The Region - News from July 22, 1987

Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, whose anti-Semitic remarks have prompted widespread condemnation, has reserved a room at the Los Angeles Convention Center in the name of his beauty care sales organization, a Jewish group said. Farrakhan, who created a furor with his anti-Semitic comments during the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984, is scheduled to speak to the group on Aug. 8, said Mordechai Levy, head of the Jewish Defense Organization of New York. Patricia Gunness, national sales manager for the Convention Center, said she was unaware that Farrakhan had booked the room, which was reserved by a group that identified itself as “Respect for Life.” That is the name of Farrakhan’s latest sales tour through several cities, said Keith Hopps, an official with POWER, a movement headed by Farrakhan that seeks black economic independence.