Bentonville, AR - Wal-Mart Executive Resigns Amid Racist Remarks

Bentonville, AR - Civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. as Chairman at to improve its public image, resigned from that post after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had "ripped off" urban communities for years, "selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables."

In an interview Young said Wal-Mart "should" displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods. "You see those are the people who have been overcharging us," Young was quoted as saying of the small stores, "and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs."

Young, a former Atlanta mayor and U.S. ambassador to the U.N., apologized for the remarks and retracted them in an interview. Within an hour of the first interview, he resigned as chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart, a group created and financed by the company to trumpet its accomplishments. He had been in the post for six months.