9 - The Politics of Boycotting: Experiences in Germany and the United States Since 1880

Summary

On December 29, 1930, the Associated Negro Press (ANP) offered its membership, which included nearly all of the major black newspapers in the United States, a feature listing the “most significant happenings” of the year. In the opinion of the leading African-American news agency, one of the thirteen events “which have meant most to the Negro race” was the “employment campaign of the Chicago Whip which won 5,000 new jobs for Negroes and had as its highlight, picketing, boycott (new forms of economic protest by Negroes), and the agreement of the Woolworth chain stores to employ colored clerks.” What had been “new” at the beginning of 1930 had become a widely used tactic by the end of the year. After the success of the boycott campaign in the South Side of Chicago, black communities in other cities quickly adopted the “new” weapon against discriminatory hiring policies of white-owned businesses. During the summer and fall, journalists reported campaigns on Detroit and Los Angeles. At the end of 1930, at least two consumer boycotts were going on in Ohio, one in Toledo and another in Columbus.

The editors of the Chicago Whip had been the first to promote successfully the idea that the black community should use its buying power as a political weapon to get jobs in companies that discriminated against African-American applicants. In 1929, this black newspaper had launched the first boycott campaign against some stores of the Consumers Corporation in the “colored district” of Chicago. But it was not until the spring of 1930 that the efforts of the Whip received nationwide coverage in the black press, which was essential for the spread of the “new” tactic to other cities, since the white media tried to ignore the boycotts. On March 1, 1930, the ANP distributed its first feature about the campaign of the Chicago Whip.