Updated Information
Tuesday February 8, 2000
As we go to press [with the February OAH Newsletter], the meeting on 8 February with the Adam's Mark owners has been canceled so they can resume meetings with two of the three parties suing them. On 10 February negotiations between OAH and Adam's Mark will recommence.
On 4 February, OAH sent this document to current members for whom we had e-mail addresses. A software error during the first-ever OAH electronic mailing to its members resulted in many receiving multiple copies of the message. We apologize for the frustration this may have caused. This document, with links to the statements of the Adam's Mark Hotel, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the NAACP, may be found on the OAH website: <http://www.oah.org/>.
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 and registration fees 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. Louisans, 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. 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.
