Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s

by Traci Parker

In this book, Traci Parker examines the movement to racially integrate white-collar work and consumption in American department stores, and broadens our understanding of historical transformations in African American class and labor formation. Built on the goals, organization, and momentum of earlier struggles for justice, the department store movement channeled the power of store workers and consumers to promote black freedom in the mid-twentieth century. Sponsoring lunch counter sit-ins and protests in the 1950s and 1960s, and challenging discrimination in the courts in the 1970s, this movement ended in the early 1980s with the conclusion of the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. affirmative action cases and the transformation and consolidation of American department stores. In documenting the experiences of African American workers and consumers during this era, Parker highlights the department store as a key site for the inception of a modern black middle class, and demonstrates the ways that both work and consumption were battlegrounds for civil rights.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Business

328 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 2019

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traci Parker’s Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement revises the long civil rights movement historiography by calling attention to the neglected department store movement. Parker highlights the ways in which the department store movement sought to address both labor and civil rights, while simultaneously examining the role of consumerism in the development of the black middle class. Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement argues that the democratization of consumption through department stores made them ideal sites for resistance. Centering on New York and Chicago, Parker offers a detailed analysis of the movement while tracking the transition of retail labor unions from ignoring civil rights to linking them with labor rights. While Parker’s final chapters are useful, they are not as well integrated as the first three. Nevertheless, her analysis of the lunch counter movements in the south demonstrates the ways in which southern organizing was influenced by northern activists. The final chapter contributes to the literature on capitalism, globalization and the rise of big-box retailers as Parker makes plain the limitations of capitalism in addressing inequality and the new forms of gendered and race discrimination in American retail.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy read with repetitive themes on conspicuous consumption and how it pertains to the race-class system of hierarchy in the US. Parker discusses the worker and consumer side means of resistance and analyzes what impact they had by examining specific real world situations. Her writing style didn’t feel too far off from Terra Hunter, my classmate made a good point that it felt like a continuation of “To ‘Joy my Freedom.”