Cuomo; and U.S. Representative Ed Koch; Koch won the nomination and the general election. In his race for mayor, Sutton surprised his liberal political base when he turned temporarily to the right. He assailed the rising crime rate, as he termed the situation "a city turned sick with the fear of crime". He attacked criminals for "cheating, stealing, and driving away our families and our jobs." His candidacy was fatally injured by racial backlash that followed the looting and arson during the New York City blackout of 1977, directly precipitating his retrenchment from politics:"It was an especially cruel fate for ... Sutton, a master builder of color-blind alliances, who had long been tapped most likely to become New York's first black mayor. (New York magazine titled a May 1974 Sutton profile 'Guess Who's Coming to Gracie Mansion?'") Private sector In 1971, Sutton cofounded the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation which purchased New York City's WLIB-AM, the city's first African-American-owned radio station. Sutton served in the New York City Police Department Auxiliary Police during the late 1970s. Sutton produced It's Showtime at the Apollo, a syndicated, music television show first broadcast on September 12, 1987. Awards and honors In 1987, Sutton was awarded the Spingarn Medal, an award presented annually by the NAACP for outstanding achievement by an African American. In 1992 he received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. See also Dogfights (TV series) Executive Order 9981 Freeman Field Mutiny List of Tuskegee Airmen Military history of African Americans The Tuskegee Airmen (movie) Tuskegee Airmen Gang of Four (Harlem) David Paterson J. Raymond Jones Further reading John C. Walker,The Harlem Fox: J. Raymond Jones at Tammany 1920:1970, New York: State University New York Press, 1989. David N. Dinkins, A Mayor's Life: Governing New York's Gorgeous Mosaic, PublicAffairs Books, 2013 Rangel, Charles B.; Wynter, Leon (2007)And I Haven't Had a Bad Day Since: From the Streets of Harlem to the Halls of Congress. New York: St. Martin's Press. Paterson, David Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity. New York, New York, 2020 References The African American Registry External links Boyd, Herb. "'Mr. Chairman,' Percy Ellis Sutton, passes at 89," New York Amsterdam News, Sunday, December 27, 2009. One of Texas Finest Synematics, Inc Percy Sutton's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project 1920 births 2009 deaths Politicians from