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ANN: News Release: OAH Leadership to Meet with Adam's Mark Hotel Owners (fwd)



of interest to SAA members, I believe

Richard J. Cox
Associate Professor
Department of Library and Information Sciences
School of Information Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Voice:  412-624-3245
FAX:    412-648-7001
e-mail: rjc@lis.pitt.edu
homepage: http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~rjc

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 12:24:13 -0800
From: Andrew C. Rieser <acrieser@students.wisc.edu>
To: H-IDEAS@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: ANN: News Release: OAH Leadership to Meet with Adam's Mark Hotel Owners

For Immediate Release
Thu Feb 3, 2000 - 2:45p.m. EST

OAH Leadership to Meet with Adam's Mark Hotel Owners over Charges of
Racism

Disturbing allegations against the Adam's Mark Hotel have made it difficult
for the OAH to hold its Annual Meeting as originally planned. A 1999
lawsuit brought by five African Americans and the NAACP against the hotel
charging racial discrimination at the company's Daytona Beach facility led
to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of the entire 21-hotel chain.
The Adam's Mark's refusal to sign a Justice Department consent decree,
the subsequent federal lawsuit, and the ensuing furor among outraged
historians and civil rights activists have forced the OAH Executive Board
to consider canceling the annual meeting.

Guided by the principle of non-discriminatory treatment of all people, the
OAH Executive Board urges the Adam's Mark corporation to sign the
consent decree.  An OAH delegation will travel to St. Louis on 8 February
to meet with Adam's Mark CEO Fred S. Kummer Jr. and Senior Vice
President Fred S. Kummer III at the corporation headquarters. Should the
company refuse to cooperate with the Justice Department, the OAH
Executive Board will pursue one of the following options recommended and
discussed by historians around the country.

Starting last month a number of OAH members and others questioned
whether the organization should do any business with the Adam's Mark
and requested the OAH break the contract for the St. Louis annual
meeting. By email and fax, they have argued that to meet in the Adam's
Mark is to compromise with racists. In order to take a bold stand against
injustice, they have said that the organization must cancel the contract
even though it would suffer serious financial consequences.

Although the OAH would challenge penalties in court, if necessary,
breaking the hotel contract could cost the OAH almost $425,000. This
money would go directly to the Adam's Mark Hotel which would not suffer
any financial losses. In fact, if the OAH canceled the conference, the
Adam's Mark would stand to profit. It would take $425,000 from OAH
members without paying a penny for the labor, facilities, and food required
for a conference, and then it could resell the very rooms just vacated. OAH
would have additional losses of $200,000 in exhibitor fees and registration
if no meeting were rescheduled in 2000. The total ($625,000) would be
close to half of the OAH's annual budget. Some argue that this strategy
allows Adam's Mark to profit from its racist deeds at the organization's
expense.

The refusal of the Adam's Mark so far to agree on implementing a
monitored policy of nondiscrimination threatens the OAH with damages
even more serious than the potential financial loss. It threatens to
cripple both the convention itself and future activities of the OAH on
behalf of the historical profession. The members of our organization hold
many different points of view. Some of them have argued to let the justice
system run its course and to avoid politicizing the organization and its
annual meeting.  Still others believe the financial blow would paralyze
and perhaps kill the OAH. They point out that when the American
Historical Association cancelled its meeting in 1995 and moved it to
Chicago to protest a new anti-gay city ordinance in Cincinnati, the
association suffered significant financial and political consequences,
from which it is still recovering.

Many argue that the organization cast its lot with the hotel company five
years ago when it signed the contract and now must make the best of a
bad situation.  Unknown to the OAH staff in 1995, this hotel had a history
of racial discrimination familiar to many in the African American community
in St. Louis. Although the OAH announced the Adam's Mark location of the
2000 meeting in early 1996 and regularly thereafter, it was not until the
Justice Department filed a lawsuit in December that the implications of the
suit's allegations for the St. Louis meeting became evident to the OAH and
its members.

The Executive Board has considered these concerns and consulted
historians throughout the profession, including African Americans, St.
Louisians, and other distinguished scholars. The board also has been in
contact with regional and national leaders of the NAACP, the Department of
Justice, and civil rights attorneys. The board's primary goals will be
arousing vigorous opposition to racial discrimination and securing
agreement by the Adam's Mark to a consent decree which assures the
adoption of antidiscrimination polices with federal oversight.

In addition to the options of canceling the meeting or holding it as
scheduled, the Executive Board is considering a third option-to hold the
meeting and use it as an opportunity to confront the enduring theme of
racism, to explore it as teachers and historians, and to draw national
attention to its persistence today. In such a case, the executive board
would urge members to attend, to support the professional goals of the
organization, and to condemn racial discrimination in any form.

A number of OAH members have suggested ways to implement this
strategy of making the convention itself a part of the struggle against
racism. OAH President David Montgomery has announced that he is
changing his presidential address to explain the OAH's critique of the
hotel chain and to place its discrimination in the historic context of the
long and bloody battle against racial oppression in the United States.
New plenary sessions on the Adam's Mark case and on the politicization
of scholarly associations will be added to the program. The five plenary
sessions, the Presidential Address and Awards, and the Business Meeting
will be moved to new locations. The Business Meeting will be devoted
to a resolution against having future conferences at Adam's Mark hotels
anywhere, and an NAACP representative has been invited to speak
about the latest developments in their court case.

Other members have urged convention participants not to patronize the
hotel's bars and restaurants. They plan to attend and to help the
organization minimally meet its contractual obligations with the Adam's
Mark but want to "send a message to the management." Others plan to
organize demonstrations outside the hotel and across the street on the
steps of the Old Courthouse where the infamous Dred Scott case had its
origins.

In any case, the OAH president will appoint a special committee to act
immediately on any convention participants' charges of discrimination by
the hotel. OAH leaders will hold a joint press conference at the St. Louis
meeting with representatives from the National Council on Public History,
Missouri Conference on History, American Historical Association, Western
History Association, and other organizations. In addition, the OAH will run
advertisements and encourage articles in the St. Louis and national press
about its plans for the annual meeting. And as it does at every annual
meeting, the OAH will invite area school teachers to participate-this year
they will be part of a teachable moment in the long history of American
racism.

The OAH has a rich tradition of promoting discussions about and
understanding of racial and other problems in American history. Indeed,
from C. Vann Woodward, who led the OAH thirty years ago, to Mary
Frances Berry and John Hope Franklin and immediate past presidents
William H. Chafe and George M. Fredrickson, half of our organization's
presidents have made crucial contributions to understanding the role of
race in American culture. Woodward, for example, who passed away only a
few weeks ago, showed us that Southern racism in the 1950s was a
cultural and legal construction only a few decades old. Far from being
ingrained and immutable, Woodward revealed that racism could be
challenged. The OAH exists to promote the professional needs,
development, and interaction of historians and to improve public awareness
of our country's history. That mission cannot be fulfilled in a setting
where racial discrimination threatens its members or the communities in
which they conduct their teaching and research.

We urge members to discuss this matter and to contact the OAH
leadership-committee chairs, Executive Board members, and officers-to
express their concerns and opinions. Your immediate feedback
(feedback@oah.org) will assist us as we prepare for our meeting with the
Adam's Mark owners on 8 February.

Contact: Lee W. Formwalt
OAH Executive Director
(812) 855-7311
http://www.oah.org/

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