Pat Dollard

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NEW YORK – The Rev. Al Sharpton on Saturday threatened to sue radio host Rush Limbaugh for writing in a column that the civil rights leader played a role in two New York race riots.

In a column published by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday about his derailed bid to become part-owner of the St. Louis Rams, he accuses Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson of making comments that helped get him booted from a group that was trying to buy the NFL team.

Limbaugh derided Sharpton as having played “a leading role in the 1991 Crown Heights riot” and the “1995 Freddie’s Fashion Mart riot.”

Those comments prompted a quick retort from Sharpton, who called both allegations false.

Sharpton was involved in the rioting in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section in August 1991, during which hundreds of blacks were involved in attacks on the neighborhood’s Jewish residents. Anti-Semitic riots in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section erupted after 7-year old Gavin Cato, a black child, was accidentally killed by an out-of-control car driven by a Hasidic Jew. Within three hours, a black mob had hunted down and killed an innocent rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum. Sharpton fanned the flames of racial hatred by publicly announcing that it was not merely a car accident that had killed Gavin Cato, but rather “the social accident of apartheid.” He organized angry demonstrations and challenged local Jews — who he derisively called “diamond merchants” — to “pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house” to settle the score. Finally he claimed, without proof, that the Jewish driver had run over the Cato children while in a drunken stupor. Stirred in part by such rhetoric, hundreds of Crown Heights blacks took violently to the streets for three days and nights of rioting. Sharpton reacted to chaos by stating, “We must not reprimand our children for outrage, when it is the outrage that was put in them by an oppressive system.”

Sharpton delivered a eulogy at the funeral of the youth whose death in a traffic accident triggered the violence. In his eulogy at the funeral, Sharpton made comments about Jews as “diamond dealers” and made the racist statement “it’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights.” In addition, a banner displayed at the funeral read “Hitler did not do the job”.

On Dec. 8, 1995, when a lone, black gunman burst into Freddie’s Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned business in Harlem, started shooting and set the building on fire. Seven people died.

Sharpton’s organization had, like other black groups, been involved in picketing the business over its plans to expand into space occupied by a black-owned business, but he said he couldn’t be blamed for the madman’s rampage.

“Unless Mr. Limbaugh apologizes and clarifies his statements, attorneys for Rev. Sharpton will move forward with a lawsuit,” said a written statement released Saturday by Sharpton’s spokeswoman. “He has the right to criticize Rev. Sharpton, but he does not have the right to accuse him of criminal activity, and riots and murders are criminal.”

A spokesman for Limbaugh, Tony Knight, of Sitrick and Company, did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The AP contributed to this report.