Putting Adam's Mark to Rest

Darlene Clark Hine and Lee W. Formwalt

As part of a larger settlement over a discrimination case involving five African American college students and the NAACP, the Adam's Mark Hotel chain has dropped its $100,000 lawsuit against OAH. On Monday, 3 December 2001, the hotel chain agreed to pay $2 million to settle the suit which charged the Adam's Mark hotel in Daytona Beach, Florida, with racial discrimination stemming from incidents during the 1999 Black College Reunion weekend. The hotel chain also agreed not to pursue its $3 million in claims against the more than twenty-five other groups which had cancelled their events at Adam's Mark hotels in support of the NAACP boycott.

The Florida Attorney General's office and the U.S. Justice Department filed their own suits against Adam's Mark in 1999 alleging violations of federal and state civil rights laws. In response, OAH decided to relocate its 2000 annual conference from the chain's St. Louis hotel to the campus of Saint Louis University. That summer Adam's Mark sued the OAH for breach of contract. For the next fifteen months, the impending trial cast a shadow over the executive office as we gave depositions, collected evidence, and prepared for our day in court. Now, finally, we can return, full-focus, to our mission of promoting history education and research.

OAH is grateful to its members, other scholarly associations, the academic community, and the people of St. Louis, for standing by us. In particular, we would like to give special attention to several scholars, who, from the start, challenged OAH to do the right thing: Arvarh E. Strickland, Robin D.G. Kelley, Mark Naison, Donald Spivey, Gwendolyn M. Hall, Timothy Tyson, David Levering Lewis, and Jeffrey Sammons. We are also grateful to our members and colleagues in St. Louis who, together with a network of local Black St. Louisans, including the Gateway City's mayor, helped us orchestrate our change of venue. We also appreciate the efforts of NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume and board chairman Julian Bond who were determined that the dismissal of the OAH suit be part of any NAACP settlement with Adam's Mark.

OAH President David Montgomery's leadership guided OAH through troubled waters as the executive board spent many hours devising an appropriate response which focused on using the crisis as a "teachable moment." During the executive board meeting in St. Louis, board member James Horton said, "Even when you expect white colleagues to stand firmly on issues of racism, as I do, especially given the ideals of this group, it is reassuring to see the board follow through in this way. It's great to have such committed company!"

OAH's collective stand against Adam's Mark's racism represented a shared commitment that makes all members of diverse backgrounds proud to be historians. We affirmed in a most public way that all are welcome to the table of history. As historian Julian Bond noted, OAH took a "principled stand against bigotry at great potential cost. In the end, justice prevailed and right triumphed--as history teaches us it often does." This is a lesson worth remembering.

Part of any struggle involves "showing up!" Nearly 1,900 of our members showed up in St. Louis in March 2000. We strongly encourage you to show up again this April at the 2002 annual convention in Washington, D.C., to celebrate our organization and our profession as we go about the business of deepening our understanding of the American past. 

Darlene Clark Hine is president, and Lee W. Formwalt is executive director, of the Organization of American Historians.