Indian American Hotel Owners and Entrepreneurial Rights
In the early 1970s, Harish Pattni, a former bellhop who worked his way into hotel management positions in California, arrived in Rockingham, North Carolina (about an hour and a half east of Charlotte), unsure of what opportunities for business might exist in the small town. Pattni found that buying property in California was nearly impossible without significant financial resources and connections, so he made his way across the country to the Southeast. Pattni’s journey was part of a broader wave of migration as Indian American hoteliers left the West Coast’s high property values behind and looked to the South for reasonable prices and a solid customer base of weary travelers pulling off highways to stay at hotels and motels. Mom-and-pop motels languished in disrepair throughout the South as sons and daughters refused to continue to operate the family business and fled decaying towns bypassed by the interstate highway system. In Rockingham, Pattni found a small, forty-eight-unit hotel with owners desperate to unload the property. He worked out a deal, acquired the property, and within a few years completely renovated the hotel and expanded his holdings into South Carolina by purchasing other old, run-down lodgings and transforming them into clean and reasonably priced venues. By the early 1980s, the former bellhop was a successful multiproperty business owner.1
Pattni and thousands of other recently arrived Indian immigrants who set up shop in the hospitality industry represented a new version of the American Dream found in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and other southern states. These migrants enlivened the economic structure of the South when many factories and textile mills closed as the United States increasingly transitioned to a service-sector economy. In many ways, Indian Americans viewed the southern region of the United States as a cradle of business opportunities (as did other investors after World War II) and appeared to be perfect examples of a new generation of the Asian American model minority. Perhaps this was the true “new” South that many had searched for following the Civil War.
But other Asian Americans had traveled to the South in earlier decades for opportunities, only to be met with discrimination, and old habits died hard. The majority of Indian American hotel owners at the time operated in some region of the South, so it was no coincidence that the majority of the discrimination was centered there. From customers who refused to stay at hotels or motels once they discovered Indians owned them to insurance agents who refused to insure property owned by Indian Americans because of racist stereotypes, Indian Americans faced discriminatory obstacles similar to those of previous waves of Chinese American, Japanese American, Filipino American, and Vietnamese migrants. Indians became socially, culturally, and economically racialized in the South, where even the most successful of the model minorities faced uphill battles in the business world. Like immigrants before them, however, Indian American hoteliers would demand their entrepreneurial rights in the South. Indian American hotel owners in Tennessee would band together in 1985 to fight insurance discrimination, but it was not until Indians experienced difficulties in acquiring franchises from the larger hotel and motel chains that they received outside assistance from business leaders and other associations in organizing for their right to freely enter into contracts, acquire and sell property, and obtain insurance.
In the 1980s, chief executive officers of Days Inn responded to the demands of Indians for fair treatment by assisting financially and strategically with organizing the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), headquartered in Atlanta. The motives of the major hotel corporations for providing aid to Indian hoteliers were complex, but Indians embraced this new form of interracial business activism to achieve their goals and entrepreneurial rights.
AAHOA brought a new look to civil rights organizing in the South in the latter decades of the twentieth century. Although AAHOA represented Indian American hoteliers and not other Asian American ethnic groups, it was one of the first interracial and Asian American–led business organizations in the South. The focus on moving away from judicial activism was the result of the commercialization or privatization of civil rights battles situated within the business climate of the 1980s and early 1990s. While other Asian American activists in the South mainly used the legal system to fight for an end to segregation and discriminatory business practices, Indian American hoteliers argued that ending prejudice, rather than using the courts to force acceptance, was the proper way to build better relations between Indian and white hotel owners. With AAHOA, Asian Americans’ battles for civil rights in the South moved into a new realm that relied on respectability politics and entrepreneurial rights to achieve justice through legislative rather than judicial means. The activism of the Indian American hoteliers not only represented a change in Asian American approaches to fighting against discrimination but also challenged the definitions of “civil rights,” “equality,” and “justice” after the legislative changes of the 1960s.
When Indian Americans first arrived in the South, they encountered a changing economic and physical landscape. A combination of domestic and international forces following World War II left their markings on Dixie and created a land of often contradictory financial conditions. The once dominant cotton industry in the South had faded as textile production shifted from the southern United States to the growing “global South” in southeast Asian and other developing nations from the 1960s through the 1980s. It became more cost effective for manufacturers to purchase cotton overseas at cheaper rates and to move production to low-paying sweatshops in Asian nations and Central America. In some respects, the South benefited from the deindustrialization of the Northeast and the rise of the Rust Belt consisting of cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, and Gary, Indiana, when companies moved production to the Southeast in search of tax breaks and cheap pools of labor. However, the general move to a service-sector economy through the 1970s and 1980s left its impact on a region where people typically depended on agricultural and textile industries for employment. An injection of military spending through the proliferation of air force, army, and naval bases as well as defense contracts for private industries created the rapid growth of the Sun Belt, but such windfalls did not touch all southerners who were forced to adapt to the economic changes around them.
For those with the resources, however, the New South of the post–World War II era held boundless opportunities for entrepreneurs. The shift to a service-driven economy helped cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham (or the Research Triangle of North Carolina) grow in the medical and education fields, but retail was also a new frontier of business. In the early 1980s, Sam Walton expanded his locally based general store into a multibillion-dollar industry by creating one-stop shops known as Walmarts throughout the Midwest and the Southeast. Similarly, small-town restaurants such as Chick-fil-A became regional names as franchises opened throughout the Sun Belt. The projected image of traditional family values combined with low prices and convenience derived from low employee pay and tax breaks allowed businesses like Walmart and Chick-fil-A to flourish during the 1970s and 1980s while redefining entrepreneurship in the South and across the country.2
Accompanying the rise of service-sector industries and franchises was a sharp decline in small, family-owned businesses throughout the South, since, when compared with the Sam Waltons and S. Truett Cathys (of Chick-fil-A), small businesses owners often simply could not compete. In small towns across the South, mom-and-pop groceries, gas stations, restaurants, and general stores were able to hold on due to a solid local customer base, but no one was “safe” as the department stores and franchises grew to previously unspoken of levels of wealth and power. It was as if a new wave of Gilded Age tycoons swept through the region, except in service instead of manufacturing sectors and led by faith-based and family-oriented grandfatherly figures who appealed to a wide and growing conservative base in the Sun Belt.
The hotel and lodging industry in the South was hit particularly hard by the rise of corporations and franchises during the 1970s and 1980s. Similar to stores and restaurants, what were once small, single-family-owned hotels such as Days Inn, Comfort Inn, and Quality Inn eventually became mammoths in the industry, with franchises springing up across the country. Large corporations had the resources to become franchises and open hotels and motels in key travel and heavily trafficked areas. Many of these prime lodging locations were located in small towns and cities that were now accessible from the interstates through new exits and extensions. A franchised Days Inn could offer a more modern stay for a better price than smaller, forty- to sixty-unit family-owned motels that were often not as conveniently located. The growth of the interstate system after World War II was both a blessing and a curse to hoteliers in the South: More traffic came through more areas, but the smaller hotels and motels either could not compete with the franchises or were deemed too out-of-the-way by travelers. A once booming location off a two-lane highway often became a less-traveled route for motorists breezing by sleepy southern towns and cities on the new interstates.3
Both white and black owners of small hotels and motels suffered with the rise of the corporate-owned franchise. Black-owned hotels and motels had a long history in the South, particularly in cities such as Birmingham, New Orleans, and Atlanta, and represented an area of entrepreneurial opportunity. Jim Crow segregation created a need for black-owned-and-operated lodging, and many African Americans took advantage of a ready-made clientele by advertising in The Negro Motorist Green Book, a directory of hotels and motels that accommodated blacks. Stories of African Americans traveling across the country and being denied a room at white-run hotels and motels prompted Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against this specific form of discrimination and contributed to the push for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation and discriminatory treatment in services provided to the public. However, long after the milestone civil rights legislation of the 1960s, hotels and motels in the South were still largely segregated and catered to customers of one race. Black hoteliers often faced uphill financial battles as discrimination in insurance coverage and claims as well as white flight and the decline of southern urban areas caused customer bases to diminish after World War II. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, both black and white owners felt the effects of new franchises and the corporatization of the hotel industry.4
Across the South, once stable if not bustling mom-and-pop hotels and motels went out of business. Boarded-up windows or decaying and dilapidated structures became a common sight along the old two-lane highways such as U.S. Route 1 running from Virginia to Florida and U.S. Route 90 from Florida through Texas. Small hotels across the country witnessed similar fates as gas prices rose and longer road trips became more difficult for the average American family, but southerners viewed their experiences with declining customer bases as a regional or local problem and could not easily discard their businesses. Owners expected their children to step up and run the family businesses when they retired, but they found that their sons and daughters had no desire to remain in sleepy southern towns and run failing enterprises. Families became saddled with aging properties that rapidly declined in value and could not be revived or rehabilitated to offer the level of comfort and ease for the prices offered by the new franchises. Small hotels and motels across the area became financial burdens and entrepreneurial nightmares in the new, post–World War II economy of the South.
