1929: The Great Depression
Big Idea
After the period of devastating massacres and rioting that destroyed countless Black businesses, homes, and sources of wealth, African Americans suffered more significant set backs during the depression. Understanding the economic drivers of the White world, Black men and women began to make their own economic wagers by refusing to buy at stores that did not hire Black workers.
The Impact of the Great Depression
The crash of the stock market and subsequent Great Depression in the 1930s led to general economic suffering across the United States. After the very targeted destruction and devastation of Black businesses, homes, and communities through massacres such as The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the East St. Louis Race Riot of 1917, such a national depression only made things worse. Most of the attacks on Black communities were supported by law enforcement and so Black families had very little legal recourse for recovering their livelihoods or economic standing. As a result, Feagin (2014) found that “By 1932, half of Black workers in cities were unemployed. Extreme hunger or starvation was often their lot” (p. 58).
Students
Want to learn more? Watch the video below about the impact of the Great Depression on African American communities across the United States.
Vide from Crash Course Black History on the Great Depression.
“Buy Where You Can Work”
As African Americans faced the Great Depression, the “Buy Where You Can Work” movement began in Baltimore and spread to other cities including St. Louis. A man known in African American circles as the Prophet Kiowa Costonie (also known as “the new Messiah”) began to generate support to resist anti-Black practices. As historian Skotnes (1994) noted, “Costonie initiated a racial advancement campaign to force White-owned stores in the African-American community to hire African-American workers” (p. 735). These “Buy Where You Can Work” campaigns occurred in over 35 cities across the United States. Seeking to use the economic levers they had at their disposal, Black communities demanded that they be hired to work at the stores where they were spending their money.
As they gained attention, they created a wider movement that brought together Black activists from many different organizations. In many ways, the “Buy Where You Can Work” campaign created the momentum and social organizations that then led to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s (Skotnes, 1994, p. 736).
Watch
This video features an interview with Frances Mary Albrier (1898–1987), a community activist who helped organize “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” protests in Berkeley, California, during the Depression.
“We Decided to Picket”
Interview by Malca Chall, “Determined advocate for racial equality,” 1977-78, University of California, Bancroft Library.
Your Turn
How did economics continue to become a way that White and Black Americans negotiated for power?
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From the Library of Congress: Race Relations in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Great Depression and World War II from the National Museum for African and African American History.
Slave Narratives from the Library of Congress collected during the Great Depression.
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NEH EDSITEment Curriculum: FDR: Fireside Chats, the New Deal, and Eleanor (9-12 Grades)
National Archivesteaching materials for the Great Depression.
Social History for Every Classroom - Letter to President Roosevelt about the Challenges Facing African Americans during the Depression.
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Article on how the “Buy Where You Can Work” movement impacted St. Louis.
JoAnn Adams Smith, Selected Neighbors and Neighborhoods of North Saint Louis and Selected Related Events (St. Louis: Friends of Vaughn Cultural Center, 1988), pp. 7–8.
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Harris, L. D. (Winter 2009). Running with the Reds: African American Women and the Communist Party during the Great Depression. Journal of African American History, Vol. 94, No. 1, 21-40