BALTIMORE--Two hundred protesters from as far away
as Texas came to this city on February 11th to show their
support for Black, female and locked out workers of Crown
Petroleum Company. The protesters gathered in front of
the Blaustein building in downtown Baltimore, Crown's
corporate headquarters.

     The occasion marked the third year of a bitter
employee lockout at Crown's Pasadena, Texas, refinery and
several discrimination lawsuits against the company.
Blacks and Latinos comprise 35 percent of the 252 locked
out employees. Union officials said that all of the 100
or more replacement workers are white males. Crown's
Pasadena plant is located in a largely Black and Latino
community.

     Among those attending the rally was Ms. Bari-Ellen
Roberts, who gained national acclaim as the woman who
started the racial bias lawsuit against oil giant,
Texaco, leading to a $176 million settlement for the
company's 1400 Black employees. "Racism is widespread in
corporate America and the oil industry seems to be the
worst. Crown is the worst of the worst," she said.

     Her book, Roberts vs. Texaco: A True Story of Race
and Corporate America, documents her experiences and
explains the circumstances that led to the largest
discrimination settlement in U.S. history.

     Other speakers included: Mr. John Grant, a highly
decorated Vietnam veteran and former White House guard
suing Crown; Rev. Douglas Miles, chair of the Baltimore
Interdenominational Ministries Alliance; Mr. Alvin
Freeman, a 36 year Crown employee; Ms. Ellen Barfield of
Baltimore's National Organization of Women and
representatives of the AFL-CIO.

     A coalition of civil rights, religious,
environmental and labor groups have joined to affect
change at Crown and a national boycott of the company has
helped plummet its stock to all-time lows. Some of the
organizations displeased with Crown are the NAACP,
National Baptist Convention, Baltimore City Council,
Jewish Labor Committee, Sierra Club, Black Trade
Unionists, Interfaith Center for Worker Justice and the
Environmental Defense Fund.

     According to local press reports, the Blaustein
family, which owns Crown, has split over the company's
management by CEO Henry Rosenberg and the resulting
business losses and bad publicity.

     In a telephone interview, Rev. Al Sharpton pointed
to the situation at Crown Oil as an example of "demanding
accountability from companies we do business with." He
added, "We underestimate our power. The margin of profit
for most corporations is six to nine percent, so if we
don't spend our money with companies or their government
contracts are stopped; they can't survive."

     Rev. Sharpton, executive director of the National
Action Network, has invited opponents of Crown to
participate in his group's April convention. 

     Commenting on the sparse coverage of the Crown
affair by the white media, Rev. Sharpton said "we don't
need white media sanction- we have the Black press."