ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 13, 1996 TAG: 9608130091
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
After a meeting last week with the new manager of Valley View Mall, the Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has decided to call off its two-month boycott of the shopping center.
But a vice president of the SCLC said she and many other people will not shop there again until the mall manager holds a community meeting outside the mall and issues a written set of changes to resolve tensions between mall guards and young shoppers.
The SCLC announced the boycott June 4 after Robert Manns, son of SCLC Third Vice President Jeanette Manns, accused the mall's security chief of shoving him during a heated exchange with a store manager. A General District judge recently dismissed both an assault charge that Manns filed against the security chief and the chief's trespassing charge against Manns.
SCLC President Perneller Chubb-Wilson said she and mall manager Louise Dudley met Aug. 5 and agreed to work together to improve relations between shoppers and mall security guards. She said the boycott is over.
"We had a good discussion. We're going to work together," Chubb-Wilson said Monday. She said she has asked Roanoke Valley ministers to visit the mall frequently and do what they can to foster better treatment of shoppers by store employees and security guards.
Dudley, who has become manager at Valley View since the June incident, said Monday she didn't know whether the boycott dealt a measurable economic blow to mall stores, but any negative publicity is unwelcome.
"We will do anything we can to further the respect and trust in the community," she said.
Jeanette Manns, however, said Monday that she had not heard that the SCLC's boycott had ended. She said the boycott was never limited to the SCLC, anyway.
"In our community," said Manns, who lives in Northwest Roanoke, "we are still passing out fliers and still boycotting. They still do what they do to black folk out there. The community as a whole is not satisfied. You think we're going to go back down there and shop like good little boys and girls because our mama and our daddy have spoken? No, no, no, no."
Jeff Artis, a member of the SCLC board of directors, arranged last week's meeting between Dudley, Chubb-Wilson and SCLC First Vice President Lenord Hines.
Artis said that although Manns is black and the mall chief is white, problems at the mall are not limited to racial ones. He said some mall guards are "overzealous" and target young people and adults of all races as troublemakers.
Dudley said two of the nine mall guards are black. She declined to discuss details of the meeting because, she said, she and Chubb-Wilson agreed to resolve problems privately.
"They have my name and phone number. They can call me immediately instead of the media," she said.
Chubb-Wilson said parents bear some responsibility for unsupervised children left at the mall for hours. "Parents have to learn the mall is not a baby-sitting place." She said friction between mall guards and shoppers is part of a wider problem - a lack of trust in uniformed officers among black Roanokers and young people of all races. She said Roanoke Public Safety Director George "Chip" Snead is coming to her house today to talk about what can be done.
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