Black Friday (hoax)

The Black Friday hoax is an internet hoax about the origin of the term "Black Friday." The term denotes the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, a day that traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. A post shared on social networks since at least 2013 makes the false claim that the name derives from a day when slave traders sold slaves at a discount. The term actually originates from a 19th century financial crisis.

The hoax
The hoax claims that the term Black Friday was originally used for "the day after Thanksgiving" when slave traders sold slaves at a discount for the upcoming winter. One of the posts was accompanied by a "1904 photo" claiming to show African slaves in America, but which actually depicts Aboriginal prisoners in Wyndham, Australia from around that time. The image dates from at least 2013, and appeared on Facebook in 2018 and 2019.

It is one of many "fanciful" claims that have surfaced over time due to the term's distant and convoluted historical provenance but it caught on and remains a viral phenomenon that regularly appears around the time of the eponymous holiday, on various social media platforms, including Twitter.

The claim has been debunked as a hoax by experts and the media,   including African online media and fact-checking websites,  but remains popular.

The term “Black Friday” was first used in relation to a 19th-century financial crisis, and became associated with a specific social disturbance, and indirectly with retail finances. In the late 1980s, the term was re-invented and promoted by retailers to denote the discounts offered to the seasonal shoppers and it spread nationwide across the United States. Through the years, discount-offer days using the "Black Friday" moniker were used for additional dates of the year, such as Amazon's "Black Friday in July" of 2015. Additionally, the use of the term for discount-offer Fridays spread beyond the U.S. It remains the prevalent use of the term.