User:Epear/Consumer activism

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African American Consumer Activism in the 1930s:

African American grassroots consumer activism in the 1930s focused primarily on securing their rights as consumers rather than with issues of consumer protection. Historically, African Americans have been excluded from opportunities to work white-collar jobs, instead finding themselves both sustained and exploited in domestic service and farming roles. Kelly Miller, a Howard University sociologist, referred to African Americans as “the surplus man, the last to be hired and the first to be hired”. The Great Depression exacerbated these economic vulnerabilities, and by 1933 nearly two million African Americans were out of work nationwide. In response, African American consumers put economic pressure on local white owned businesses by choosing to shop at African American owned businesses, thus using familiar boycott tactics on a mass scale across major northern cities. The “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” campaign turned the racial segregation of urban communities into an opportunity to economically support African American capitalists while simultaneously protesting the continued exploitation of African American labor by white employers. The campaign was considered successful in ushering an increase of African American employment rates, opportunities for advancement and promotion, and a strengthening of purchasing power. The movement also provided a basic template for direct-action Civil Rights activists to use in the 1960s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycotts or lunch counter sit-ins.

The OPA and Wartime Consumer Activism

The popularity and support for the Office of Price Administration’s wartime rationing systems and price control policies depended on the American women who served as their households main shopper. Grassroots community-based organizations, local government agencies and OPA officials targeted women in an attempt to persuade them to join local boards in charge of rationing and price control. These local boards were often led by women and helped ensure compliance to OPA stabilization policies through recurring meetings with grocery stores, where they would report any potential rule breaking to their local OPA official.

Many of the women consumer activists that worked with the OPA often had experience with other sorts of activist groups such as localized consumer groups or labor unions. These groups' agendas were often aligned with the OPA’s, and in part used the OPA’s legally established framework to organize their own groups.

This mutual relationship between consumer activists and the OPA allowed for consumers to be ensured of their rights to product information and fair prices while simultaneously ensuring the effectiveness of the OPAs policies and their interests. By mobilizing thousands of women across the country, the OPA was able to effectively “Hold the Line”, and keep inflation prices down during World War Two. With the promise of postwar prosperity, women consumer activists all over the country were effectively motivated to stand up for their consumption rights.

It is to be noted that African American consumers defended the OPA as both consumers and specifically as African American consumers as well. Many African American women were specifically interested in this issue of rent control. Although the OPA could not reverse the high prices and discrimination that African Americans faced in the housing market, they could still work to “prevent the extension of this abuse”. In the Washington D.C. office, the OPA had African American members on six of the fifteen price panels. The OPA also made special appeals to African American consumers, with one pamphlet reading “Negroes too, are Consumers”.

Other Topics / Additions (to be added later):

The use of storefront sidewalks and window displays for activism can also be noted. Suffragists in San Francisco used these public spaces to access the vast network of consumers shopping in the downtown boutiques in order to “sell” suffrage to both the men and women of California. Using the displays and advertising techniques employed by retailers, the women of San Francisco were able to successfully use consumer spaces to campaign for their suffrage.

Consumer boycotts have also been an effective strategy for African Americans to gain equality in employment or access to public spaces such as shopping centers. This will be added to the section regarding tactics and objectives.