Just as southern hoteliers were struggling to dump their properties, Indian immigrants were looking for business opportunities in the United States. These two occurrences were far from coincidental and were related as much to changes in immigration patterns after the 1960s as to changes in the southern economy. After the United States allowed Indian immigrants to naturalize with the passing of the Luce-Celler Act in 1946 and following Indian independence from the British in 1947, more Indians began to arrive in the United States. Most immigrants came from the Gujarat state in western India and were often among the more financially stable and educated classes. Despite the level of education of these Indians, high taxes and endless, labyrinthine levels of bureaucracy made obtaining placement in a professional field or opening a business next to impossible for them in India after World War II. As other migrants before them, many Indians could not resist the siren call of new starts and opportunities from the United States, and as Indian American hotelier H. P. Rama explained, “We traveled thousands of miles to realize the American Dream backed up by hard work, dedication, and faith in this promise land called America.”5 Sikh migrants from Punjab, India, had made their homes in the inland portions of California and became a core labor force in the timber industry of the Pacific Northwest during the early 1900s, but their numbers were low compared with other Asian migrant groups for the first half of the twentieth century. The earliest wave of post–World War II Indian immigrants primarily settled along the West Coast and in pockets in New York City and engaged in small entrepreneurial enterprises such as groceries and hotels and motels. The first Indian American hotel owner in the United States was possibly Kanjibhai Desai, an undocumented migrant who came to San Francisco during the late 1940s and bought the aging Goldfield Hotel. Because only approximately 100 Indian immigrants and their families were allowed into the United States per year through 1965 because of immigration restrictions, the number of hotel owners on the West Coast grew slowly. However, many soon found it difficult to run a successful business while breaking even in California with increasing property taxes through the 1950s and 1960s and climbing operating costs.6
Just as Indian Americans living on the West Coast looked eastward for better and more affordable and efficient opportunities, the Immigration Act of 1965 opened avenues for more professional or white-collar laborers to come to the United States from Asian countries as the decades-old race- and nationality-based quotas were abolished. The majority of Indian immigrants who arrived after 1965 were college educated, with degrees in engineering, nursing, mathematics, and computer science, and searching for employment opportunities with the assistance of special labor-based visas. By 1990, 469,000 Indian immigrants came to the United States.7 Although professionals such as nurses, computer programmers, and engineers were in demand in the United States, there were not enough jobs to accommodate all Indian migrants. As the small hotel and motel industry across the country began to face the consequences of the growing hospitality moguls, Indian immigrants with little experience running businesses identified an economic possibility and became, in their own words, “accidental hoteliers.” Many Indian immigrants initially desired to return home to India but stayed in the United States as they succeeded in various business and hospitality ventures. Hotelier Vilpesh Patel described running a hotel as “easy” because you “don’t need fluent English, just the will to work long hours.”8 Many Indian Americans had will in ample amounts and were also fluent in English, so they found opportunities for economic stability and entrepreneurship.9
The South drew Indian Americans from the West Coast for the same reason that other manufacturers and industries came down to Dixie: affordable property taxes and operating costs. On the West Coast, Indian Americans established their presence in the lodging industry during the 1950s and 1960s in California (particularly in the San Francisco area) by pooling resources with family to buy and operate hotels and motels, a tactic that was not uncommon for many immigrants who migrated as families and worked as a unit for economic stability. However, they soon looked to the more cost-effective opportunities in the Southeast. Many would follow the path of Harish Pattni and migrate to southern states. Not only was the weather more familiar in the southeast portion of the United States, but the desperation of small motel and hotel owners to rid themselves of their money pits created excellent purchasing deals for Indian Americans. Prices were already reasonable, as many owners wanted to sell as quickly as possible, but Indian Americans were also able to enter into special mortgage purchase agreements. Indian Americans often did not have the money to pay the full price (approximately $30,000 at the time) for a small property, but they could put $3,000 down as a payment and in return receive the seller’s property and then take responsibility for the seller’s mortgage. In essence, it was a win-win situation for both the Indian Americans and the sellers. Indian Americans entered into these transactions across the South during the 1970s, and through wise investment and maintaining low overhead costs by using family members as employees and living on-site, they were able to purchase a number of small motels and hotels in the area and transform the properties as well as the ailing small motel and hotel industry in the South.10
Despite eagerness to get rid of run-down properties, not all southern sellers willingly turned their businesses over to Indian Americans. As soon as a seller found out from a broker, realtor, or lawyer that the intended buyer was Indian American and not white, he or she often wanted to rescind the offer. H. P. Rama, who came to Buffalo, Tennessee (near Nashville), in 1974 to purchase a small, sixty-unit motel, experienced such discrimination firsthand when he entered into an agreement with a realtor from Greenville, South Carolina, to purchase another small hotel and begin to expand his holdings. As soon as the buyer discovered that Rama was an Indian American, the lawyer called Rama to explain that the seller was no longer interested in selling his property. Both the lawyer and the seller did not hesitate to credit Rama’s “Indianness” with the decision not to sell. Under the 1968 Fair Housing Act, property owners could not refuse to sell based on race or national origin, so the hotel owner’s actions were illegal. Rama was “hurt on a personal level” but did not pursue any legal action against the seller. Not only was Rama not interested in buying a hotel from a seller who was not willing to enter into an agreement with an Indian, but he also “was not just buying brick and mortar from this guy. . . . [He] was buying the goodwill behind the hotel,” and if the goodwill was not there, Rama did not feel as though he could force the deal on the seller. Three years later, the same seller contacted Rama again and offered the motel at a third of the original price. At this point, Rama happily accepted because he “understood that people do business with people they can trust and feel comfortable [with],” but also because he finally “won him over rather than forced him to sell.” Rama credited his “self-confidence without arrogance” for his ability to “overcome this discriminatory transaction,” which led to one of his life-long mottos: “I always say, ‘Who says discrimination does not pay?’” This belief in the value of the dollar and fair business transactions would go a long way in shaping the activism and responses of Indian Americans to other forms of entrepreneurial discrimination in the South, but in the 1970s and early 1980s, tacitly accepting a seller’s desires without legal or other pressure appeared to be the best way to do business.11
As more Indian Americans migrated to the South from the West Coast or directly from India through the late 1970s and early 1980s, they added to the changing economic and ethnic landscape of the South. Although Indian Americans were technically “accidental hoteliers,” their professionalism, education, and business acumen made them the model minority Asian Americans in the United States. This was a new spin on the classic American Dream story, and Indian Americans were more than happy to seek a new beginning in a New South. Those like Rama recognized the pitfalls of doing business with whites as an Indian, but they also had the desire to become entrepreneurs and attempt to maneuver around the racial roadblocks and obstacles in southern business.
But entering into business deals was always a precarious position for Indian Americans, who often depended on purchase mortgages and special loans through sellers. After Harry Pattni established himself in Rockingham, North Carolina, he saw a special deal on the Baker Motel in Cheraw, South Carolina, and purchased it in 1981. Pattni and his family poured time and money into renovating the property but failed to attract enough customers to either stay in the rooms or eat at the on-site restaurant. The majority of Pattni’s customers were African Americans, and although Pattni saw nothing wrong with this (like other Asian American entrepreneurs in the South before him who developed a large black clientele), when the former owners found out that Pattni was serving and hosting African Americans in their formerly whites-only hotel and restaurant, they moved to initiate foreclosure on Pattni. The sellers, attempting to conceal the racial undertones of the case, sued Pattni in 1981, claiming that he mishandled the property and violated the contract by undergoing drastic and out-of-code renovations. Eventually the court ruled in favor of Pattni and held that the renovations were not harming but, rather, greatly increasing the value of the property and that Pattni was well within his rights to make improvements. This was a rare example of Indian Americans appealing to the southern legal system to defend their property rights at this time, but the seller’s rejection of Pattni’s misunderstanding of race relations in the South would shape other experiences for Indian hoteliers in the region.12
In the case of Indian Americans who came to the South, the “model minority” was perhaps too “model” in its economic success and reflected growing anti-Asian trends. The age-old fear of labor and business competition from Asian immigrants resounded in various industries in America. As Asian car manufacturers such as Toyota and Hyundai outpaced and outperformed American automakers, including Ford and Chevrolet, Americans demonstrated their patriotism by urging others to “Buy American” and lashing out against both the manufacturers and the Asian employees who worked in plants. The presence of Asian-based car plants in the South (particularly in Tennessee, where Nissan was one of the first Asian corporations to take advantage of tax incentives and a climate that was, according to Nissan, “southern, but not too southern”) was perplexing to locals, who both desired and welcomed the new plant but also exercised their patriotic inclinations to criticize the competition with American-made autos.13 The xenophobia and nativism reached a peak with the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American draftsman who worked at an automotive supplier in Highland Park, Michigan, near Detroit, after he encountered two drunken white supervisors from the nearby Chrysler plant outside a bar on June 19. The two men were angry at “chinks” for stealing jobs and supposedly initiating a series of layoffs, and they brutally beat Chin (whom they believed to be Japanese) to death. While the Chin murder helped to galvanize a new wave of activism among Asian Americans, it also served as a reminder that despite their economic, educational, and professional success, Asian Americans were still eyed with suspicion and blamed for America’s economic woes.14
In the South, Indian Americans faced uphill battles with cultural racism and a more insidious form of discrimination in business practices. Interestingly, it was after Indian Americans became successful in their ventures that they became racialized and othered in the South. Although Indian Americans and Asian Americans were well educated and professional, cultural stereotypes of them often hindered the ability of “accidental hoteliers” to attract customers and gain recognition in the hospitality industry. One of the more pervasive negative images of Indian Americans related to curry, a staple dish of Indian cuisine. Because Indian American families often lived in or near their hotels and motels when they first bought their businesses, the smell of curry may have greeted some customers when they initially entered the lobbies. The smell of curry would be no different from the odor of any other spice or entrée cooked in a restaurant or home, but whites who were not acquainted with curry were put off by the scent and often immediately associated it with filth and “otherness.” As a lawyer who later assisted Indian Americans with fighting against cultural stereotypes explained, “Curry is an aroma that is foreign to Americans. They associated the odor of curry with dirt—the place was dirty.”15 Many whites assumed that if the smell of food permeated the lobby, then cleanliness was an issue with the hotel or motel. From this line of thinking, it did not take long for whites to associate motels and hotels run by Indian Americans and the Indians themselves with dirtiness and uncleanliness. While this was a problem for Indian owners across the country, because the majority of motels and hotels run by Indian Americans were located in the South, this form of prejudice fell within the larger, southern context of distrust of those on the racial margins and a longer history of Orientalism used to ostracize Asian Americans. Other Asian Americans had begun to assimilate into southern society and achieve a level of respect by the 1980s, but Indian Americans were a relatively new presence in the South and were not as easily grouped with the model minority Chinese Americans or Japanese Americans who had called the southern states home for decades. Travelers from across the country who drove through the South may have encountered their first hotel run by Indian Americans and easily adopted the stereotypes and cultural forms of racism that lingered in the South and deterred them from giving their business to “curry palaces,” the derogatory and colloquial term used to describe Indian-run hotels and motels in the 1970s and 1980s. The prejudice against Indian Americans became so great that many owners in the South reported incidents of potential customers walking into the lobby, seeing that the hotel was run by Indian Americans, and immediately getting back on the road to find an “American-owned-and-operated” hotel or motel.16
American-owned-and-operated advertisement in Valdosta, Georgia, 2015. Photo by the author.
