Previous Intro Note: Consumerism on the Farm
To give a fuller picture of the position of African Americans in the consumer economy, about which it is difficult to find much direct documentation, material included here covers such topics as blacks and labor, blacks as small businessmen and business women, and the attempt to establish a Negro Industrial Commission. (DETAIL NOTE National Negro Industrial Commission) Material that has as its primary focus racial discrimination and civil rights issues has not been included.
Documents selected from the General Collections and the Manuscript Division represent the National Negro Business League, a little-studied national network of small black businessmen. Started by Booker T. Washington in 1900, it continued in the 1920s, after Washington's death, with League president and Tuskegee Institute principal Robert R. Moton at the helm. (DETAIL NOTE National Negro Business League) The League is still in existence today, though headquartered in Washington, D.C., under the name of the National Business League. On the whole, League materials in the Coolidge-Consumerism collection from the Robert R. Moton Papersand the Booker T. Washington Papers show that as small businessmen, African Americans demonstrated initiative and a measure of success in making their own way in the American economy of the 1920s.
The League consisted of local chapters of small-business entrepreneurs, men and a few women, concentrated in towns in the South but also scattered throughout the Midwest, the far West, and the Northeast. Local Leagues operated under the umbrella of the state and national League offices, in essence providing a black alternative to the white businessmen's chamber of commerce network, although a very few towns also had a black chamber of commerce. The League conducted and in 1928 published the Report of the Survey of Negro Business (1928), to meet the need for more information about the state of black business.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's illustrated monograph, Extension Work Among Negroes Conducted by Negro Agents, 1923 (1925), in the General Collections, depicts in some detail a non-entrepreneurial line of work open to African Americans in the agricultural South (INTRO NOTE Farmers). Extension agents performed both "farm demonstration work" and "home demonstration work." Farm demonstration work included farm management and marketing. Home demonstration work included household management and home furnishing. It was assumed that such extension agents could teach farm families how to make more money and how to spend earnings wisely and, through strategic demonstrations and possibly the establishment of "model homes" in the community, could encourage better homes.
Materials in the National Urban League Papers of the Manuscript Division present a larger economic picture in terms of two city surveys of African American economic life during the twenties, one of Fort Wayne, Indiana and the other of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The search for a better standard of living and less discrimination led many blacks to migrate to the urban North from rural areas in the South.
Once in the North, as a December 1926 editorial in the journal Opportunity notes, their employment situation benefited from 1920s legislation that imposed stringent restrictions on the number of immigrants coming into the country (DETAIL NOTE Immigration). An article in the October 1927 issue of Opportunity by Charles S. Johnson discusses "Some Economic Aspects of Negro Migration," and touches on the subject of Mexican immigrants. An article in the May 1927 issue of Southern Workman describes "Migration Difficulties in Michigan."
Another economic solution that African Americans tried was to live in exclusively black towns, as illustrated by the town of Boley, Oklahoma, discussed in the August 1925 issue of Opportunity, the monthly publication of the National Urban League.
Much of the advertising and many of the features directed at African-American consumers appeared in the newspapers constituting the "negro press." Technical impediments related to oversize pages and scanning from microfilm made it difficult to digitize these newspapers in 1995, when the Coolidge-Consumerism collection was in production. However, readers interested in researching these newspapers might begin by consulting the December 1925 issue of Opportunity that is included here, for a regular year-end feature listing the "Outstanding Negro Newspapers of 1925."
According to Paul K. Edwards in The Southern Urban Negro As a Consumer (1932), the relatively small number of "white magazines" to which African-American households subscribed included, from among those in the Coolidge-Consumer collection, The Delineator, Good Housekeeping and Country Gentleman (p. 179). Edwards' study features reproductions and discussions of advertisements targeted to African Americans, as well as analysis of black consumers' buying patterns, fleshing out the portrait of the black consumer.
For "black magazines" representative of a general black readership, readers can turn to The Messenger: The World's Greatest Negro Monthly, with its invigorating mix of feature articles, fiction, poetry, and ads. The magazine features on the back covers of many of its issues full-page advertisements for female African-American entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker's famous hair and skin-care products. Hair and skin preparations were among the products most purchased by black consumers. (DETAIL NOTE Madame C.J. Walker) For sample ads promoting Madame C.J. Walker's chain of beauty culture schools, as well as the Poro School of Beauty Culture, readers can consult the November 1927 issue of Opportunity.
Opportunity, published by the National Urban League (which carried fiction, poems and a few ads) and
The collection also provides access to two rare catalogues of so-called "race records," a consumer product that African Americans purchased in significant quantities. The Columbia Race Records catalogue (1925) offers "the latest blues by Columbia colored stars." A 1929 Victor Records catalogue offers "Vocal Blues, Religious Spirituals, Red Hot Dance Tunes, Sermons, Novelties." Readers interested in articles and advertisements showing how phonographs and records were marketed to the black consumer can access selections from the Motion Picture and Recorded Sound Division's reference collection serial Talking Machine World for June 15, 1926.
The Better Homes Movement encompassed an attempt to bring blacks as well as whites into the consumer economy. Guidebook for Better Homes Campaigns in Rural Communities and Small Towns (1927) and Guidebook for Better Homes Campaigns in Cities and Towns (1927) show that African Americans were a part of these campaigns. School Cottages for Training in Home-Making: A Study of School Practice Houses and Home Economics Cottages (1926), another monograph published by Better Homes in America, shows how black as well as white children received consumer-oriented training within the educational system in how to be the home-makers of the future.
Still other items in the collection illustrate the adversities faced by African Americans in the 1920s economy. The Income and Standard of Living of Unskilled Laborers in Chicago (1927) includes discussion of immigrant and black workers. Case Studies of Unemployment (1931) portrays unemployment among whites, blacks and immigrants before the "crash," in the late 1920s. (INTRO NOTE Labor)
Those interested in the subject of African-American women at high levels of employment in the federal government may wish to consult the Coolidge Papers case file (DETAIL NOTE Mary Church Terrell)
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