Sears has NOTHING!

Post Reply New Topic

We shopped at Montgomery Ward all the time

I've seen Ben Franklin, like the one in Monroe, but have never been in there either and thought it was a craft store like Michaels.

Every time black Southerners went to a local store, they were forced to wait as white customers were served first. Serving white customers before black ones might seem a relatively small insult, but behind that racial ordering was an omnipresent threat of violence. Products in these stores reminded black shoppers that whites did not consider them deserving of human dignity: Grotesque caricatures of black faces were used as a “humorous” way to sell toothpaste, soap and nearly anything else; far more harrowing, with the rise of public “spectacle” lynching in the 1890s, black people could find the charred remains of lynching victims for sale alongside postcards commemorating the event.

Waiting for service was not mere discrimination. It was part of a larger world of white violence.

Then there was the matter of buying items on credit. Farmers, white and black, depended on credit to survive until the harvest. Credit came through small general stores, where the (white) shopkeeper would decide what you were allowed to buy. Black sharecroppers would often be in perpetual debt to a store, which was often owned by their landlord and employer. The credit price for goods, higher than the cash price, always managed to leave sharecroppers a little in the red even after they were paid for their crops. This debt system bound black farmers to the land in an almost feudal fashion. Adding insult to injury, black people were often even not allowed to purchase the same quality clothes as white people.

If you were a black Southerner in 1900, finding another way to shop would have been a godsend. Enter the Sears catalog.

The catalog, which was introduced around 1891, undid the power of the storekeeper, the landlord and, by extension, the racially marked consumerism of Jim Crow. All of a sudden, black families could buy whatever they wanted without asking permission. The Sears catalog, unlike the earlier Montgomery Ward catalog, also offered credit. With that credit, black farmers could buy the same overalls and hats as white people, and even the same guns (and farm equipment).

Prices were lower, too. Indeed, the catalog was so successful in part because it brought low prices to the countryside. And flipping through the catalog was like strolling through a department store in Chicago. For sharecroppers who had often never have left the county in which they were born, the catalog was a window into another, freer life.

Shopkeepers resisted this newfound freedom. They convinced their customers to burn the catalogs in public squares, and offered prizes for the most catalogs destroyed. Part of the resistance was economic, pushing back against the catalog’s threat to local businesses, but the racism of Jim Crow was also at work. In an attempt to discourage whites from using the catalog, shopkeepers told them that Sears was a black company, and that was why it sold by mail — to hide its black face.

Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck, the company’s founders, published photos to “prove” they were white. They were not anti-racist crusaders. But in an important sense, it didn’t matter to black customers whether Sears itself was for or against Jim Crow. Simply by giving African-Americans equal access to consumer goods, the company doing something radical, even if it was profitable...

Why aren't more people depressed about the future of brick-and-mortar?

Why aren't more people depressed about the future of brick-and-mortar?

I like how they ...

-deliver groceries now
-load your fridge for you
-voice commands to add items to your grocery list
-track grocery list
-submit list to delivery service

It's like room service at a hotel.



[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?t ime_continue=54&v=8bOuVjbcTgs[/youtube]

Montgomery Ward
Woolworth
Kresge

Are stores I've never been in.

I've seen Ben Franklin, like the one in Monroe, but have never been in there either and thought it was a craft store like Michaels.

Most of my clothes are bought in smaller mall shops like Old Navy, H&M, Ameican Eagle etc.

Why aren't more people depressed about the future of brick-and-mortar?

I used to walk around the malls on the Vegas strip all the time. But I was always wearing shades and earphones. Being at a mall here is the one thing that makes me feel like I'm back in Vegas. That and the big Indian casino.