The growing resentment of whites in the South for Indian American–owned hotels and motels inspired an insidious yet successful billboard campaign against Indians. Once white hoteliers discovered that the smell of curry and the presence of Indians in the lobby repulsed travelers and moved them to seek out other establishments, they slapped the phrases “American-owned” or “American-owned-and-operated” on every advertisement possible. Hoteliers displayed signs in their lobbies, on their windows, and particularly on highway billboards as a reassurance to customers that they would not be duped into spending the night in a filthy curry palace. As with other industries and products, the American-owned-and-operated campaign was a coded form of racial and marketing branding, indicating to travelers not that the hotel was owned by Americans but, rather, that it was owned by whites. But amid the larger buy-American campaign that applied to everything from appliances to cars, on the surface, this could be interpreted as a form of patriotic consumerism.
Indian American hoteliers, however, like H. P. Rama, knew better and immediately recognized the practice for what it was: a racially charged campaign designed to use prejudice to gain customers. In 1985, Rama was traveling from Atlanta to Nashville on Interstate 75 when he saw a sign for a hotel declaring it American-owned-and-operated. He was intrigued by the sign but thought little of it until later, when he stopped in Commerce, Georgia, on a business trip and saw a hotel marquee that also proclaimed the same message. He was even more shocked a few months later when he went to Arkansas and, while flipping through the yellow pages, counted numerous ads for hotels and motels that proudly displayed “American-owned-and-operated” phrases. “This prompted me to investigate further why they are putting this thing [on their ads] because if the American traveling public started believing in this, I will be out of business,” Rama explained.17 After some inquiries to other Indian American hoteliers, Rama discovered that white hoteliers were “using this tagline to bring customers and the traveling public to their hotel. . . . They were using this as a marketing tool to bring business to their hotel.”18 Rama understood the racially coded messaging behind this ad campaign, but he was perplexed that “people didn’t realize that this [Indian American hotel industry] was ran by Americans, built by Americans, and sold to Indians.”19 Other Indian American hoteliers learned to shrug the campaign off; one, who migrated to the United States from Uganda after leader Idi Amin expelled Asians in the 1970s, mentioned that “if we survived Idi Amin, a couple of redneck motel owners aren’t going to bother us.”20 Still, the idea that “American-owned-and-operated” implied that Indian Americans were not and could never be “American” reflected a deep-seated xenophobia and anti-Asian sentiment.21
The American-owned-and-operated campaign was a visible sign of the persistence of anti-immigrant practices and beliefs in the South and reflected the changing nature of racism and discrimination toward the end of the twentieth century. The marketing campaign was a cultural form of discrimination that sought to disrupt the progress of Indian American hoteliers and prohibit them from entering the white and “American” space of entrepreneurship in the southern economy. By proclaiming “American-owned,” white hoteliers were reinforcing the notion among customers that Indian Americans by culture were foreign and other and undeserving of business or respect. Were the hoteliers simply responding to the customers’ desires, or did the billboards themselves shape and perpetuate the stereotypes of Indians and their “curry palaces”? Although marketing a brand is a central component of any form of advertising, this particular branding shaped perceptions of the marginal place of Indian Americans in southern and American society. This was a subtler form of racism and anti–Asian American and anti-immigrant sentiments masked by patriotism, coded racial branding, and Orientalism that replaced the openly hostile language and racism of the past. But it was a form of marketing that both white southerners and Indian American hoteliers immediately understood nonetheless.
The cultural stereotypes went beyond unpleasant smells and customer dissatisfaction and influenced how other businesses and agencies negatively viewed Indian Americans as hoteliers. The belief that Indian hotels were dirty or unclean lent credence to the idea that Indian Americans were incapable of properly running their businesses. Such assumptions negatively impacted Indian Americans when they applied for insurance for their properties. If they did not face discrimination from banks or sellers when they initially set out to purchase hotels, they more than likely encountered it from insurance agencies throughout the South. Many insurers identified Indian Americans as poor and therefore risky managers and refused to provide protection for Indian properties. Although Indian Americans were accidental hoteliers, they strove to advance their professionalism and integrity in the industry but continuously ran up against discriminatory barriers from insurance agents. When an Indian American–owned hotel burned down outside Nashville, Tennessee, in 1979, this appeared to confirm insurance agents’ and sellers’ worst fears about the type of businesspeople that Indian Americans were. The agency that insured the hotel refused to pay benefits because it suspected (without grounds) that the owners themselves had set fire to the hotel as part of a scam to use insurance money to invest in other property. There was no proof or evidence of these claims, and the Indian American owners, out of confusion and a misunderstanding of insurance policies and regulations, decided not to pursue the matter. As a result, insurance agencies across the South increasingly refused to insure more Indian American hoteliers, arguing that Indian Americans as a group were prone to illegal methods of obtaining their insurance benefits. This was not a far cry from the centuries-old Orientalist claims that Asian Americans in general were shifty, shady, and dishonest by nature. To the dismay of the Indian hoteliers who strove for professionalism and respect in the industry, cultural stereotypes shaped not only the customers’ responses to their business but also subverted their basic operating and entrepreneurial rights.22
When Indian Americans did manage to do well for themselves despite these setbacks, their success was met with derision from others in the industry and from the media as well. Many of the Indian Americans who migrated to the United States after World War II and particularly after 1965 had the surname Patel, a ubiquitous name from the Gujarat region of India that denoted descendants of peasant clans from prior centuries. The name was no different from Smith or Brown in the United States, but the otherness of Patel and its association with Indianness resonated with white Americans. The belief that all Patels were from the same family permeated society and caused many to wonder if a single, giant, Patel family was creating a monopoly in the hotel industry. Concerns of a Patel cartel combined with the fact that many Indian American families did operate as a unit and run a hotel or motel themselves with little help from outside employees created further suspicion of the motives of Indian American hoteliers. Were these individuals following their American Dream, or were they money-hungry immigrants who would do whatever it took to control an entire industry? Many insurance agencies favored the latter stereotype and frequently denied coverage to anyone with the last name Patel. “Patel hotels,” like “curry palaces,” became a common, derogatory term among the public to refer to Indian-run hotels and motels and did much more than indicate that a certain establishment was not American-owned-and-operated. Perpetuating the fear of Patel hotels as an un-American monopoly was a way to distance Indian American business owners in the South from whites and to strip this new immigrant group of their social and economic capital.23
The biases and prejudices against Indian Americans in insurance agencies carried over to corporations and their franchises. When Days Inn began to franchise in the late 1970s, Indian Americans who had built up capital by investing in smaller hotels leapt at the opportunity to branch out and have a degree of financial safety in aligning with larger corporations. However, they ran into continuous problems with Days Inn when they applied for a franchise. Word of shifty Indian Americans who set fire to their own hotels for money and who were uninsurable and dirty carried to the highest reaches of corporate offices. Those in charge of franchising did not deny the Indian Americans a franchise outright; they simply refused to meet with them to discuss options. Other corporations, including Hilton, Holiday Inn, and Marriott, followed suit and shied away from interacting with potential Indian franchisees. By the early 1980s, H. P. Rama was able not only to operate independently owned small motels but also to acquire a franchise from Days Inn. It was an uphill battle, but Rama pooled so much capital for investing in a franchise that Days Inn found it difficult to ignore his request. But this was not a typical trajectory for Indian American hoteliers looking to break into the corporate or franchise sectors of the hospitality industry. Despite being a franchisee, Rama had a difficult time reaching the corporate offices of Days Inn if he had problems or questions. He did not immediately connect this with racial bias or prejudice, but he soon heard of other Indian American hoteliers with franchises from Comfort Inn and Suites who had similar problems. For Rama, it didn’t make good business sense to shut out a growing subset of the industry. “We couldn’t ever get in to see or even speak to the higher-ups in Comfort or Days Inn. . . . We built these chains and they were not giving any time of day to the Indian hotel owners . . . because they didn’t think they would bring much money into the company.”24 And considering the pervasive stereotypes of Indian American hoteliers, it was not a leap of imagination to understand why corporate leaders may have felt this way. For the hotel and motel chains, granting franchises to a few Indian Americans was a way to spread out locations into the more off-the-beaten-path spots throughout the rural South. Otherwise, they were well aware of the American-owned-and-operated campaign and believed that white travelers would not patronize franchises owned or operated by Indian Americans. Days Inn and Comfort Inn not only embraced the stereotypes of Indians but also effectively racialized and ghettoized their own Indian franchisees.
