Sutton, Percy Ellis

November 24, 1920

The politician and media businessman Percy Ellis Sutton was born in San Antonio, Texas. His parents, Samuel J. Sutton and Lillian Smith, were educators and philanthropists. Percy Sutton graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School in San Antonio and subsequently attended Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical College, Tuskegee Institute, and Hampton Institute. When he attempted to join the Army Air Force in Texas during World War II, he was rejected for reasons having to do with his racial background. He then successfully enlisted in New York City. As an intelligence officer with the black Ninety-ninth Fighter Squadron serving in the Italian and Mediterranean theaters, Sutton earned combat stars and rose to the rank of captain.

After the war, Sutton completed his education under the G.I. Bill, graduating from Brooklyn Law School in 1950. During the Korean War, Sutton reentered the Air Force as an intelligence officer and trial judge advocate. When the war ended, in 1953, Sutton opened a law partnership in Harlem with his brother Oliver and George Covington and worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) on several civil rights cases throughout the 1950s. In addition to its work with the NAACP, the firm served other clients, such as Malcolm X and the Baptist Ministers Conference of Greater New York.

From 1961 to 1962 Sutton served as branch president of the New York City NAACP, participating in demonstrations and Freedom Rides in the South. During the winter of 1963–1964, Sutton and Charles Rangel cofounded the John F. Kennedy Democratic Club, later known as the Martin Luther King Jr. Club. Sutton was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1964. In 1966, after Manhattan borough president Constance Baker Motley accepted an appointment as a federal judge, the New York City Council chose Sutton to finish Motley's term. Sutton was reelected in his own right later that year and was subsequently reelected in 1969 and 1973. As borough president, Sutton focused on decentralizing the municipal bureaucracy, cutting city spending, and addressing the broader social causes of urban crime and poverty.

In 1970 Sutton endorsed Rangel's campaign to replace Adam Clayton Powell Jr. as congressman from Harlem. Rangel's victory marked the ascendancy of a new black political coalition in Harlem, a coalition that included not only Percy Sutton but also future New York City mayor David Dinkins. In 1971, while still Manhattan borough president, Sutton set out to purchase several black-owned media enterprises, beginning with the New York Amsterdam News (which he sold in 1975) and radio station WLIB-AM. In 1977 Sutton became owner and board chair of the Inner-City Broadcasting Company, a nationwide media corporation, and through the corporation he subsequently purchased radio stations in New York, California, and Michigan. He also formed Percy Sutton International, Inc., the investments of which encouraged agriculture, manufacturing, and trade in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Brazil.

In September 1977 Sutton was an unsuccessful candidate for the nomination for mayor. He retired from public office after finishing his second full term as borough president in December 1977, but he continued to advise Rangel, Dinkins, and other black politicians on electoral strategy and urban policy. In 1981 he acquired Harlem's Apollo Theater as a base for the production of cable television programs. By the end of the decade Sutton's estimated net worth was $170 million. In 1990 he was succeeded as head of Inner-City Broadcasting by his son, Pierre Montea ("PePe"), who raised the company's net worth to $28 million by 1992.

Sutton has been a guest lecturer at many universities and corporations and has held leadership positions in the Association for a Better New York, the National Urban League, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and several other civil rights organizations. A founding member and director of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), Sutton was also a close adviser to Rev. Jesse Jackson. He was awarded the NAACP's Spingarn Medal in 1987 at the Apollo Theater, which under Sutton's management had been restored as a major Harlem cultural center and landmark.

In 2002 Sutton cofounded Synematics, of which he is the chief executive officer. In 2004 he was named to the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.

See also Apollo Theater; Dinkins, David; Harlem, New York; Jackson, Jesse; Malcolm X; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); National Urban League; Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity); Rangel, Charles Bernard; Spingarn Medal

Bibliography

Green, Charles. The Struggle for Black Empowerment in New York City: Beyond the Politics of Pigmentation. New York: Praeger, 1989.

"Hall of Fame." Broadcasting & Cable 134, no. 15 (2004): 62.

Lewinson, Edwin R. Black Politics in New York City. New York: Twayne, 1974.

durahn taylor (1996)
Updated by publisher 2005