father, Al Sharpton Sr., and Sharpton’s older half-sister Tina Glasgow, ProPublica reported. Tina Glasgow is one of two children Sharpton’s mother Ada had during her first marriage in Alabama.
Tina Glasgow was 16 when she moved in with Sharpton and his parents in the early 1960s in Queens, New York. Sharpton’s father and his half-sister began a sexual relationship. When it was discovered, the two moved out of the home. Glasgow was born in May 1965.
The relationship was a scandal for Sharpton’s family at the time. Glasgow’s mother would eventually move back to Dothan with him when he was 12. It was there that his troubles with the law began.
While in Dothan, Glasgow, who described himself as sensitive when he was a child, said an acquaintance of his mother sent him to purchase weed. The seller turned out to be a cop, and Glasgow was arrested.
“I was born messed up. My fingers messed up. It’s meant for me to be messed up,” he told the publication.
After high school, Glasgow got married and had children. But he also began using drugs and went in and out of jail.
In a letter to his brother published in The Village Voice in 2001, Glasgow revealed how his addiction to crack cocaine over the years had left him delusional and opined over the disparate lives they had lived.
“I became immune to cocaine,” he wrote. “It got to a point where I didn’t get high anymore. I started going to my mother’s just to [stare] at [her], my daughter, and my granddaughter, and cry. I didn’t tell them [that] other crackheads didn’t want to get high with me anymore.
“When I hit [got high], Alfred, I would start preaching! Yes, preaching and prophesying. I would visualize scripture in my mind and see vivid pictures of people’s lives. When I would tell them [what I saw], they would get uncomfortable. Some would cry. All who I got high with agreed that God was calling me and I should quit,” he continued. “Since I wouldn’t quit, they just wouldn’t get high with me. No matter how much I paid them, they didn’t want to pray and get high with me.”
