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On Patrons and Shoppers: Representations of Consumer Culture in the Black Press from 1890 to 1920
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2025
Abstract
This article traces the early origins of Black consumer culture as it was portrayed in the Black press from the late 1800s to the early 1920s. It argues that Black newspapers were important agents in shaping how African Americans conceived of and interacted with the evolving commercial sphere around the turn of the century. Papers such as the Pittsburgh Courier, the Broad Ax, the Tulsa Star, and many others celebrated participation in the consumer arena as a respectable and desired practice. They also distinguished between shopping, as a social feminine pursuit, and patronizing Black-owned businesses, which was perceived as a gender-neutral, or even manly, racial duty. Espousing African American elite ideologies such as racial uplift and self-help, Black editors presented any purchasing of goods as an upright activity, which adorned its performer with affluence, respect, and power. Such portrayal encouraged the participation of African Americans in the consumer sphere and implied that it was an arena of similarity rather than difference.
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- Information
- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , January 2025 , pp. 55 - 72
- Copyright
- © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)
References
Notes
1 Roscoe W. Dunjee, “The Negro in Business,” in Official Proceedings of the Second Conference on the Negro in Business, Oct. 1947, box 15, Department of Commerce, Records of the Office of the Secretary, Records of the Advisor on Negro Affairs, 1940–1963, NC 54/Entry 9, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.
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8 Up to the 1920s, an overwhelming majority of African Americans lived in the South. In his study of southern Black consumers, Paul K. Edwards found that a majority of “common and semi-skilled labor families” shopped at small, independent stores, which sold medium or cheap quality goods. See Edwards, The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer, 84–85; In his book about Mississippi consumer culture, Ted Ownby explains that, even with the expansion of the state’s consumer sphere, beginning around 1900, “the most significant continuity,” was that “African Americans still had not become significant figures in the stores.” See Ownby, American Dreams in Mississippi, 95.
9 Gallon, Kim T., Pleasure in the News: African American Readership and Sexuality in the Black Press (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020), 11 Google Scholar.
10 For more on the concept of racial uplift, see Gaines, Kevin Kelly, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 The concept of the leisure class was developed by Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
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13 McGovern, Charles, Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 62–65Google Scholar.
14 The leading studies of the Black press include Dahn, Eurie, Jim Crow Networks: African American Periodical Cultures (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Washburn, Patrick Scott, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Vogel, Todd, ed., The Black Press: New Literary and Historical Essays (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Pride, Armistead Scott and Wilson, Clint C., A History of the Black Press (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Wolseley, Roland Edgar, The Black Press, U.S.A. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Thornbrough, Emma Lou, “American Negro Newspapers, 1880–1914,” Business History Review 40 (Winter 1966): 467–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For studies dedicated to specific editors and their careers, see Ottley, Roi, The Lonely Warrior: The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1955)Google Scholar; Bunie, Andrew, Robert L. Vann of the Pittsburgh Courier: Politics and Black Journalism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Horne, Gerald, The Rise and Fall of the Associated Negro Press: Claude Barnett’s Pan-African News and the Jim Crow Paradox (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For studies dedicated to the Black press’s role in the struggle for civil rights, see Carroll, Fred, Race News: Black Journalists and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Twentieth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017)Google Scholar; Jordan, William G., Black Newspapers and America’s War for Democracy, 1914–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2001)Google Scholar; Simmons, Charles A., The African American Press: A History of News Coverage during National Crises, with Special Reference to Four Black Newspapers, 1827–1965 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998)Google Scholar; Finkle, Lee, Forum for Protest: The Black Press during World War II (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.
