Reporters: To RSVP, click here. You will receive a Zoom call-in number and be able to ask questions during the news conference. Otherwise, you can listen to the news conference live on the Repairers of the Breach website: www.breachrepairers.org/livestream

Black pastors representing communities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia are calling on the Trump administration to demand data on COVID-19 deaths by race and to ensure that people of all colors have access to treatment.

“We demand federal action at every level of government in response to the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on African Americans, people of color, poor and marginalized persons, as a result of legacy systems of racism and criminalization of poverty,” the pastors said.

The 10 pastors will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, April 15, via Zoom. The news conference is sponsored by Repairers of the Breach based in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference based in Chicago.

“Blacks often live in communities with less access to high-quality, affordable healthcare. This limits testing and treatment which results in more severe cases and deaths,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach.

“This is why expanding health care is so critical, especially in states that have refused to expand Medicaid. — states in the South like Mississippi, where the death rate is reported to be 70% among blacks.”

In Chicago, for example, black Americans account for 70% of all coronavirus cases in the city, where the population is 30% black, and more than half of the state’s deaths. In New Orleans, African Americans account for 70% of the deaths in a city where they make up just 32% of the population.

“We are ministering to people whose loved ones are being held in morgues or on freezer trucks,” said Rev. Dr. Frederick D. Haynes, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church and co-chair Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. “Our parishioners are having to bury their loved ones without proper regard and reverence or, in some cases, are being forced to cremate them.”

Pastors participating in the news conference include:

  • Rev. Dr. William Barber, minister of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina
  • Rev. Traci Blackmon, Executive Minister of Justice and Witness Ministries of The United Church of Christ and Senior Pastor of Christ The King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Missouri
  • Rev. Dr. Leslie Callahan, first female pastor of the 119-year-old St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Philadelphia. 

Pastors from San Francisco, Dallas, New York, San Francisco, Memphis and Atlanta are participating. A full list of participants can be found at https://www.breachrepairers.org/press-releases/black-pastors-participating-in-news-conference-about-disproportionate-covid-19-impact-on-african-americans.

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Contacts:
Martha Waggoner | mwaggoner@breachrepairers.org | 919-295-0802
Michael Peery| Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference| 312-217-2260

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Repairers of the Breach is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization that seeks to build a moral agenda rooted in a framework that uplifts our deepest moral and constitutional values to redeem the heart and soul of our country. It was founded in 2015 by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II as a way to organize, train, and work with a diverse school of prophets from every U.S. state and the District of Columbia. 

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The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference represents a cross-section of progressive African American faith leaders and their congregations in the U.S. Its mission is to nurture, sustain and mobilize the African American faith community in collaboration with civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders to address critical needs of human rights and social justice within local, national, and global communities.