Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/187632
•pg_42-55__BMT_pg3-58 9/26/13 9:24 PM Page 54 "Mills and I became fast friends and at his request I served as the NCBMP's unofficial publicist and photographer." Howard Inn at Howard University) a Best Western Benchmark property in Memphis, which coincidentally opened the same year the NCBMP was founded. Charles Wright, an African-American executive at the now defunct Eastern Airlines provided tickets for the board members and others to attend that first gathering. Wright later became the international bureau chief for the Florida Division of Tourism at the Department of Commerce. He also served as president and CEO of the Tallahassee Convention and Visitors Bureau. When the Coalition was founded, there were no African-American CVB chiefs, in fact there were just 15 Blacks employed in any capacity across all 500 MELVIN TENNANT CVBs, and two of them were at the Atlanta CVB. All of that changed in 1990 when Melvin Tennant was named president and CEO of the Oakland Convention and Visitors Bureau. Tennant says, "It was a challenging and very rewarding experience…not because I was African-American, I was only 30 at the time and I had no gray hair." The Oakland CVB was a very multicultural organization when Tennant took over. Working in the shadow of San Francisco, Tennant said he had the opportunity to grow with the position. BRENDA SCOTT SAVAGE Tennant was particularly proud of Oakland as the only major city in California that did not riot following the Rodney King verdict. In 1995, Brenda Scott Savage became the first African-American female to head a CVB when she took the reigns of the Mobile CVB. Solomon J. Herbert officially launched Black Meetings and Tourism in 1993. Somewhere a r o u n d 1984/1985 Herbert was assigned to cover the second and third meetings of the NCBMP. "I remember so well at the end of the conference all of the participants sat around in a circle to have a wrap up session," says Herbert. "Mills and I became fast friends and at his request SOLOMON J. HERBERT I served as the NCBMP's unofficial publicist and photographer." It was Mills who encouraged Herbert to start BM&T, "because he felt the industry was not acknowledging the contributions African-Americans were making to the meetings/hospitality/tourism arena. It wasn't an easy decision, but Herbert reluctantly agreed to launch a magazine. His apprehension was borne out of economics because the country was in a deep recession at the time. But as luck would have it, a bad situation pushed Herbert to make the decision that would change the course of his life. Herbert was covering the Arizona travel and tourism boycott for another trade publication. The boycott was called for because of then Governor Evan Mecham's refusal to honor the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday. Many of you might remember that President Reagan signed the King holiday into law at the federal level several years earlier. But Arizona was among the last holdouts. The boycott proved widely successful, especially after the National Football League pulled the NCBMP Co-Founders Sylvia Thomas and George Turner at NCBMP 25th Anniversary 54 B M & T ••• September/October 2013 ••• www.blackmeetingsandtourism.com