A Digital History Project
During an exceptionally frigid December in 1933, picketers faced intimidation and numerous threats as they protested on Pennsylvania Avenue in West Baltimore. In addition to enduring brutal weather conditions, they had to navigate encounters with harassing cops, angry store managers, and unfamiliar, shady onlookers. The intentions of the unidentified spectators were presumed to be sinister and troublesome to the movement, including possible harm to eliminate the boycott leader Prophet K Costonie. Mrs. Vivian-Thurgood Marshall reported that one of these suspicious men even followed her from her home on Druid Hill Avenue as she attended a Housewives League meeting to discuss the boycott. Despite these menaces, the mission and commitment remained clear; disrupt the flow of pedestrian traffic into the stores that had refused to hire black workers. Over 100 young men and women committed to picketing and boycotting several stores on Pennsylvania Avenue until those managers and owners would agree to hire Black clerks. The protestors and organizers were in “their” community and ensured that they had their own reinforcement. Neighbors parked at the curbside allowing picketers to take respite from the cold in their car while Pennsylvania Ave eateries provided the marchers with sandwiches. Some local Black physicians and drug stores committed to provide care to picketers suffering from the prolonged exposure to the cold, while bodyguards hid their leader. Despite the community backing, the movement ended a couple of weeks later when an all-white, all-male business association of Pennsylvania Avenue successfully issued an injunction against the organizers to end the picketing.
The co-existing threats and the support described here in West Baltimore were commonly experienced in many of the communities that organized a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” protest and boycott during the 1930’s. While this particular battle between black residents and white owners, cops, and associates on Pennsylvania Avenue was short-lived, it was representative of not only the movement but also the ongoing complexity and contradictions of living in “Black” communities. The shopping strips, the main streets, and the retail and entertainment corridors were often a battleground for the racial power dynamic that existed in segregated Black communities. One side fighting for autonomy and agency in their space and the other side attempting to preserve racial hierarchy in space. The “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” movement was one of the many necessary strategies and organizing efforts for black equality and autonomy within these communities.
The Movement
Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work
Between 1929 and 1940, African Americans engaged in economic protests and boycotts to fight against job discrimination, and to gain control of their communities. The “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” movement used picketing and boycotts of local businesses in segregated Black neighborhoods, to compel retail businesses to hire and retain Black workers. Approximately 1.5 million African Americans migrated to the urban North and Midwest in search of improved economic, social, and political freedom. Instead, however, they encountered discriminatory practices, residential segregation, and constrained economic opportunities. Within the confines of their “new” neighborhoods, Blacks were frequently hired only for menial work such as elevator operator or janitor or were altogether excluded from employment in the retail businesses. The Great Depression exacerbated economic and social inequalities as African Americans were the first to be fired and displaced from their positions for white workers. Although Black nationalism encouraged patronage of Black-owned businesses and notions of a self-sustaining Black economy, this was not a reality during the 1920s and 1930s. An estimated 70-80 % of businesses, and up to 90% of retail businesses or shops in the segregated black neighborhoods such as Harlem, NY, Bronzeville, Chicago, and West Baltimore were white-owned. African Americans were therefore reliant on white establishments for their needs and services as well as for local jobs.
Despite the enforced segregation, in the 1920s and 1930s, these communities were still transitioning neighborhoods, with a few white residents dispersed and plenty of white business owners. In some cities, the retail districts functioned as a crossroad where whites and blacks working or residing nearby encountered each other. Subsequently, commercial streets would become a battleground for demonstrating muscle power, with white business owners having political and hiring power, but African Americans preparing to reveal consumer power. Before an actual boycott and picketing of stores began, organizers mobilized and attempted to negotiate with store managers to hire Black workers. When no action was taken, residents took to the streets. The job campaign and boycott movement leveraged the purchasing power of Black residents and employed strategies of disruption across dozens of American cities in the 1930s. The movement occurred in at least 30 cities/communities,1 including Chicago, Harlem, DC, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, and yielded tens of thousands of jobs for black residents.
The movement reflected a diversity of supporters which included housewives, students, the Black elite, local ministers, street orators, Black newspapers, controversial cultists, and nationalists like UNIA Garveyites. It was equally opposed by and trivialized by some African American organizations, intellectuals, and newspapers. Who supported and opposed the movement varied by community and city. Overall, both support for and conflicts within the movement were the results of confining people with class, ideological, religious, and even ethnic differences (American vs Caribbean) within racially segregated spaces. The biggest threats remained to be, however, the police, the courts, store managers, business associations, and white vigilantes.
The Digital Project
A Digital Spatial Project: Mapping an Urban Protest Movement
All aspects of the movement are emblematic of the complexity and contradictions within many urban black communities during the 1930’s and thereafter. The corridors and commercial areas where the movement unfolded revealed racial power dynamics and tension. I argue that by looking at this resistance movement one can gain a greater understanding of Black spaces and communities and how African- Americans employed autonomy and control over their space. “Mapping an Urban Protest Movement” is a digital history project that will use narrative- interactive maps to explore the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” movement within urban Black communities.
The map and project aims to re-center space, specifically segregated black urban space, back into the understanding and interpretation of the movement. Space is not a neutral backdrop for action, but instead reflects power and choices. “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” has largely been seen as a movement about economics and activism ideology, but like the fights for housing equality, it is also a resistance movement about race, place, and space. Within this movement, the negotiations, boycotting, picketing, and even decisions to hire, reflect the choices and power dynamics over space. The boycott movement allowed African Americans to assert some level of autonomy, agency, and control over their space. Whether picketing businesses and retail blocks or using street corners and churches to mobilize, local residents used actions that employed visibility, community, and defiance against the businesses that imposed a racial hierarchy into the resident’s space and place.
This is an evolving project that will include more narration and details over time. This project will eventually use digital storytelling to highlight and journey through the communities within the national map and in a local community. Currently, users can view and interact with the map to see what cities organized a protest. Under each point are the city, the neighborhoods where the protest took place, active dates, and the organizing committee involved. Additional facts include the number of jobs produced by the local campaign2 and the Black population in that city. It is important, however, for me to emphasize that the “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign was never a city-wide campaign and was isolated to the segregated neighborhoods or “negro sections” of the city. The map allows viewers to zoom in directly to the communities that this movement took place in.