Sharpton said that back in the old days, “[he] could have never imagined meeting with senior-level officials and members of the president’s cabinet, let alone that we would have a black president,” Sharpton said. “It’s like unreal, and then you get to the end of the year and MSNBC offers this deal — it’s a situation that some of the older civil rights leaders never had.”

“America has grown and I’ve grown,” he said. “After a while, you take so many hits. And people after a while say, ‘You know what? He wouldn’t stay there if he didn’t really believe in what he was doing. I’ve done 90 days in jail [for protesting on Vieques Island]. I’ve been stabbed. That didn’t even happen to many people in the ’50s or ’60s.”…

“We’re fighting the Tea Party and those energized by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh,” Sharpton said. “The Edmund Pettus Bridge of today is Fox TV. We have got to continue to fight those on the anti-civil rights side.”