COLUMBIA, S.C. - About 80 people marched to the Statehouse on Saturday to rally for reparations for slave descendants and to kick off a national campaign to drum up support for the movement across the South.

A national group called Millions for Reparations plans to march through several Southern states this summer, ending in Tennessee this fall, said spokeswoman Amadi Amaju.

The group has held annual rallies at other cities in the nation, drawing hundreds in Washington, D.C., in 2002. A much smaller crowd gathered at the South Carolina Statehouse, but organizers say they expect to gain momentum as they move across the South.

"We know that going through the South will be a test of wills," Amaju said. He said the group is trying to do grass-roots work in churches and through other groups to get people familiar with the reparations movement.

Black Americans worked without pay to help build the country for hundreds of years and still suffer today because a system that enslaved them, said Ernest Louis, a Columbia minister who heads the South Carolina Statewide Maafa Reparations Committee.

The residual effects of subsequent segregation policies can be seen in modern-day statistics showing that blacks have lower average salaries than whites and do not have equal access to health care or an adequate education, Louis said.

"We were freed without any compensation, just thrown out," Louis said. "When we needed food and a secure job, what could we do?"

The march kickoff coincided with the Statewide Maafa Reparations Committee's annual conference on reparations.