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President Tom Hickerson on the Adam's Mark Settlement



        It is with a strong sense of relief and also a sense of
gratitude that I report that the Adam's Mark hotel chain has agreed
to settlements of racial discrimination lawsuits by the Justice
Department, the state of Florida, and a group of black guests
represented by the NAACP.  These settlements have been detailed by
Associated Press
http://www.archivists.org/news/index.html#adams_mark_settlement  and
others. The Council and Officers of SAA are pleased that the hotel
chain has agreed to apologize and to compensate victims of previous
discriminatory practice and in the future to investigate any
complaints by guests, to design nondiscrimination training for all
hotel employees, to test hotel compliance annually, and to design a
marketing plan to attract black guests to the chain.

        We want to express our appreciation to the General Manager of
the Denver Adam's Mark, who contrary to management of the chain,
expressed an understanding of the seriousness of these charges, the
legitimacy of SAA's concerns, and the difficulties which their
behavior posed for the Society and its members.

        Principally, however, I want to express our respect and
appreciation to the many SAA  members who have supported the
development of a common strategy for SAA in addressing this difficult
challenge.  We greatly appreciate the efforts of members of the
Archives and Archivists of Color Roundtable in planning a plenary
session on diversity issues, and I also want to add a note of thanks
for the stalwart efforts of the members of the Denver Host Committee
who have had to conduct their work under difficult and ambiguous
circumstances.

        In conclusion, I want to assure everyone that the settlement
of this particular conflict in no way reduces Council's commitment to
make every effort to insure that the good of the Society and the
welfare of its members are not placed in jeopardy in this manner
again.  We have already obtained legal advice on language to include
in future hotel contracts which not only makes clear to the hotel our
formal commitment to non-discrimination, but also provides recourse
to SAA should there be substantive questions about a hotel's
performance in this regard.  Nor does this settlement reduce our
commitment to insuring that diversity remains a focus of this meeting
and of SAA's future agenda.

                                        Sincerely,

                                        Thomas Hickerson
                                        SAA President
H. Thomas Hickerson
Associate University Librarian
Information Technology & Special Collections
107 Olin Library
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
607-255-9965 (ph.)
607-254-5419 (fax)

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