Initially, Indian American hoteliers were unsure of how to approach the prejudice and discrimination they faced from sellers, customers, and corporations. Many, like Rama, were merely trying to learn the trade and build a better economic life for themselves and their families. The deeply embedded racism of the South made this difficult. Even if Indian Americans did manage to secure small properties, their attempts to branch out or buy franchises were met with resistance from a variety of forces. Indian American hoteliers also broke away from traditional Asian American business models in the South in that they did not (as Chinese Americans did) try to serve mainly minority clientele; there was no need for this when they were operating motels and hotels designed to accommodate all travelers regardless of race or ethnicity. And while Indian Americans did manage to secure economic stability and branch out through wise investment, they repeatedly encountered discrimination and a lack of recognition of their entrepreneurial rights. The 1970s and 1980s, however, were supposedly the “post–civil rights” era—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 theoretically ended discrimination in the business world. Thus fighting against de facto segregation and racism was more difficult. There were no laws that prevented Indian Americans from owning property or receiving insurance or buying franchises, but the discrimination, in all of its traditional racial and xenophobic forms, continued nonetheless. The initial response among Indian Americans, as Rama’s case demonstrated, was often to buckle down and work hard to further prove their professionalism in keeping with the widespread conviction that the solution to the problem of discrimination lay with individual progress and merit. “We never wanted to have a confrontational attitude with the industry or people who were doing those things because we wanted people to win the hearts and souls, not force them . . . because we are minorities,” Rama explained. “Because from day one we wanted people to do business with us. . . . We had to rise to on our side to be professional and not just accidental hoteliers.”25 Indian Americans were well aware of their racial place in the South: They were minorities, and they would have to learn how to navigate that identity in the later decades of the twentieth-century business world.
Other Indian Americans, however, organized to ensure their success in the hospitality industry despite the racism and discrimination they faced in the South. Indian American activism for equality and entrepreneurial rights assumed different forms during the 1980s and 1990s, few of which resembled Asian American civil rights activism in the past. In a “post–civil rights” age and within the realm of private business, the struggle against racism and discrimination in the South and within the industry itself was generally not pursued through the courts. Rather, it was geared toward fighting de facto prejudice and discrimination in the world of business through the education-oriented efforts of professional associations. Indian American activism revealed the limits of civil rights legislation from the 1960s as well as the strategies for fighting discrimination in the post–civil rights era.
Insurance discrimination prompted the first attempt at organization among Indian American hotel owners. By the mid-1980s, approximately 80 percent of the hotels and motels owned by Indian Americans were located in the Southeast. Although Indian American hoteliers faced discrimination from insurance agencies nationwide, the South quickly became the epicenter of the battle. Between 1983 and 1985, a string of Indian American–owned hotels and motels in the Nashville, Tennessee, area burned down. The exact cause of the fires was unknown. Police suspected poor electrical wiring, while Indian American hoteliers feared that arson was at the root of the fires (not surprising, considering the high levels of anti-Indian sentiment and the American-owned-and-operated campaigns). Regardless of the cause, the Indian American hoteliers in Nashville suffered severe economic setbacks as either they were uninsured or their insurance companies refused to pay out on their policies. The stereotype of Indian Americans setting fire to their own property to collect insurance claims undergirded discriminatory practices by insurers. The American Hotel and Lodging Association (the largest nationwide association for those in the hospitality industry) also participated in such practices of discrimination and prejudice in an ancillary way by creating a list of American-owned-and-operated hotels and motels following the fires.26
In response, Indian Americans in and around Nashville formed the Mid-South Indemnity Association (MIA) in 1985. Shankur “Big Sam” Patel, a hotelier from Lebanon, Tennessee, whose hotel was one of the properties that burned down earlier that year, led the effort in organizing Indian American motel and hotel owners to ensure their equal participation in the hospitality industry. Identifying the MIA as a civil rights organization with roots in the South is somewhat problematic, however, as it did not fit the mold of a standard civil rights group. The MIA more closely resembled immigrant aid organizations formed by Jewish and Italian communities during the early twentieth century. Rather than pushing back against the insurance agents who openly discriminated against Indian Americans or challenging the American Hotel and Lodging Association through the courts, the MIA was purely for indemnity and did not engage in legal activism or pursue legal solutions to its problems. In other words, it did not directly challenge the prejudice that Indian Americans experienced in the industry. Patel and the others who joined him in 1985 during the early days of the MIA were primarily interested in forming an association to protect Indians and their property when others failed to do so. Members of the MIA joined together and paid a membership fee that would be used to provide insurance if any could not obtain it from a larger insurance agency or if their insurers did not grant a policy that covered enough or refused to pay out on the policy in the event of a disaster or damage (by the mid-1980s, many insurers refused to include fire damage in policies sold to those with the last name Patel). The members and leaders of the MIA did not push for punitive measures against discriminatory agencies and groups and did not directly challenge discriminatory practices. Rather, they engaged in the same type of benevolent activity as so many other immigrant and minority groups had done years before to protect their own when no one else would.27
The early organization of Indian Americans against discrimination reflected a longer history of activism from Asian Americans even without the legal action of Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Filipino Americans, and Vietnamese Americans who came before them and settled in the South. As with other minority businesspeople (including the Chinese grocers, Japanese farmers, and Vietnamese fishermen, as well as black entrepreneurs), Indian Americans engaged in a financially oriented version of respectability politics in the 1980s. Respectability was often a central component of civil rights activism since the late nineteenth century: appeal to white liberals as well as the upper stratum of minorities to garner respect and acceptance in southern society. For many immigrant groups, the politics of respectability took the form of assimilation and dictated their success based on their ability to fully acculturate to social, political, economic, and cultural aspects of American society.28
The model minority myth also dictated the level of acceptance (or lack of it) of Asians Americans among white Americans. Like H. P. Rama, not only did many Indian Americans lack a good working knowledge of the law, but they also did not wish to push back too hard, as they believed deeply in the free market and how the market affected personal relationships between buyers and sellers. Indian Americans and members of the MIA knew that prejudice was at the root of the denial of insurance agencies to accommodate them, but they did not see legal action as an appropriate tool to regulate business relationships. They believed in entrepreneurial rights in that they were entitled to full participation in the hospitality industry, but in a free market system, they would have to protect their own interests. They did not have to challenge the discriminatory agencies and organizations, but they could also not sit idly by and have their economic dreams shattered by racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Indian Americans respected the revered concept of private property in America and the right of owners to oversee their property as they see fit—a concept challenged by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other subsequent statutes and laws. Here, entrepreneurial rights meant the right of whites to refuse to do business with Indian Americans, just as it meant the right of Indian American hotel owners to manage their own properties as they wished. Determining whether or not the MIA was a civil rights organization depends not only on how historians define civil rights but also on how activists themselves identified their role in fights against prejudice or discrimination. Indian Americans had a right to be insured and to property protection; but business owners also had their own rights to their own property, and if they did not wish to sell to Indian Americans or insure Indian Americans, then there was nothing that could be done legally. This philosophy was in stark contrast to that of the Asian Americans who used the legal system in previous eras to fight against school segregation and antimiscegenation, while at the same time it was reminiscent of the Japanese and Chinese who chose to defy anti-alien land laws and anti-Asian sentiments against Asian American property owners in the South by continuing with their business practices. As with other minorities in the South, at times, going about day-to-day business while prejudice, racism, and discrimination abounded was often a radical act in and of itself and a statement of rights and equality.
