Summit of Black Leaders Including Farrakhan Planned

NEW YORK —  The NAACP said Saturday it will host a national summit of black leaders that will, for the first time, include controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

“We have every right to convene African American leadership,” NAACP Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. said. “There’s a deep hunger in our community.”

Chavis and national board Chairman William Gibson announced the decision during the group’s annual board meeting. Both men said they will proceed with the summit despite concern among Jewish groups over Farrakhan’s involvement.

Neither would say whether they were under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith to distance themselves from Farrakhan because of his past anti-Semitic statements.

“Civil rights is a business where you have to deal with people pressuring you every day,” Gibson said.

In a telephone interview from New Orleans, ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said his group did not ask the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People to ostracize Farrakhan from black leadership as a condition of their own discussions, held last week.

But Foxman added that he hopes other black activists will address Farrakhan’s “racism and anti-Semitism” during the summit.

If it comes off, the meeting would mark the first time in more than a decade that black activists have united around a common purpose. The last time was 1979, when several black leaders met in New York over Andrew Young’s removal as ambassador to the United Nations.

No date was announced for the summit. Five cities are under consideration as possible sites, Chavis said. He did not name them.

He said the meeting will be a follow-up to a unity pledge made by Chavis, Farrakhan and other prominent African Americans at a September forum in Washington.

This effort comes on the heels of offensive statements by Farrakhan aide Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and Farrakhan’s refusal to denounce Muhammad for the sake of moving into the mainstream.