Freddy's Fashion Mart attack

In 1995 a black Pentecostal Church, the United House of Prayer, which owned a retail property on 125th Street, asked Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant who operated Freddie's Fashion Mart, to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store called The Record Shack. African-American activist Al Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction of The Record Shack.[3][4][5] Sharpton incited the protesters to violence: "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business."[6]

On December 8, 1995, Roland J. Smith Jr., one of the protesters, entered Harari's store with a gun and flammable liquid, shot several customers and set the store on fire. The gunman fatally shot himself, and seven store employees died of smoke inhalation.[7][8] Fire Department officials discovered that the store's sprinkler had been shut down, in violation of the local fire code.[9]

Sharpton subsequently stated that the perpetrator was an open critic of himself and his nonviolent tactics. In 2002, Sharpton expressed regret for making the racial remark "white interloper" but denied responsibility for inflaming or provoking the violence.[10][11]