Others in the hospitality industry, including whites and corporate leaders, came to recognize the discrimination the Indian American hoteliers faced as a form of civil rights violations. In the early 1980s, Mike Leven, a relatively young up-and-comer in the hospitality industry, was appointed chief operating officer (COO) of Days Inn, working directly under the president of the corporation. Obtaining the position of COO was a long journey for Leven. Growing up in Boston with his Jewish family during the 1940s, Leven distinctly remembered traveling to Cape Cod one summer for vacation and facing the difficult task of finding a hotel to stay in. The Leven family spotted a pleasant-looking bed-and-breakfast that appeared welcoming but, upon closer inspection, proudly displayed a “No Jews or Dogs Welcome” sign on the lawn.29 This moment stuck with Leven for his entire life. While it is unclear if the incident influenced his decision to major in business and hospitality at Cornell University, Leven would continuously reference that moment in interviews, and his friends and colleagues would always include it in their descriptions of his character and drive as a businessman. In 1961, Leven first tried his hand at a career in advertising but found that he couldn’t climb the corporate ladder because of lingering anti-Semitism in the industry. Later, when he was living in Chicago, a real estate agent outright denied him a home in a well-established neighborhood because the community did not want Jews living there. For a Jewish kid from Boston to begin with a negative view of ethnic discrimination in hotels and motels and later climb to the top of the hospitality industry (Leven would go on to found the Holiday Inn Express and Microtel hotel chains as well as serve as president and chief executive officer of The Sands hotel and casino in Las Vegas) was an impressive feat, and Leven offered a sympathetic ear when he began to hear complaints from Indian owners of Days Inn franchises of the rampant discrimination in the corporation.30
In 1987, H. P. Rama, who owned a Days Inn franchise in addition to his other investments across South Carolina and Tennessee, was finally able to schedule a meeting with Leven. As COO, Leven was in charge of overseeing the operations of the franchises and responding to issues, concerns, and complaints as well as making sure that franchises abided by state and federal codes and regulations. The position of COO was relatively new at Days Inn, and Leven was quickly learning how in-depth the job was. Rama had been desperately trying to contact Henry Silverman (chief executive officer of Days Inn) to discuss the various levels of discrimination in the hotel industry and within Days Inn itself, but he was not having much luck. Rama and other franchisees did not fully realize that Leven was the person to contact, but once Silverman heard of Rama’s attempts, he placed him in contact with Leven. Rama traveled to Leven’s office in Atlanta, where Leven heartily greeted him and the two initiated a conversation about discrimination against Indian hoteliers. Leven initially assumed that Rama had a specific, individual concern about his franchise and asked Rama what he could do to help him improve his business. “No, I don’t need anything from you,” Rama began, “but this is what I’m facing. This is what I see. And this is what many Asian Indian hotel owners are facing.” He then launched into the myriad ways that the hotel industry (including Days Inn) discriminated against Indian American hoteliers and further propagated negative stereotypes and prejudices in American society.31
Although Leven was not entirely surprised by what Rama reported, he was taken aback that his own company (where Indian Americans owned 10 percent of the franchises and were mainly located in the South) participated in such discriminatory practices. Leven confided in Rama and recounted his story of growing up Jewish in Boston, and although the two experiences were not the same, Rama and other Indian American hoteliers would identify Leven as a kind of “godfather” who understood their predicament and was an ally in the business world. Rama discovered that Leven “faced the same thing while growing up—dogs and Jews not allowed in hotels—he immediately understood what I was going through . . . and [I understood] why he was so keen to help us.”32 Leven immediately proposed to Rama that he allow Days Inn to conduct a survey of Days Inn personnel at the corporate level and around the country to uncover their perceptions of Indian Americans and Indian American hoteliers and gain a sense of how deep the stereotypes and prejudice were. Rama wholeheartedly agreed, as he believed “there is a big gap between what we do and what is our intention versus what people thought about us.”33
In 1987, Leven procured funds from Days Inn and hired Lee Duschoff, a young lawyer and consultant to the hospitality industry from Philadelphia, to travel to Days Inn franchises across the South not owned by Indian Americans and survey personnel at the corporate level. Duschoff had a pragmatic view of his role in Leven and Rama’s plan to assess discrimination in Days Inn, explaining, “Leven was trying to be responsive to what was already becoming a growing group of Days Inn owners [Indians], so there’s policy and profits. And when social policy and profits come together, all good things could happen.”34 Duschoff was not necessarily a high-minded civil rights advocate and recognized (as did many other businesses that chose to integrate after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 rather than lose customers) that discrimination was often bad for profits. Duschoff accepted Leven’s task because he did consulting work and had a firm handle on managing large corporation surveys, but also because “obviously . . . there wasn’t anybody in the Days Inn chain who had the time to do it, so he [Leven] hired an outsider to manage the process.”35 If Indian Americans were “accidental hoteliers,” men like Leven, Duschoff, and Rama could be classified as “accidental activists.”
Duschoff’s survey took approximately four months to complete and revealed that Days Inn employees at all levels confessed to knowing little about the people who owned 10 to 15 percent of the franchises. The little that they knew was rife with generic stereotypes of Indian Americans as dirty, unscrupulous, and unable to speak English. Also surprising to Duschoff was that as he interviewed more Indian American franchisees, he learned that the American Hotel and Lodging Association not only tacitly participated in the American-owned-and-operated campaign but had rejected the membership applications of a number of Indian American hoteliers. When Duschoff shared the results of the survey, Leven and Rama were crushed to see evidence of such prejudice permeating Days Inn and the entire hospitality and lodging industry more generally. As Rama noted, “There was a gap between the reality and the perception [among Days Inn employees] of Indian hoteliers” that was wide and disheartening. It appeared as though racist and xenophobic anti–Indian American sentiment existed at all levels of the industry and that dispelling these myths would be a difficult task. Later that year, Leven held two meetings with small groups of Indian American hoteliers in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Atlanta, where he shared the results of the survey and learned more about the extent of insurance discrimination as well as more general discrimination against Indian Americans in the industry and in larger southern communities. What was to be done with the survey results if they appeared to simply confirm Leven’s and Rama’s worst suspicions? This would be a question that would pull Days Inn, Leven, and Rama further into the realm of organizing and activism.36
In 1988, armed with the results of the survey, Duschoff, Leven, and Rama reported to Days Inn Chief Executive Officer Henry Silverman, who decided that the Indian American franchisees were an asset to his corporation and required organization and representation to make themselves heard. “We knew that Asian Americans had size in the market, but what they needed was political clout,” Silverman explained. The discrimination the Indian hoteliers faced was “a civil rights issue for them and a business issue for [Days Inn],” which required “lobbying power” to take on the racism and prejudice inherent in the industry and particularly in the South.37 Silverman provided Leven with $100,000 to assist the Indian franchisees in joining together and forming an organization that would build solidarity to tackle some of the larger issues, including insurance discrimination and the American-owned-and-operated campaign. Leven, Rama, and Ravi Patel, another Indian hotelier from North Carolina, oversaw a meeting of approximately 300 Indian hotel and motel owners in Atlanta (where Days Inn’s headquarters were located at the time) in April 1988. The men kept the purpose of the meeting vague, apart from inviting the attendees to convene in Atlanta to discuss current issues facing Indian American hoteliers in the South and across the United States. Leven agreed not to have any Days Inn sales members attend the meeting so that, according to Duschoff, no one “would think that Days Inn was putting this together in order to sell more franchises.”38 The entire Days Inn team was concerned that outsiders and particularly other chains would believe that their assistance in organizing the Indian hoteliers was purely motivated by business interests—to attract more Indian American hoteliers to their company and saturate the southern hospitality market with “curry palaces” under the guise of altruism. However, Leven and Days Inn had little to worry about in this regard. At the end of the meeting, after breakaway meetings and more personal dinners, lunches, and coffee breaks, a group of twelve Indian hoteliers decided that they needed a formal, visible, and nationwide organization to more fully address the needs of Indian American hotel and motel owners.39
As with other groups in their early stages, the initial goals of the organization (yet to be named) were not fully formed. The Mid-South Indemnity Association (formally renamed the Indo-American Hospitality Association in 1987) dealt largely with insurance discrimination but not with other aspects of discrimination, such as the American-owned-and-operated billboard campaign or broader social and cultural instances of anti–Indian American prejudice. Few outside Tennessee knew that the Indo-American Hospitality Association (IAHA) existed, leading hoteliers to believe that a larger, more multifaceted group was needed. Would this be a legally minded organization? Would the group also focus on regional insurance discrimination? How would they go about challenging social and cultural prejudice? What would the new organization look like? Who would lead it? Who would fund it? These were all questions that plagued attendees at the 1988 Atlanta meeting. Although the initial vision for the proposed association was not yet clear, Leven and Days Inn were thrilled with the idea and wholeheartedly supported a group run by Indian hoteliers to assist Indian American hoteliers. Leven and other Days Inn executives and leaders viewed the formation of an Indian hotel association as a means for Indian American motel and hotel owners to integrate into the larger motel and hotel association. As Duschoff explained, “The goal was never to have a permanent separate organization” but to become a fully functioning part of the larger hospitality industry without prejudice or discrimination barring Indian American hoteliers from advancing.40
But Indian American hoteliers, not Leven or Days Inn, were in charge of the would-be association, and they would come to dictate their own goals and missions. At the meeting in Atlanta, a small group of Indian American hoteliers, including Rama and Ravi Patel, decided to meet again one year later in Charlotte. Leven suggested that Days Inn representatives not attend the meeting to encourage the hoteliers to independently form the framework for their larger association. Twelve hoteliers met in Charlotte and created a steering committee to form a national association and invite all Indian American motel and hotel owners regardless of whether or not they were Days Inn franchisees. It was to be a membership-based group with annual dues and would serve as the voice of the Indian American hoteliers in the United States. One member of the steering committee suggested that they call themselves the Indian American Hotel Owners Association to advertise that this was a group made by Indian American hoteliers for Indian American hoteliers and that it recognized the problems and opportunities for Indians in the hospitality industry. However, others suggested that not only did this sound similar to the Indo-American Hospitality Association, but it was also not as inclusive. Although there was never any intention to attract hoteliers of various Asian ethnicities beyond Indian Americans, naming the association Asian American Hotel Owners Association was a nod toward the potential expansiveness and reach of the organization and also differentiated its members from Native Americans (a point of confusion for many Americans at the time whenever the term “Indian” or “Indian American” was used).41
The steering committee also decided on the goals and mission of the group, which would be the all-inclusive “fighting against discriminatory activities.” Organizers did not want to limit their purpose to insurance discrimination (which was the focus of IAHA) and wanted to tackle larger, deep-seated prejudices in the industry and in larger communities that served as the rationale for discriminatory practices. AAHOA would not be a legal group but, rather, an association that sought to build “acceptance in the mainstream hotel and motel industry” through cooperation rather than “coercion.” Although “fighting discriminatory activities” was at the center of AAHOA’s mission and appeared to be in line with other civil rights and equality organizations, from day one, the Indian American hoteliers never considered themselves as part of a civil rights group. “It’s an organization that helped to remove the stereotypes, bias, and ignorance, but, no . . . it was not a civil rights organization,” according to H. P. Rama, who would go on to be the first chairman of AAHOA and a key founding member. Rama had a very firm definition of a civil right: “Civil rights [means] ‘it’s my right and I’m enforcing [it] on you.’ We already had a right, people were just not treating us on a human basis.”42 For Rama, there were no rights to fight for, just a fight against cultural and social prejudices that led to discrimination in the industry. Prejudice was cultural, not legal, and one “cannot legislate the behavior of people . . . but we can educate and we can try to remove bias and stereotypes.”43 AAHOA would be “inclusive” and “not force others to behave a certain way,” unlike other civil rights organizations, which founding members of the association were not interested in collaborating with for a larger end to discrimination in the hospitality industry.44 Using legislation to force insurance agencies to provide coverage and sellers to not rescind agreements if they discovered that their purchasers were Indians was not the goal of the Indian hoteliers. They viewed these problems as rooted in business and a poor understanding of Indian culture and characteristics. You could not force individuals to do something with their property that they did not want to do, and you could not force businesses to perform a duty if they did not want to, no matter the wrong-headed reasons why they did not wish to do it. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made many discriminatory activities technically illegal, AAHOA existed to improve relations between the white-dominated hotel industry and white communities and the Indian Americans, not antagonize whites by creating a further poor image of “hostile” Indian American hoteliers. Rama explained the goal of the group succinctly: “I want you to accept me and I accept you and we both feel good about it.”45 Perhaps this attitude could be grouped with the idea of maintaining a model minority identity that at times worked for Asian Americans in the past and sometimes did not; however, overall, the strategy of avoiding legal action was not the same strategy that other Asian Americans previously utilized in the South.
