ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 5, 1997 TAG: 9703050087
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
TO THE COLLECTION of ambiguities, imperfect solutions and unintended consequences that have characterized this country's halting struggle for racial justice, add the NAACP's national boycott of certain hotel chains.
Whatever the ultimate effect on the industry, the immediate impact in Roanoke will be felt by some of the people the action is supposed to help - the city's black residents.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is pressing the lodging industry to improve its record of hiring and promoting blacks. The goal is worthy. The strategy is as time-honored as the midcentury bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., and as up-to-date as the nation's pursuit of marketplace solutions to social problems.
Among the 10 targeted chains is Doubletree Hotels Inc. - operator of the Hotel Roanoke, an institution with a long, at times contentious, history as a major employer for black residents of nearby Northwest neighborhoods.
Today,the hotel has a unique tie to the city's black community. After it was closed by Norfolk Southern, its original owner, the landmark was restored and reopened by dint of an extraordinary public-private partnership that recognized the importance of the hotel to its neighbors and their contributions over the years to its successful operation.
Renew Roanoke, which raised contributions large and small from Roanokers who wanted the hotel to reopen, has one-third ownership of the property. Any profits it receives from the hotel and adjoining conference center are to be used in the surrounding Gainsboro neighborhood, a black historic district in need of capital investment.
Another promise was that the hotel would again be a major black employer, a source not just for low-skill work but also for high-paying jobs. The hotel seems to be working to live up to the expectation: Its manager says 33 percent of hotel and conference center employees are black, and 15 percent of the managers are black.
Unable to take into account every local circumstance, the national NAACP has called for a boycott - and the Roanoke chapter is supporting it. Already, the call has prompted organizers of the city's first African American Film Festival to move the event to another site. To have gone ahead with plans to hold it at the hotel would have forced some patrons to choose between two causes they might wish to support.
There is a third cause, though: an enterprise in which the black community has a significant stake. Let's hope any lodging-industry gains made by a boycott won't be more than offset locally by the sacrifices such action requires.
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