THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 20, 1995 TAG: 9510200005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, was angered by the National Park Service's estimate of the crowd at the Million Man March on the National Mall last Monday.
The agency estimated 400,000 African-American males. That's far fewer than Minister Farrakhan claims. He accuses the Park Service of bigotry. He says he will sue Park Service officials for slighting the hundreds of thousands more marchers.
That Minister Farrakhan would dislike the official estimate was predictable from the moment the Park Service disclosed it. He had appealed for a million African-American males to gather on the mall to dedicate themselves to rebuilding black families and black neighborhoods and expanding black economic opportunities. He had announced that the million-man objective had been exceeded. Then the Park Service rained on his boast.
Park Service estimates are public information, but they are meant for the agency's use. Enabling masses to assemble in orderly, safe and sanitary conditions is a Park Service job. The agency needs solid crowd estimates to do that job well.
Its numbers are products of tried-and-true methods for sizing up crowds. Agency personnel photograph the crowds from helicopters. They place grids over the pictures and count bodies within the squares. They know from years of experience and careful calculations how many people can be crammed into well-defined acreage. They check and recheck their figures.
When reporters ask how many showed up for this or that event, the Park Service shares its numbers. Events' organizers are frequently pained. Pro-life groups have never drawn as many demonstrators to the mall as their sponsors claim. The same goes for pro-choice demonstrators. In 1989, for example, when a Virginian-Pilot headline proclaimed, ``300,000 rally for abortion rights,'' some women who attended the march complained to the newspaper that 600,000 had turned out. One complainant said: ``This seems like an attempt to suppress the news.''
She was wrong. Minister Farrakhan is wrong, too, to attribute the Park Service estimate to bigotry. Truth is at best a sometime thing in the mouth of the Nation of Islam's leader. But like the little boy who cried ``Wolf!'' when no wolf was around, the minister is not to be credited when he discerns racism where there is only clear-eyed professionalism. by CNB