The white corporate officers from Days Inn who provided financial backing to the upstart AAHOA certainly grounded their efforts in the language of civil rights, however, even if they, too, agreed that legal action was not the correct path to follow. “Was it about civil rights? Absolutely! It was about civil rights—the discrimination against the Indians in the industry was terrible,” Duschoff exclaimed when describing his efforts in organizing the association. For Duschoff, Leven, and Silverman, the Indian Americans hoteliers did suffer from civil rights violations that were fueled by prejudice, misunderstandings, and racism. Denying insurance coverage was, for Leven, a clear-cut example of a violation of basic business rights. The Indian Americans “needed an advocacy group that would give them a voice in the industry . . . and let the vendors and insurance agents know that they [the Indians] knew what they [the vendors and agents] were doing was wrong and was illegal.”46 Such practices were, as Leven pointed out, also “bad business” for all involved. Silverman agreed with Leven and placed his concerns within a business-oriented context. Silverman viewed the American-owned-and-operated campaign as “a civil rights issue for them [Indian hoteliers] and a business issue for us [Days Inn].”47 The American-owned campaign, while being detrimental to the Indian Americans’ business, was also detrimental to Days Inn when Indian American franchisees took a financial hit when travelers refused to stop. “In the South, where Days Inn grew up, competitors noticed our growth and noticed which franchisees were most responsible for it,” Silverman noted, and he condemned “their rather unsavory response” of posting “American-owned” signs and putting up “American-owned” billboards.48 Duschoff, Silverman, and Leven identified both civil rights and business issues with the ways in which the Indian hoteliers were treated. Unlike the Indian hoteliers who became “accidental activists” once they became involved, the three Days Inn corporate representatives identified the burgeoning AAHOA as a civil rights group and, simply, the “right thing to do” to protect the civil rights of minority members of the Days Inn family. Murmurs throughout the hotel industry that Days Inn was only devoted to the Indian American hoteliers because the franchise wanted to make money and not because it cared about the rights and equality of the Indian Americans angered Leven and Silverman. The two went out of their way to ensure other competitors and Indian American hoteliers that this was not merely about business or profits, but if profits and business increased as a result, then that would be a favorable by-product of their involvement with the group.
The fact that only the white Days Inn executives characterized AAHOA as a civil rights organization creates a complex and problematic place for the organization and Indian American hoteliers in the longer history of Asian American civil rights organizing in the South. Although Asian Americans in the past who had used the courts to fight for their civil rights had often worked with white attorneys and other organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, interracial activism on a group scale was not common. Asian ethnic groups identified their own needs and rights violations and worked to address their individual issues. When Asian Americans used the courts, it was typically to fight for themselves rather than their entire ethnic or nationality group and certainly not for all Asian ethnic groups (the Vietnamese Americans being an exception when they fought for property rights for all Vietnamese refugees). Once Days Inn became involved with the Indian American hoteliers, the goals and characteristics of AAHOA, according to Leven, Duschoff, and Silverman, were broader than simply ending prejudice. These men believed that this was a larger civil rights issue and one that exposed deep-seated prejudices and obstacles in the hospitality industry. If Days Inn had never become involved with the group, it is questionable if AAHOA would ever be classified as a civil rights organization. Ravi Patel differed from the Days Inn executives on the purpose of AAHOA, explaining that “AAHOA is not a civil rights group. We did not witness any civil rights violations, only prejudice. We would never have compared our situation to that of the African Americans.”49 By the post–civil rights era and into the 1980s, the Indian American hoteliers firmly defined civil rights violations as including “not having the right to vote and the right to own property” (as Patel explained), and they defined who suffered from inequality as African Americans. African Americans experienced real civil rights violations from visceral and systematic racism, while Indians were only dealt the glancing blows of cultural prejudice. For Patel, Indian Americans defined themselves not racially but ethnically and did not experience racism (as only African Americans did) but, rather, prejudice—which was not the same. As a result, the Indian American hoteliers’ battle was against the effects of prejudice and not civil rights violations. In the South, Indian American hoteliers believed that associating their plight with that of African Americans was not a particularly wise strategy. Meanwhile, the white Days Inn executives had the privilege of viewing what they were doing as civil rights organizing from a position of class, racial, and corporate privilege. It was interracial civil rights activism and organizing for the new corporate climate.
One point on which the Days Inn executives clashed with Indian American leaders during the early days of AAHOA was whether or not to invite other Asian ethnic groups to join the organization. Leven envisioned an organization that was truly all-encompassing, consisting of Indian American, Korean American, and Thai American hotel owners, who were not as prevalent in the hospitality industry but were still Asian American hoteliers.50 However, Leven’s proposal did not receive a favorable reception among either the Indian American hoteliers or other hoteliers of different Asian ethnic groups. “We were the majority in the hotel and motel industry . . . and we wanted to make sure that our interests were addressed and met,” Patel explained. “We didn’t know of any problems that other Asian Americans experienced with insurance agencies—we may have all suffered because of the [American-owned-and-operated] billboards and signs—so we wouldn’t speak for them. That’s not what we wanted to do.”51 And hoteliers of different ethnicities apparently agreed with Ravi Patel and the other early leaders of AAHOA. When Leven and Silverman attempted to reach out to a few of their franchisees who were Asian American, there was little interest in the group. Other hoteliers viewed AAHOA as a purely Indian American organization, and the Indian American hoteliers behind the group did not see any problems with this. Hoteliers who were not Indian American did not believe that they would receive any benefits from joining an organization, particularly one that was so young and so outside the mainstream. Leven attempted on a few occasions to continue to push the subject of being truly representative of all Asian American hoteliers, but the idea was not favorable across the industry. In the South, Asian American activism was rarely panethnic, and the Indian American hoteliers were merely following a pattern of self-interest that Leven had difficulty understanding. While organization across various ethnic groups was the hallmark of a burgeoning Asian American movement on the West Coast and other areas of the United States since the late 1960s, organizing was different for Indian American hoteliers in the South, who (as other ethnic groups did) banded together in a region where the Indian population had only recently begun to grow and held an uncertain place in the racial and social order. Unlike the Indian American hoteliers, Leven and Duschoff viewed AAHOA as a way to fully integrate the Indian American hoteliers into the industry, primarily forcing the American Hotel and Lodging Association to fully recognize Indian hoteliers and admit them as members rather than letting them remain as an ethnic association. This was a further example of the divide between the Days Inn executives and the early leaders of AAHOA over whether or not the group was a civil rights organization or an association to end prejudice and protect the business interests of a particular ethnic group. Integration for Leven was a matter of civil rights, and while the Indian American hoteliers did wish to become fully represented and respected in the industry, they chose to do so not with “arrogance” or “force” but through representing their ethnicity with AAHOA.52
With the outline of the organization formed, the steering committee for AAHOA planned its first annual convention in Atlanta in 1990. This was to be the association’s coming-out party and would be the main platform for attracting dues-paying members to the group. Rama, Leven, and Duschoff sent more than 1,000 invitations to Indian American franchisees not only from Days Inn but also in other chains throughout the United States. Once again, Leven guaranteed AAHOA that while he would put up the money to help finance the cost of the conference, there would be no Days Inn representatives in attendance. However, in attempting to maintain the idea that Days Inn was not involved with AAHOA for money or to attract more franchises, Leven also invited representatives from other corporations to attend the meeting (a move the Indian American hoteliers supported), not only to educate the other chains about the problems that Indian Americans faced in the industry but also, if they desired, to give them the opportunity to assure Indian Americans that the other chains were not discriminatory and were open to doing business with them. However, many of the other corporations were not interested in sending representatives to the meeting, and the majority of the invited Indian American hoteliers did not express much enthusiasm for AAHOA either. A disappointing 200 Indian American hoteliers traveled to Atlanta for the meeting, and Rama was only able to convince about 15 of them to become dues-paying members. Although AAHOA had ambitious goals, it was not clear to the outside world or even to many of the early members of the organization exactly what those goals were.53
The major problem that AAHOA faced in its first year was a lack of a clear strategy. It was difficult to pinpoint exactly what AAHOA was going to do to “fight against discriminatory activities.” IAHA was already working on helping Indian Americans with insurance, so Rama argued that the new group should not necessarily engage with that mission. It made little sense to early members to battle insurance discrimination on two separate fronts; forming a united coalition might be more effective. Members of AAHOA held several meetings with IAHA in 1989, and both organizations agreed that fighting insurance discrimination was within IAHA’s realm. Indian American hoteliers were unsure of what their dues (which were originally suggested to be $100 a year but were lowered to $25 annually) were supporting. What was in it for them? Not only was the mission of the organization vague, but AAHOA also lacked a professional presence as far as organizations go—it did not have a central office and lacked any clear leadership structure. Fighting against discriminatory activities was noble, but there was no explanation on how AAHOA planned to do this and who the targets would be.54
AAHOA had a rocky start, but Rama and Patel wasted little time in actively recruiting new members. Later in 1990, Rama and Patel traveled throughout the South at their own expense, stopping in urban and rural areas to speak to Indian American hoteliers on an individual basis. Rama and Patel crisscrossed the South and explained to hoteliers the “challenges we are facing and if someone says we are a bad operator, we should take this as an opportunity to learn from people who are telling you that you are not good. We cannot be arrogant about it.”55 Rama and Patel preached the business-oriented model of fighting against prejudice in a way that appealed to many Indian American hoteliers. Joining a trade organization would help in professionalizing the image of Indians and “build[ing] a bridge to the mainstream.” This was not organizing for legal justice but, rather, organizing to help Indian businesses eliminate prejudice. Rama and Patel also offered the concrete goal of working toward membership in the American Hotel and Lodging Association to raise the professional profile of Indian American hoteliers. As a result, “people understood,” and Rama sweetened the deal by offering to pay the first year’s membership fees (with his own money). If members decided at the end of the year that AAHOA was not for them or was not assisting them in any way, then they would not have wasted any of their money. “They saw the sincerity in our efforts, so they all came around actually. It was maybe right time, rightly orchestrated, rightly articulated and we can validate what we do and what we say.”56 Rama and Patel convinced other early members of AAHOA to travel to other regions, including farther out toward Houston and the Midwest, in order to raise awareness of the group and its activities. Following Rama and Ravi Patel’s efforts, Asvlin Patel joined AAHOA “with a passion of belonging” to a group that so represented his needs. Despite being a poor upstart franchisee from New Jersey, he would drive from New Jersey to Atlanta as soon as he was done manning the lobby of his hotel at 7pm, wake up at 8am the next morning to drive around the area drumming up members, and then get back on the road later that same evening so that he could be at his hotel in time to start another business day.57 In other words, Rama, Ravi Patel, Asvlin Patel, and the other early leaders who traveled became experts at “good communication and good networking” and developed a business-oriented model of grassroots activism that was the hallmark of many other civil rights groups.
