WEDNESDAY was a lousy day for the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Not that he didn’t deserve it.
First, Rev. Jackson was forced to admit that he had not long ago fathered a child out of wedlock. Then, in a far less publicized development, Jackson’s racial activism aimed at the sports world was again exposed as such fact-free knee-jerking that he remains more disposed toward defamation than reformation.
Wednesday in a federal courtroom in Michigan, William “Tank” Black, jet-setting sports agent, pleaded guilty to money laundering on behalf of drug dealers. He now faces 6½ years in prison, plus a $2.2 million fine.
Black is an African-American whose highly dubious and now criminal activities on behalf of prominent NFL and NBA clients inspired the NFL Players Association to censure Black and threaten him with expulsion as an accredited representative.
Desperate, Black screamed, “Racism!” And he enlisted Rev. Jackson, a board member within Black Americans of Achievement, one of Tank Black’s corrupt business ventures, to bolster the charge.
Black’s lawyer, Leonard Mungo, also chose a racial hustle over the facts. “It appears to me,” he said several months ago in Black’s defense, “that we are seeing the work of the angry white man syndrome.”
But the charges of racism, not that Jackson bothered to check – he is, after all, the prominent racial activist who charged the NBA with “stripping Dennis Rodman of his dignity” – were colossally absurd. The agent who first flagged Black to the NFLPA, Ray Anderson, is an African-American. The head of the NFLPA, Gene Upshaw, is an African-American.
And all of Black’s clients who couldn’t find out or figure out what happened to millions of dollars they’d entrusted to Black – players including NBA star Vince Carter, NFLers Ike Hilliard, Fred Taylor, Rae Carruth, Jevon Kearse, Terry Allen, Jacquez Green, Duce Staley and Germane Crowell – are all African-Americans.
Black still stands accused in Florida of ripping off about $5 million from his African-American sports clients and illegally paying Florida undergrads for their future consideration. In Louisiana, he’s accused of bribing LSU athletic department employes with steering star players his way.
And Wednesday, Tank Black, who Jesse Jackson had reflexively suggested was a victim of the sports world’s overt racism, pleaded guilty to laundering money on behalf of a Detroit drug ring.
Phil Mushnick appears regularly in New York Post Sports Week.
