Former presidential hopeful the Reverend Al Sharpton has been booked to speak at the Bermuda Industrial Union's Labour Day banquet.

Rev. Sharpton, who was preaching when he was four-years-old and was ordained as a minister when he was ten, will lead a service at Mount Zion AME church on September 5 ? two days after the speech at the Fairmont Southampton Princess.

The civil rights activist worked with Rev. Jesse Jackson in New York and was singer James Brown's tour manager from 1973 to 1980.

According to the CNN website Sharpton led protests on numerous issues, including the 1985 Bernhard Goetz subway shootings of four black teenagers, the 1986 killing of a black man and the beating of another in Howard Beach, New York, and the 1989 murder of 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins by a white mob in Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighbourhood. Sharpton made national headlines in 1987 after he became an advocate for Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old, black New Yorker who claimed six white police officers abducted and raped her.

A grand jury found the story was a hoax and acquitted them. Sharpton had to pay $65,000 for defaming an assistant district attorney he accused of being involved in the alleged attack.

The New Yorker founded his signature organisation, the National Action Network in 1991 which raises money for inner city youth and fights drug abuse.

Rev Sharpton Jr. had campaigned to be the Democrat's 2004 presidential campaign on a platform of racial equality, education and health care rights but lost out to Sen. John Kerry.

Tickets for the Fairmont Southampton Princess banquet are $75.

On Labour Day, which is Monday September 6, there will be a fun run starting at 9 a.m. around Hamilton finishing at the BIU headquarters.

The annual Labour day march, with participants from all Bermuda's unions, will begin at 11 a.m. and head to Bernard's Park where Premier Alex Scott and Labour Minister Randy Horton are due to speak.