Crowd Size Controversy
Because of the name of the event, the number of attendees was a primary measure of its success and estimating the crowd size, always a contentious issue, reached new heights in bitterness. March organizers estimated the crowd size at between 1.5 to 2 million people, but were incensed when the United States Park Police officially estimated the crowd size at 400,000. Farrakhan threatened to sue the National Park Service because of the low estimate from the Park Police.
Three days after the march, Dr. Farouk El-Baz, director of the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University released a controversial estimate of 870,000 people with a margin of error of 25 percent, meaning that the crowd could have been as small as 655,000 or as large as 1.1 million. They later revised that figure to 837,000 ±20% (669,600 to 1,004,400)..
The Park Service never retracted its estimate, and other academics have supported its lower figure.
After the Million Man March, the Park Police ceased making official crowd size estimates. Roger G. Kennedy, the Director of the National Park Service, said that his agency planned to study the possibility of no longer counting crowds, noting that most organizations that sponsor large events complain that Park Service estimates are too low. When it prepared the 1997 appropriations bill for the United States Department of the Interior, the Committee on Appropriations of the United States House of Representatives stated in a June 1996 report that accompanied the bill that the Committee had not provided any funding for crowd counting activities associated with gatherings held on federal property in Washington, D.C. The report further stated that if event organizers wish to have crowd estimates, they should hire a private sector firm to conduct the count.
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