Abstract

"“Negroes Don’t Trade Here;” Boycotting for Jobs in Depression Era Atlanta"

Micah Jones, University of Virginia (mcjo@uoregon.edu)

On November 16, 1935, three white clerks at the West Hunter and Asby Street A&P in Atlanta, Georgia accused a middle aged Black customer of stealing and attacked him. It was common for Black shoppers in the Jim Crow South to experience discrimination and violence at the hands of white staff. Shoppers at the West Hunter and Ashby store had long complained that the all-white staff was dishonest and discourteous in their dealings with their majority Black customer base. The assault caused these long simmering tensions to boil over. Large crowds of residents gathered outside the store and formed a picket line. They hung a sign that read: “Negroes Don’t Trade Here. Stay Out.” The protestors notified the A&P that they would be boycotting and picketing the store until the company hired Black clerks.
My paper situates the 1935 Atlanta A&P boycott within the broader history of the Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work Movement (DBWYCWM) of the 1920s and 1930s. Black activists boycotted stores which served majority Black customer bases, but refused to hire Black workers. The movement has primarily been understood as a Black labor movement concentrated in the urban North and Midwest. Using the Atlanta campaign, I approach the movement from the perspective of Black southern consumers. Black shoppers demanded the A&P hire Black clerks as a way to secure a shopping experience free from discrimination and violence. They made this demand to the A&P in their guise as consumers, by framing Black clerks as a kind of perquisite for Black customers. I demonstrate how Black southerners’ struggles for equity as workers and consumers were inextricably intertwined. I contend that Black shoppers’ experiences of racism within commercial spaces motivated them to engage in organized forms of resistance as part of the Civil Rights Movement.