ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 1, 1997 TAG: 9703030046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
HOTEL ROANOKE'S management company is on an NAACP boycott list. That makes for a difficult situation for the black film festival scheduled there.
Leroy Lowe has worked for nearly a year to pull Roanoke's first African American Film Festival together.
He organized an impressive program for the March 16 event, featuring the work of Oscar Micheaux, a black filmmaker who made one of his movies on Gilmer Avenue in Northwest Roanoke in 1923.
Lowe had lined up speakers, including Oliver Hill, a civil rights attorney who was raised in Roanoke and whose legal efforts helped produce the landmark Supreme Court decision that outlawed racial segregation in public schools.
Lowe had secured sponsors - including Kroger, Crestar Bank and Grand Piano & Furniture Co. And he'd found a location - the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center.
Then this week, the national NAACP called for a boycott of 10 of the country's leading hotel chains, assailing the lodging industry's record in hiring and promoting blacks. One of them was Doubletree Hotels Inc., which operates Hotel Roanoke.
Lowe was worried. He was concerned about holding a film festival recognizing a piece of black artistic history at a hotel whose parent company was the target of a national NAACP boycott.
Lowe canceled the news conference he'd scheduled for Friday to promote the film festival. He instead approached Hotel Roanoke management with his concerns.
"I asked if there was any truth to this allegation about Doubletree having a bias," said Lowe, a Roanoke musician, singer and actor. "We needed to do something about this ominous cloud hanging over the whole situation.
"We don't want to attract malevolent spirits here."
The Roanoke chapter of the NAACP was expected to endorse the festival at the news conference that had been scheduled for Friday.
"I think the sponsors of the festival can still expect us to support it wholeheartedly to the extent that it is possible," said Martin Jeffrey, president of the Roanoke NAACP branch. "As far as the boycott goes, we're boycotting what our national office is boycotting. We're committed to that as a matter of the organization's integrity and credibility.
"I don't anticipate [the Roanoke] NAACP not supporting the idea of an African American film festival. But I would have problems if we held it at a site that is among the list of targeted hotels."
Lowe said he asked Hotel Roanoke management on Friday if it would make a goodwill gesture to help allay any public concern, possibly something in the way of co-sponsorship of the film festival.
Hotel Roanoke general manager Gary Walton said he told Lowe he would consider, as the hotel does with many organizations, some form of support.
"But at this point in time, our budget for sponsorship and donations is already spoken for," Walton said. "There is very little we can do in terms of something significant."
Walton said Doubletree responded to the NAACP boycott in a news release Friday. The corporation, Walton said, was "proud" of its minority hiring and promotion record.
Doubletree has hotels in the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean.
In the news release, Doubletree stated that the corporation has demonstrated a diverse work force from management on down. Doubletree maintained that 23 percent of its 15,500 employees are black. A little more than 9 percent of its managers are black.
"We celebrate diversity in our company and in fact publish employee-related materials in 13 languages to accommodate our most important asset - our people," Ann Rhoades, a Doubletree spokeswoman, said in the news release.
The national NAACP this week called for a boycott of leading hotel chains, including Holiday Inn, Best Western and Radisson Hospitality Worldwide. The boycott is the first step in a broader effort to maximize black buying power in corporate America, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said earlier this week.
The NAACP sent 16 national companies a four-page questionnaire seeking general information such as number of properties, number of rooms and number of black employees in executive, managerial and professional positions.
Doubletree did not answer the survey. In response, the NAACP notified a Doubletree hotel in Little Rock, Ark., that a March regional conference would be moved elsewhere.
In the Doubletree news release Friday, Rhoades said the NAACP had given the corporation until the end of March to provide the requested information because the corporation was in the midst of an acquisition of the Red Lion Hotel chain and a major computer systems integration project.
"The boycott was a surprise," Rhoades said. "We had spoken with the NAACP, who agreed to wait for the information."
Lowe - who has checked into alternate locations for the film festival, without success - said Doubletree's response on Friday helped ease some of his concerns that the corporation had "thumbed their nose at the NAACP." He intends to reschedule the news conference for sometime next week.
"We've got to clear this out of the way before we can go back to the community and say, 'Hey, come on in. The water's warm.'
"I'm trying to get an indication from the hotel that the water is warm."
LENGTH: Medium: 93 linesby CNB