CINCINNATI, Ohio [Sep 27, 2004] -- Three years after black groups angered by the shooting of a black man by a Cincinnati police officer began a boycott of downtown restaurants, hotels and events, business is brisk.
No one is saying the boycott is over, but it has clearly lost its clout.
Top performers like Usher and Prince regularly draw thousands of fans downtown. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center is a new riverfront stop. Convention bookings this year are on pace to finish well ahead of last year's.
No major convention has honored the boycott since the Urban League pulled out in July 2002. Author Barbara Ehrenreich was the last celebrity to cite the boycott when nixing her appearance, in March 2003.
"I haven't seen much evidence of [a boycott] for a long time," Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken says.
Pickets still appear occasionally. Boycott leaders say the boycott -- designed to call attention to economic inequality and improvements in police-community relations -- won't be over until they say it's over, and that won't happen until long-standing racial problems are resolved.
But even they acknowledge that they're working less on a boycott and more on other ways to effect change. The Rev. Damon Lynch III, who led the boycott at its height, is involved in programs to help the homeless and poor and plans to run for City Council next year.
"The boycott as an ongoing tactic needs to be looked at," Lynch says. "While it has provided us with tremendous victories and successes, eventually you can get to a point of diminishing return."
Cincinnati's image took a beating after the April 2001 riots, which lasted for three nights. The downtown boycott, announced three months after the riots, plodded along until February 2002, when actor- comedian Bill Cosby canceled a downtown show. Other celebrities and musicians followed, including the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Whoopi Goldberg and Spike Lee.
The boycott -- and a sluggish economy -- hurt the city's $3.4 billion-a-year tourism industry.
Nine conventions canceled because of the boycott or the city's image in the wake of the 2001 riots, according to the Greater Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Lynch says the boycott "helped bring about a change in direction."
"Cincinnati is not just a good-old-boys club anymore," he says.
But so far this year, 106 conventions have signed contracts to come downtown. And musicians such as Prince, who canceled in 2002, have since returned.
Gannett News Service
Copyright The Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.
That event is what made me a dedicated FReeper. There was so much going on, that was being reported here, that was being ignored by the Old Media, that it just blew me away.
The whole event was overshadowed by 9/11 4 months later.
Here’s a compilation of threads I generated, during that event:
Links of Interest on the Cincinnati Riots
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ad646ad6811.htm#9