ROANOKE TIMES Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times DATE: Thursday, March 6, 1997 TAG: 9703060075 SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: MARY BISHOP THE ROANOKE TIMES
Avoiding the word "boycott," the group says it is helping members make informed choices.
Roanoke NAACP President Martin Jeffrey got a call the other day from a member who had reserved space at the Holiday Inn-Tanglewood for a weekend event.
National news stories had reported that Holiday Inn Worldwide earned an F from the national NAACP for failing to provide information on hiring and promoting of minority employees. So, in light of the NAACP's proviso about doing business with Holiday Inns and nine other lodging chains, should the local member cancel at Tanglewood?
No, Jeffrey said he told the member, who had signed a contract with the motel and might have trouble getting out of it. "We don't want to get anybody in legal trouble," Jeffrey said after a Wednesday news conference on the national campaign.
In small ways around the Roanoke Valley, the NAACP's "economic reciprocity" crusade was being felt this week. Black consumers fretted over how to deal with targeted hotels; hotel and motel managers gave interviews in defense of their corporations; and at least a few black employees at the Hotel Roanoke quietly cheered on the NAACP.
Gerald Carter, manager at the Holiday Inn-Tanglewood, said he would like to explain to Jeffrey that almost all Holiday Inns are franchised and largely independent, so Holiday Inn Worldwide wouldn't have been able to give the NAACP national statistics on the number of black workers and managers.
Still, Carter wouldn't divulge figures on his motel. He said his catering manager is black, but Carter wouldn't say how many others are black. "Most companies don't provide that kind of information," he said. "It's nothing that's anybody's business."
Jeffrey said it's the business of minority consumers. "If I spend my dollars at your hotel," he said, "I want to be able to expect that you're giving every opportunity and consideration to my community and to me as represented by others who look like me, and I think that's fair."
The national Marriott chain got a C - the highest grade awarded by the NAACP.
"From our perspective, we see it as a positive," said Herman Turk, manager of the Roanoke Airport Marriott hotel. "Obviously, for others it's not playing out so well."
Jeffrey and national NAACP President Kweisi Mfume avoid the word "boycott." Jeffrey said the NAACP does not dictate where its members buy lodging but instead gives them information so they can make an informed choice.
In the months to come, he said, the NAACP at its local, state and national levels will be critiquing the minority hiring records of every major American industry. Automakers and car dealers will be next.
The first local impact of the NAACP's action was when Hadassah Stowe and Leroy Lowe moved their African American film festival from the Hotel Roanoke to the Jefferson Center.
Jeffrey said only the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center has provided local data on black employees: 33 percent of all workers and 15 percent of managers are black. Jeffrey said the hotel was required to release the information because some government money was spent to restore the old hotel and build the conference center.
Considering that city residents are still paying "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in annual debt service for the hotel/conference center complex, Jeffrey said of minority employment, "I think they can do better."
The hotel's corporate owner, Doubletree Hotels Inc. in Phoenix, received an F from the NAACP for failing to supply national data. Doubletree has contended that the NAACP agreed to give it more time to file a report. The company, with 242 hotels in the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean, has since reported that 23 percent of employees and 9 percent of managers are black.
The Rev. Charles Green, former president of the local NAACP, is advising several former Hotel Roanoke employees on possible racial discrimination charges against the hotel. Three of those employees and one current hotel worker complained in interviews Wednesday that they were unable to move up at the hotel, partly because it imports Doubletree employees from other hotels for top positions.
Hotel manager Gary Walton denied that his hotel stifles the advancement of black workers. "We're very proud of our work force here," he said.
Three black employees have been promoted to management jobs within the last three months, he said. Some managers do transfer in from other Doubletree hotels, he acknowledged, but some of them are black, including the hotel's new human resources director, who moved here from Hartford, Conn.
Thomasine Campbell, a former busperson in the hotel's Regency Room, said she was forced to resign in September. A supervisor accused her of taking too many breaks and criticized her job performance after she had a long bout with pneumonia.
"I loved the place," Campbell said. "I was practically raised down there at the Hotel Roanoke." Campbell worked there off and on since 1974. Her aunt was a hotel waitress for more than 20 years.
"That was supposed to be my retirement place, you know," said Campbell, 42, "because I'm not a young woman."
Campbell said two of her white friends were hired there but none of the black friends and relatives she recommended. "You know," she said of black co-workers, "practically everybody's gone. You know, it's got to be something."
A black woman still working there who asked that her name not be published said she and her friends at the hotel are glad the NAACP is drawing attention to hiring and promotions there.
"They think it's good," she said. "They want to be treated fair."
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART THE ROANOKE TIMES. Martin Jeffrey explainsby CNBthe NAACP action Wednesday as the Rev. Samuel Robinson (from left),
Hadassah Stowe, the Rev. Charles Green and Leroy Lowe listen.
color.