15 Green, Adam, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940–1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 108 Google Scholar. For other works that examine the Black press beyond the fight for civil rights, see Gallon, Pleasure in the News; Gallon, Kim, “Silences Kept: The Absence of Gender and Sexuality in Black Press Historiography,” History Compass 10 (Feb. 2012): 207–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haywood, D’Weston, Let Us Make Men: The Twentieth-Century Black Press and a Manly Vision for Racial Advancement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 In order to ascertain the full contours of the discourse surrounding consumption in the Black press, I performed a vast keyword search in twenty-one newspapers published during the period and available online. The search resulted in hundredes of hits. The anaysis in this article is based on a close reading of the results. The newspapers surveyed were all weeklies published between the 1890s and the late 1920s. They include the Baltimore Afro American, Chicago Defender, Norfolk Journal and Guide, Philadelphia Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier, available via ProQuest Historical Newspapers. The West Virginia Advocate, Appeal (St. Paul, Minnesota), Black Dispatch (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), Broad Ax (Salt Lake City, Utah, from 1895 to 1899, then Chicago), Bystander (Des Moines, Iowa), California Eagle (Los Angeles), Colored American (Washington, D.C.), Denver Star and its predecessor Franklin’s Paper, Montana Plaindealer (Helena), Nashville Globe, New York Age, Richmond Planet, Seattle Republican, Tulsa Star, and Washington Bee, available via Newspapers.com or the Library of Congress.
17 Paul R. Mullins explains that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, many Black Americans welcomed “genteel materialism” as a way to demonstrate their “suitability for civil and consumer citizenship.” See Mullins, Race and Affluence, 118.
18 Marchand, Roland, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 64 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Guarneri, Julia, Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 It is hard to determine the exact number of Black papers or their circulation since N. W. Ayer and Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory listed them only occasionally. See Washburn, The African American Newspaper, 48–49, 83; Thornbrough, “American Negro Newspapers, 1880–1914.”
21 Jordan, Black Newspapers and America’s War, 19.
22 Jordan, Black Newspapers and America’s War, 20–25. The editorial from the Indianapolis World is quoted in Thornbrough, “American Negro Newspapers, 1880–1914,” 487.
23 “Montgomery,” Advocate, Dec. 17, 1908.
24 Broad Ax, May 5, 1906.
25 These early versions of society columns were a feature of most Black newspapers as well as local white papers. For example, in the state of Oklahoma, such columns appeared in African American papers such as the Tulsa Star and the Black Dispatch, as well as in small-town papers like the Muldrow Sun and the Claremore Progress. They were not featured in widely distributed papers like the Oklahoma Daily.
26 “Mrs. M. Henderson Shopping,” Chicago Defender, Dec. 25, 1920, 9.
27 For more on the role of women in the emergence of consumer society and the remaking of modern urban spaces, see, for example, McGovern, Sold American, 36–48; Remus, Emily, A Shoppers’ Paradise: How the Ladies of Chicago Claimed Power and Pleasure in the New Downtown (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benson, Susan Porter, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Rappaport, Erika, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For studies that examine Black women’s experience in turn-of-the-century urban spaces, see Hartman, Saidiya V., Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019)Google Scholar; Harris, LaShawn, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deutsch, Sarah, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870–1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 “Women’s World,” Afro-American, Aug. 6, 1904.
29 “A Distinction,” Tulsa Star, Aug. 8, 1914.
30 “Art of Shopping,” Broad Ax, July 10, 1915.
31 “Shopping and Buying,” Chicago Defender, Mar. 6, 1915.
32 “Shopper’s Comfort,” Broad Ax, Sept. 16, 1905.
33 Howard, Vicki, From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 14 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 “Just as Bad,” New York Age, Nov. 2, 1916.
35 The Appeal, June 15, 1907.
36 For more on this practice and on American journalism in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Blondheim, Menahem, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844–1897 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 “Sympathy,” Broad Ax, Feb. 5, 1916. The same piece was published by the paper also on Feb. 12 and Feb. 16 as well as in the Pioneer Express (Pembina, North Dakota), the Daily Alaskan (Skagway, Alaska), the Bridgeton (New Jersey) Express, and the Lovington (New Mexico) Leader, among several additional papers.
