On Saturday (August 17) in Washington, D.C., there will be a march calling for reparations for African Americans. The following commentators are available for interviews:

JOE FEAGIN
Graduate research professor at the University of Florida and author of numerous books on racism in the United States, Feagin said today: “Reparations for the enslavement and later blatant segregation of African Americans are long overdue. During this 350-year period of extreme racial oppression, African Americans saw their labor stolen, lost several trillions of dollars in income and wealth as a result, and also saw their actual lives severely shortened, while most white Americans (including poor immigrants) benefitted greatly in one way or another. For example, some 240 million acres of federal lands were given away under the Homestead Act from the 1860s to the 1930s almost entirely to white homesteading families, whose descendants today number in the several tens of millions of white Americans….”
More Information

MARY HOOVER
Chair of the education commission of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America and professor of education at Howard University, Hoover is currently working on a book about reparations and education. She said today: “My family was one of the few which got their ‘Forty Acres and a Mule’ — land in Florida which my ancestors homesteaded. But the federal government took the land in 1941 to build a military plane facility. Now it’s an airport worth over $10 million. While white families were adequately compensated for their land, ours was not. Slavery and racism continue to affect the resources and education people have.”
More Information

SAM JORDAN
A representative of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and former director of Amnesty International USA’s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, Jordan said today: “Reparations are a key element in the continued struggle to transform the U.S. into a nation governed by the principles of human rights.”
More Information

VERNON BELLECOURT
Bellecourt is a director for international affairs for the American Indian Movement and one of the drafters of the manifesto “The Trail Of Broken Treaties: Restitution, Reparations, Restoration of Lands for a Reconstruction of an Indian Future In America.” He said today: “American Indians have been victims of the American holocaust. Most recently, billions of dollars have ‘disappeared’ from Individual Indian Money Accounts held in trust by the U.S. Treasury. While we have been having our land, water, oil and timber stolen, the nation was built up largely by slave labor. We should be joining together to demand justice.”
More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167