Blacks Call Off Tourism Boycott, But Plan to Sue Visitors Bureau

Local black leaders on Friday formally announced that they were suspending their drive for a nationwide boycott of local tourism, but warned they would file a lawsuit against the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau for withholding the names of confirmed conventions scheduled for San Diego beginning next year.

Herb Cawthorne, president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of San Diego, announced the suspension of the boycott and the impending lawsuit during a noon speech at the Catfish Club, a weekly luncheon gathering of black leaders.

More than two weeks ago, Cawthorne called for the boycott in response to the Nov. 3 citywide vote that stripped the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from a downtown thoroughfare, reinstating the name of Market Street. Cawthorne said economic sanctions would underscore the depth of hurt in the black community over the vote.

But Friday, Cawthorne said the boycott--which, so far, has resulted in the cancellation of no conventions--would be suspended because the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce voted on Thursday to form a committee to raise money for a private memorial to the slain civil rights leader.

Fund-Raising Goal

Cawthorne was involved in talks with chamber officials to hammer out the resolution, and he said Friday that members of the black community would be included on the committee. Its goal would be to raise the funds by Jan. 15, he added.

“We are not stopping it (the boycott) because we cannot be successful,” Cawthorne said. “We are stopping it because we are people of good will . . . .”

Cawthorne lashed out at the Convention & Visitors Bureau (ConVis), for trying to “define the success of the boycott” and for refusing to release to the Urban League a report that lists the names of conventions booked for San Diego starting in 1988.

Cawthorne said the Urban League would file suit against ConVis, which is supported with hotel tax money from the city, to get the list. He said black leaders want to use the list to resume their boycott efforts, if necessary.

Hours after Cawthorne’s address, ConVis President Dal Watkins said the private, nonprofit group had “softened its policy” and offered to provide a list to the Urban League. He said he made the offer to Cawthorne on Friday afternoon, but there was no indication whether the Urban League would drop its plans to sue.

Watkins said the move to offer the list was prompted by the suspension of the boycott. A list wasn’t provided earlier, he said, because “we were reluctant to give them something to take business away from the membership.”

“We’re suggesting that it isn’t necessary to sue,” Watkins said. “They’re saying, in a spirit of cooperation, that they’re suspending it (the boycott) and, recognizing the same spirit, we’re willing to release the information.”

ConVis policy provides for supplying its 1,600 members with the convention list and to charge outsiders $200 for the information, Watkins said. But Cawthorne’s argument--that the information should be public because ConVis is largely supported with public funds--was a “legitimate issue,” Watkins said.

ConVis has a $6.6-million budget, about $4.6 million of which comes from hotel tax money collected by the City of San Diego, Watkins said.

Cawthorne said, after his speech at the Catfish Club, that it was important for the private sector and San Diego citizens to push for a King memorial, rather than the local politicians, because the black community feared a repeat of the Market Street vote.

“Absolutely, the black community has said to me, over and over, that we don’t want to talk about the political solution because they’ll take it (a King memorial) away again,” Cawthorne said.

The Rev. George Walker Smith, Catfish Club founder and pastor of Christ United Presbyterian Church in Golden Hill, echoed Cawthorne’s sentiments.

“One of the things that I felt early on in the game was that whatever we did, it had to be removed from the public arena to the private sector,” Smith told the luncheon crowd, which met in a dining area of his church. “Politicians are not going to do anything that the people who buy them, through the political process, don’t tell them to do.”

Smith said that during discussion with chamber officials, “we went to the folks who bought the politicians” and told them “revert your thinking to the 1960s when things were hot” in coming up with plans for a private memorial.

The size and makeup of the committee, as well as what type of memorial, is still to be determined, Cawthorne said.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Mayor Maureen O’Connor said Friday that she is still going to push ahead with plans to name a public memorial for King. O’Connor has charged her black advisory group to come up with ideas, and she hopes the chamber committee will be able to work with the city, the spokesman said.