The most prominent pastor in Harlem, Butts is the leader of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and a major political player in the city.

Butts grew up in the Lillian Wald projects on the Lower East Side and attended Flushing High School, where he was voted president of his senior class. He went on to Morehouse College in Atlanta and the Union Theological Seminary in New York, before becoming an assistant pastor at 200-year-old Abyssinian Church in the late 1970s at age 22. In 1989, Butts became the church's head pastor. He later founded the Abyssinian Development Corporation, a non-profit that has brought more than $300 million in retail development and low-cost housing to Harlem, including the Harlem Center, a shopping/hotel complex on 125th Street. Additionally, since 1999 Dr. Butts has served as the President of the State University of New York at Old Westbury. [Image via Getty]