Impressed with Rama and Ravi Patel’s efforts in recruiting new members, Henry Silverman and Days Inn parent company Hospitality Franchise System contributed to the professionalization of AAHOA. In 1990, Silverman provided AAHOA with an office at Days Inn headquarters in Atlanta and paid Duschoff and Leven to further assist AAHOA with establishing itself and recruiting more members. A year later, Silverman agreed to provide AAHOA with an endowment of another $100,000, while Days Inn and Hospitality Franchise System donated $1 million to help AAHOA open its own office on Clairmont Road in Atlanta. Competitors refused to believe that Days Inn was supporting an organization simply because of a deep-seated belief in justice and civil rights and not as a means to make more money. However, Leven and Duschoff always maintained that if their actions and their money happened to increase growth while bringing equality for Indian hoteliers, “then the money was a good investment.”58 The members of AAHOA never questioned the motive behind Days Inn’s support for their endeavors and actually came to view Leven as a type of “godfather” for their organization and all Indian American hoteliers. Leven traveled to the Gujarat region of India in 1990 to learn more about Indian hospitality culture and came to be seen as a man who, with the assistance of Lee Duschoff, “helped [AAHOA] grow, gave [AAHOA input on] how to grow. Very important contribution by Mike and his team.”59
The efforts of Rama and Patel in recruitment as well as the assistance of Leven, Silverman, and Days Inn worked. Approximately 600 Indian American hoteliers attended the second annual convention in 1991 at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, and all 600 signed up to become members of AAHOA. Vendors and representatives from different chains also attended the conference that year and succeeded in selling franchises to many of the Indian American hoteliers in attendance. By the early 1990s, AAHOA was becoming more mainstream. Members created bylaws and elected a board of directors (with a rotating chairman every two years so that one member would not monopolize the position) to further professionalize their organization and create a leadership structure for change and activism. H. P. Rama served as the first chairman of AAHOA (with Ravi Patel as assistant) and oversaw early attempts at putting into practice the organization’s ideas to end prejudice and promote equality within the hospitality industry.60
The first issue AAHOA tackled was the American-owned-and-operated campaign. The racist and prejudiced billboards and signs inspired a goal that spoke to the organization’s tactics of cooperation and outreach to end discrimination rather than using the courtroom or “force.” The campaign was a manifestation of a cultural practice that had dire consequences for Indian American hoteliers’ success in obtaining insurance and, in many cases, customers. But more so it was an easy target for the inequality that was prevalent in the industry and supported by the American Hotel and Lodging Association. By 1994, AAHOA had merged with IAHA after leaders of both organizations agreed that they would have more political clout if they formally worked toward the same goals. Also, by the mid-1990s, the American-owned-and-operated campaign that began in the South had garnered national attention, with stories appearing in the New York Times highlighting the “absurdity” of such a marketing technique. While many whites still viewed Indian American hoteliers and their curry palaces suspiciously, others identified not a menace but a group of immigrants who were simply living the American Dream. By the mid-1990s, Indian American entrepreneurs were on their way to becoming part of the model minority myth in the business-oriented imagination of America. As a result, AAHOA perceived a prime opportunity for pushing back against the American-owned-and-operated campaign.
In 1995, Silverman, Rama, and Ravi Patel began their own countercampaign against the “American-owned-and-operated” billboards and signs. First, Rama viewed this movement as an opportunity to increase the presence of Indian hoteliers in the larger, nationwide associations and use them to help combat the prejudice apparent on the highways and byways of America through billboards. In dealing with the organizations, Rama and AAHOA took a slightly more forceful approach than they had before, particularly with the American Automobile Association (AAA). Rama believed that the organization, the go-to expert in hotel and motel diamond ratings, had the clout to put pressure on the industry and larger chains to take down the billboards and signs. Recognizing that Indian American hoteliers were a rapidly growing portion of hotel owners in the United States, the AAA pressured participants in the American-owned-and-operated campaigns to realize the discriminatory message behind their marketing strategy and encouraged the larger chains to survey their franchisees and create a corporate policy that would ban such activity. Days Inn was the first chain (under the demands of Silverman) to completely ban any franchisees from displaying “American-owned” or “American-operated” signs on their property (this was part of a signed agreement for all franchisees). Silverman also inquired of local prosecutors in the South if the signs violated any business or civil rights acts. At the time, these measures did not fall into any legal category for action, but Indian American hoteliers were not deterred, as they preferred cultural and social plans of action in any case. Other chains soon followed suit, realizing, as Duschoff previously mentioned, that discrimination and racism could be bad for business. Although smaller mom-and-pop motels and hotels continued to display handwritten “American-owned” signs on the doors of their lobbies, fewer billboards were seen along major highways in the South and in other parts of the nation.61
The mid-1990s also saw the elimination of other discriminatory practices in the industry, primarily among the nationwide associations and organizations. The American Hotel and Lodging Association admitted more Indian hoteliers as members, and in 1999 H. P. Rama became secretary and chairman of the association. Similar to the push to do away with the “American-owned-and-operated” signs and billboards, reaching out to the national organization was in line with AAHOA’s goals of cooperation and ending prejudice in the industry. “We invited the American Motel and [Lodging Association] to speak at our conventions to help our hotel owners,” Rama explained, but these invitations also helped the larger organization. “That’s how we created a platform for them and helped them to recruit membership to their organizations, so it was a very collaborative effort from day one. We had started building a bridge to mainstream hotel industry.”62 Rama and the other members of AAHOA viewed building a bridge between Indian hoteliers and the rest of the hospitality industry as a means of business-oriented integration that would also go a long way in deconstructing racist stereotypes of Indians.
As AAHOA’s membership grew throughout the 1990s, its political and financial presence did as well. Thousands of Indian American hoteliers throughout the country joined AAHOA as members, and although AAHOA was based in Atlanta and continued to have members primarily from the South, it garnered nationwide attention. AAHOA branched out from cultural and social outreach and became fully engaged in legislative action in 1998 when it developed the “Twelve Points of Fair Franchising,” a set of provisions for best practices in franchisor and franchisee relationships spearheaded by Chairman Mike Patel. Indian American hoteliers found it easier to obtain insurance by the late 1990s, but there remained problems with unequal treatment in the relationship of a franchisee to the owner and other middlemen (such as sales agents). Of primary concern were examples of sales fraud wherein larger corporations or regional sales managers would deny certain coverage or benefits to Indian American hoteliers and unfairly terminate the sales contract. Also, franchisees were often bound to purchasing supplies and materials from specified vendors, creating a form of vertical integration and constrained capitalism. Under U.S. business and finance regulations as well as civil rights legislation, AAHOA had some grounds for seeking redress in the courts. However, Mike Patel and AAHOA chose to leave the legal battles to the individual hoteliers and work through the larger legislative process to enact change.
