As We Say Goodbye to Sears, Don’t Forget All They Did to Fight Jim Crow
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Politics Features Sears
Sears is filing for bankruptcy this week, and most of us millennials likely saw the news and shrugged our shoulders, as it’s simply another data point in the death of retail. Of course, Sears is going out of business. We don’t need its array of products anymore, that’s what the internet is for. That said, the revolutionary freedom brought to our fingertips by the internet is actually just following the lead of the Sears catalog, and it was a major factor in African Americans gaining a measure of independence from the Jim Crow south, as Louis Hyman, Associate Professor of History at Cornell and the Director of the Institute for Workplace Studies, detailed on Twitter last night.
Every time a black southerner went to the local store they were confronted with forced deference to white customers who would be served first.
— Louis Hyman (@louishyman) October 15, 2018
The stores were not self-service, so the black customers would have to wait. And then would have to ask the proprietor to give them goods (often on credit because…sharecropping). The landlord often owned the store. In every way shopping reinforced hierarchy. Until #Sears
— Louis Hyman (@louishyman) October 15, 2018
Southern storekeepers fought back. They organized catalogue bonfires in the street.
— Louis Hyman (@louishyman) October 15, 2018
Happened enough that sears instructed customers to evade the postmaster and directly speak to the mail carrier:
“just give the letter and the money to the mail carrier and he will get the money order at the post office and mail it in the letter for you.” pic.twitter.com/iegVjvvvR3— Louis Hyman (@louishyman) October 15, 2018
These rumors didn’t affect sales but show how race and commerce connected in the countryside. And how dangerous it was to the local order, to white supremacy, to have national markets.
— Louis Hyman (@louishyman) October 15, 2018
Wow. So much response! If you would like to know more about the larger history of Sears and resisting white supremacy, check out this video from our series on the history of capitalism. #thread. Also #JohnHenry and #webDubois. https://t.co/zC9Qb4z6Gk
— Louis Hyman (@louishyman) October 15, 2018
So as we say goodbye to an American institution, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Sears for their significant efforts to provide avenues outside our racist structures. A simple catalog may not seem like much, but giving people agency over their own lives is proof that America can sometimes live up to its lofty ideals, despite 20th and 21st century conservative politicians’ insatiable desire to restrict our democracy.
Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.