KING'S SPEECH
Who is Shaun King?
Check out what happened to Shaun's Twitter/X
SHAUN King is an American writer and activist.
He was once ranked in the top 25 Most Influential People in the World on the Internet in 2018 by TIME.
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Who is Shaun King?
Shaun King, 44, was born in Kentucky where he was raised and attended high school.
King's upbringing was difficult as he was unsure who his real father was.
Jeffery Wayne King, a white man, is Shaun's father as it appears on his birth certificate.
However, Shaun in 2015 claimed that his mother told him his biological father is a light-skinned black man.
Namio, King's mother, raised Shuan and his brother as a single mum.
Growing up, Shaun was the victim of a lot of racism and hate crimes in Kentucky.
He would get attacked by other youths and recounted the time they tried to run him over with a pickup truck.
After reporting the assault to the teachers, the children would be protected rather than punished, he claimed.
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The bullying continued throughout his time in Kentucky.
One incident saw him getting get beat up by "self-proclaimed" rednecks which caused him to miss out on two years of school due to multiple spinal surgeries, he claims.
After graduating from high school, Shaun worked temporarily as a teacher before giving that up to become a pastor.
Shaun admits that he was inspired to become a pastor by his best friend's dad, who visited Shaun in the hospital while he recovered from injuries.
In 2008, he founded a church in Atlanta called "Courageous Church" which he later resigned from in 2012, citing personal stress and disillusionment.
Shaun would then turn his attention to journalism and focus his stories on social justice issues and his experience as a biracial person.
In 2015, he started Justice Together, an organisation for identifying police brutality and lobbying local politicians for change.
However, just one year later he disbanded it much to the surprise of many of the group's members.
Three years after he created Justice Together, Shaun co-founded Real Justice PAC, a political action committee aimed at helping prosecutors who support criminal justice reform at the county and city levels.
Who is Shaun King's wife?
Rai, 40 and Shaun King have been married for 13 years after tying the knot in 2001.
Rai is the co-founder and media face of Real Justice PAC.
Not much is known about Rai's background but according to her posts, she completed her studies in medical science.
The pair have five children together, one son and four daughters.
The Kings adopted two of their children and have also previously fostered children, nieces and nephews living with them.
Rai came into the media spotlight after her daughter, Kendi King was admitted to hospital after a car accident left her with injuries to her body and brain.
Shaun and Rai posted on their social media, asking their followers to pray for their daughter's recovery.
Rai currently runs a charity account for children who cannot get a proper education or whose studies are left out due to some reason.
What has Shaun King written about?
Shaun wrote extensively on the Black Lives Matter movement which gained notoriety after the events that followed the shooting of Michael Brown.
In 2015 he joined the New York Daily News as a senior justice writer where he'd write about police brutality, race relations and social justice.
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In June 2020 Shaun controversially tweeted that statues and murals depicting a "white Jesus" should be removed.
The tweet has since been deleted, but Shaun's posts quickly received condemnation from those on Twitter, including several prominent conservative figures.
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