In 1998, Mike Patel and AAHOA authored the “Twelve Points,” which consisted of best-practices guidelines that would prevent franchisees from being “profit centers for franchisors.” The “Twelve Points” included “fair formulas to protect the franchisees assets and the franchisors interests in cases of economic impact,” the belief that “franchisees should enjoy the right to purchase goods and services from any vendor,” and the right of franchisees “to be able to exit a relationship without having to pay liquidated damages when a brand does not perform at minimum occupancy,” which was a problem for Indian American franchisees who suffered as part of the American-owned-and-operated campaigns earlier in the 1990s.63 More generally, AAHOA hoped that franchisors would “mandate ‘good faith and fair dealing’ practices among their sales agents” to limit fraud and deception. These were problems that affected franchisees across the country, but AAHOA, representing a growing number of franchisees, argued that violations of franchisee rights were of special concern to Indian American hoteliers and particularly those who operated in the South.
AAHOA’s fair franchising ideas became more than just guidelines. Late in 1998, AAHOA joined with other associations and corporations (including Kentucky Fried Chicken, Domino’s Pizza, and The Country’s Best Yogurt, among others) to work with Congress on legislation that would make franchisor and franchisee relationships more equitable. Though opponents of the Small Business Franchise Bill, such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and David Koch, argued that the proposed bill would give too many rights to the franchisees at the expense of the franchisor (particularly the clause that allowed state attorneys general to become involved in disagreements if they were perceived to hurt the interests of the citizens of the state), the bill’s sponsors, Representative Howard Coble (R) of North Carolina and John Conyers Jr. (D) of Michigan, believed that these measures simply leveled the playing field in the partnership. Franchises were small business and the franchisees were technically small business owners; too often, franchisees were grouped with corporations, and few recognized the complete control of the franchisor over all of the franchisee’s actions. The bill proposed to reclassify (for legal purposes) franchisees as small business owners to protect their business rights and interests. Apart from inspiring the basic components of the bill, AAHOA also supported the recognition of Indian American hoteliers as small business owners who had begun with nothing and pulled themselves up to become highly visible members of the industry. Through the lobbying efforts of AAHOA, the bill garnered bipartisan support and passed easily in 1999. The Small Business Franchise Act revolutionized the relationship between franchisor and franchisee and pushed AAHOA further into the political and legislative (if not the judicial) realm of activism.64
Interestingly enough, AAHOA’s turn to using the legislative process to protect small business owners created tensions with other corporations in the hospitality industry. One of AAHOA’s earliest supporters and essential founders, Henry Silverman, questioned the organization’s motivations for becoming legislatively invested in limiting the power of franchisors. In 1997, Silverman’s corporation, Hotel Franchising System, merged with the direct marketing firm CUC International to create Cendant Corporation. Silverman reduced his role in the new corporation, becoming chairman and leaving Chief Executive Officer Walter Forbes in charge of the day-to-day operations. While Cendant initially agreed to honor most of AAHOA’s “Twelve Points,” the leadership of Cendant became wary of AAHOA’s support of the 1999 Small Business Franchise Act and openly spoke out against the association in various trade publications and venues, labeling AAHOA’s activities a form of “radicalism.”65 Later in 1999, Cendant cut off support and involvement with AAHOA after expressing fears that the organization would venture further into legislative action to limit the rights and powers of franchisors. What AAHOA viewed as best practices, Cendant and others interpreted as restricting business and operation rights. AAHOA leaders worried that other franchisors would follow suit and suspend their ties and support as well. Fortunately, no other franchisor powerhouses followed Cendant’s lead, and one, AmeriHost, strengthened its support of AAHOA. As Indian American hoteliers came to make up 40 percent of the hospitality industry by the late 1990s, they became more difficult to exclude, a fact not lost on franchisors and corporations. Cendant’s actions inspired more praise than denouncements of AAHOA, and by the early 2000s, AAHOA fell back into favor with Cendant and continued to receive support from Silverman’s corporation. Following the success of the Small Business Franchise Act, AAHOA moved further into political action in 2000 when it held its first legislation action summit and, later, in 2008 when it formed a political action committee to focus on issues of bank lending in the franchise industry. From darlings of the hospitality industry during the mid-1990s to “radicals” and back again, AAHOA experienced growing pains that resulted in the creation of the most powerful association in the hospitality industry and a legislative force to be reckoned with.66
The South provided AAHOA and Indian American hoteliers more generally with an opportunity to witness the depths of racism and discrimination but also the means to challenge these forces. For those Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, and Vietnamese Americans who came before, legal activism produced uneven results. Indian American hoteliers may not have taken into account the many failures or successes of Asian Americans in the courts, but their practically uniform decision not to seek justice through lawsuits against agencies and businesses that discriminated against them was a reflection of how the South and civil rights had evolved through the twentieth century. Indian American hoteliers set up shop in a post–civil rights era, after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was supposed to have leveled the playing field in business operations. As such, identifying discriminatory business practices as racist or in violation of civil rights was difficult for Indian American hoteliers, who largely associated civil rights violations with African Americans. From the formation of AAHOA to the support of legislation for franchisees, Indian American hoteliers engaged in a form of business or entrepreneurial activism that sought to end prejudice rather than racism. Prejudice could only be eradicated through organizational development and outreach; court cases would only lead to antagonistic relations with sellers, buyers, and customers. The fact that Gong Lum almost immediately turned to the local judge to help his daughter gain admission to a white school while H. P. Rama’s initial reaction when faced with a racist seller was to avoid a lawsuit at all costs speaks volumes on both the changing nature of Asian American activism over time and how Asian Americans in the South experienced racism and discrimination not as a unified whole but as individual ethnic groups. In many ways, the actions of the Indian American hoteliers resembled the reactions of Japanese American farmers in Florida and Louisiana who chose to tend to their daily businesses in the face of rising anti-Japanese sentiment and racist constitutional amendments during the early twentieth century. Also, Indian American hoteliers worked openly with whites in the industry, beyond the typical interactions between Asian Americans and lawyers in past southern battles for civil rights. The concentration of Indian Americans in the South, the southern roots of the growing hospitality corporations, and respectability politics created an opportunity for Indian hoteliers to grow as activists in this region and approach the issue of civil rights from an entrepreneurial angle in a post–civil rights era.
In 2014, AAHOA celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary, and leaders and members looked back fondly over its history and its dramatic growth. Today, AAHOA is more than 14,000 members strong, and its annual convention is one of the largest trade association meetings in the country. Indian American hoteliers now make up more than half of the hospitality industry, and many of the early AAHOA members, like H. P. Rama, have moved beyond small motels and into successful corporations and franchises (Rama has done so well that he recently started a university in India to provide students with the know-how for making it in the industry)—accidental hoteliers no more.
While many Indian American hoteliers can look back fondly on their business successes, how can historians track the success of AAHOA as a civil rights organization and Indian American hoteliers as civil rights activists? Perhaps, as Rama and Ravi Patel have explained, it is unfair to classify them and their organization as vehicles for Asian American and Indian American civil rights if their focus was never on civil rights but, rather, equality and an end to prejudice. However, as AAHOA stated in its own mission statement since its earliest days, the goal of fighting “against discriminatory activities” certainly conjures images of civil rights activism. By using stereotypes and racism to deny Indian American hoteliers the same opportunities as others, insurance agencies, customers, and even the large hospitality industry associations denied Indian Americans their basic civil rights and property rights. Also, it was neither an accident nor a coincidence that AAHOA was (and remains) very much a southern-based organization. This was not a national story that just happened to begin and be set in the South; this was part of a larger story and history of racism directed toward Asian Americans in the South and a denial of rights.
But was AAHOA a civil rights organization? That is a difficult question to answer, and as mentioned above, there is division on this even among the organization’s leaders. While Leven, Duschoff, and Silverman refer to AAHOA as a civil rights group, Ravi Patel and H. P. Rama see it differently, although Rama has since changed his opinion slightly: “If you consider ending prejudice a part of civil rights, okay, then AAHOA is about civil rights.”67 Leven also admired the association’s nonlegal approach to civil rights because, as he explained, “you’re never going to do away with prejudice—it’s a human condition, it’s human and it will always be there.” But Leven did consider business rights as civil rights, and he considered AAHOA extraordinarily successful as a civil rights association. During a recent interview, Leven countered that “there is no discrimination in the hospitality industry today—prejudice is still here, but there’s no more discrimination.”68 AAHOA was a civil rights organization that practiced post–civil rights activism by attempting to end prejudiced practices even if it was not able to do away with prejudice altogether. Without any discrimination, however, perhaps AAHOA is a civil rights association no more. The problem lies in how we define civil rights, its boundaries, and its activists when Indian Americans used strategies and tactics to fight against racism that were often different from those of both Asian Americans before them and African Americans.
American-owned-and-operated advertisement on U.S. Highway 84 West outside Valdosta, Georgia, 2015. Photo by the author.
Driving along Highway 84 in southern Georgia today, going east from Tallahassee toward Valdosta, one would be hard-pressed not to notice a billboard advertising a hotel as American-owned. The original signs can still be found here and there, and new “American-owned-and-operated” signs resurfaced in the wake of anti-Muslim sentiment after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, with Americans confusing Hindus for Muslims. The prejudice is still here, if perhaps not the more formal means of discrimination that existed in the early days of AAHOA. As time moved on, the model minority myth obscured the previous battles of Asian Americans in the South against de jure forms of discrimination and wiped Asian Americans from the history of civil rights activism in the region. However, prejudice remains as perhaps the most difficult battle yet for Asian American activists, and if Leven is right, then this will be an ongoing battle for years, decades, and centuries to come. As Leven explained in a recent interview, “Prejudice will always be here, you just have to work with it or work against it. Maybe you can end your book on that.”