38 For more on the education of young Black women in cities, see, for example, Chatelain, Marcia, South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners; Mitchell, Righteous Propagation; Wolcott, Victoria W., Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
39 “Shoppers’ Headache,” Montana Plaindealer, Feb. 14, 1908.
40 Broad Ax, Dec. 25, 1897.
41 “How Shoppers Are Sold,” Broad Ax, Aug. 6, 1904.
42 “To Detect Impure Material, Broad Ax, Jan. 18, 1919.
43 See, for example, “Don’ts for Buyers,” Broad Ax, May 6, 1916; “When Buying Furs,” Broad Ax, Jan. 9, 1915.
44 “Side Talk to All,” Washington Bee, Nov. 3, 1894.
45 “Do You Shop All Day and Then Purchase Nothing?” Pittsburgh Courier, June 2, 1923. I suggest this article is original since an extensive search did not locate it in any other publication available online.
46 See, for example, “A Remarkable New Departure in the Business Life of Nashville,” Nashville Globe, Sept. 13, 1907; “Anderson Has Large Furniture Business,” New York Age, Oct. 14, 1922.
47 The opening of the store was reported on by the Delta Independent, the Gilpin Observer, the Lamar Register, and the Springfield Herald.
48 “Denver’s Big Building,” Franklin’s Paper the Statesman, Apr. 5, 1907.
49 On race relations in Colorado and the role of the Statesmen in African American migration, see Stephens, Ronald J., “The Influence of Marcus Mosiah and Amy Jacques Garvey: On the Rise of Garveyism in Colorado,” in Enduring Legacies: Ethnic Histories and Cultures of the Colorado Borderlands, ed. Arturo J. Altama, et al. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2011), 139–58Google Scholar.
50 Parker, Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement, 41–42.
51 “Denver’s Big Building.”
52 A notable exception comprises the reports on African American boycotts of Jim Crow cars that featured in the Black press around 1900. For more on this topic, see Kelley, Right to Ride; Glickman, Lawrence B., Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53 Hale, Making Whiteness, 123.
54 The choice not to report on racial discrimination in consumer spaces is especially surprising since Black editors and publishers, like many affluent African Americans, exerted efforts in order to avoid discourtesy and maltreatment. As Parker documents, The Afro-American publisher Carl Murphy and his family refused to shop at Baltimore department stores and preferred to travel great distances in order to receive decent customer service. See Parker, Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement, 51.
55 See Lears, T. J. Jackson, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994)Google Scholar.
56 W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro in Business; Report of a Social Study Made under the Direction of Atlanta University, together with the Proceedings of the Fourth Conference for the Study of the Negro Problems, Held at Atlanta University, May 30–31, 1899 (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1899), 12, 50.
57 “Manchester Letter,” Richmond Planet, Mar. 6, 1897.
58 Broad Ax, Feb. 3, 1900.
59 Tulsa Star, Aug. 8, 1916.
60 See “shop, v. 1”; “shopping, n.2”; “patron, n.”; “patronize, v.”; OED Online, Oxford University Press, accessed Dec. 2022: https://www.oed.com/?tl=true.
61 Haywood, Let Us Make Men, 2–3.
62 “Deceive Not Yourself,” Denver Star, Dec. 11, 1915.
63 “Self-Help,” Advocate, Dec. 16, 1909.
64 Amelia Johnson, “Letter to the Editor,” Afro-American, May 29, 1915.
65 For more on this process and African American consumer citizenship in the 1920s and 1930s, see Walker, Style and Status, 15.
66 The Pittsburgh Courier, for example, increased its circulation from 7,920 in 1917 to 50,523 in 1930. See N. W. Ayer and Son’s Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer, 1917); N. W. Ayer and Son’s Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer, 1931).
67 Regev, “‘We Want No More Economic Islands,’” 4.
68 Chambers, , Madison Avenue and the Color Line, 3 Google Scholar.