WASHINGTON, DC - Eleven new ethnic, nationality and minority organizations and five scholars of immigration and migration history have joined the Coalition for the National Museum of the American People since last spring.

"The museum, about the making of the American People from the first humans in the Western Hemisphere through today, will be one of the greatest story-telling museums in the world," said Sam Eskenazi, director of the coalition. "It will tell about every group's history of coming to this land and nation and their migrations within it."

There are now 167 ethnic organizations and 71 scholars in the museum's coalition supporting this effort. The museum, which will be scholarly-based, is expected to attract visitors from throughout the nation to learn about their group’s stories. It will draw people from throughout the world to learn how Americans came from every corner of our globe to create this nation.

The coalition is seeking a Presidential Commission to study establishment of the museum in Washington, DC.

The new organizations in the coalition include:

Albanian American Women's Organization
Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement
Hispanic Elected Local Officials
Liberian-American Community Organization of Southern California
Native Hawaiian Legal Defense and Education Fund
Native Hawaiian Organization Association
Polish American Historical Association
Polish Institute of Art and Sciences of America
Rosebud Sioux Tribe
Swedish Colonial Society
United States Hispanic Leadership Institute

The new scholars in the coalition are:

Sylviane Anna Diouf, Director of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery, New York Public Library Schomburg Center (Ph.D. - Paris University).

Kathleen Flake, Professor, Richard Lyman Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies, University of Virginia (Ph.D. - University of Chicago).

Lori Flores, Assistant Professor of History, Stony Brook University, SUNY (Ph.D. - Stanford University).

Marilynn Johnson, Professor of History, Boston College (Ph.D. - New York University).

Linda Trinh Vo, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and Director, Vietnamese American Oral History Project, University of California, Irvine (Ph.D. - University of California, San Diego).