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



I am confused. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that OAH had
decided to go ahead and hold their meeting at Adam's Mark. Are they
reconsidering?

 Steve Fisher
 University of Denver

On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, richard cox wrote:

> 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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>

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Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>