Boycott of South St. Businesses

Here, we stand at the corner of 7th and South St, a major commercial corridor today and in Du Bois’ time. As I mentioned earlier in our tour, there were a lot of community building within the black community at this time and also a lot of organizing, forming unions where possible, mutual aid societies, or other institutions. In 1916, a major action took place here on South St that shows this level of organization. At this time, the black community held a “mass-meeting” at the Allen A.M.E Church at 17th and Bainbridge. At this meeting, they discussed complaints related to white-owned businesses on South St pushing for the removal of Black people from the police-force, as well as price-gouging and unfair treatment of Black customers. The boycott lasted months, though in the end it was not exceedingly successful in achieving its aims. One thing this difficulty of exerting influence through collective action might indicate is the heterogeneity of the neighborhood. At this time, the Black community was mixed in with immigrant and native-born White people in the same neighborhood, largely because they had to be proximal to their work. Thus, these businesses might not have relied solely on the Black customers who were boycotting.

However, one thing that this boycott did do is continue to spur efforts towards economic self-sufficiency of the community. This is the same effort that led to mutual aid societies and banks being formed. Black people, despite the prejudice and systemic racism leveled against them, acted as citymakers in their own right and organized to improve their conditions. Du Bois noted and supported these efforts (though not without showing some if his own biases yet again), saying that:

“Looking back over the field which we have thus reviewed – the churches, societies, unions, attempts at business cooperation, institutions, and newspapers – it is apparent that the largest hope for the ultimate rise of the Negro lies in this mastery of the art of social organized life. To be sure, compared with his neighbors, he has yet advanced but a short distance; we are apt to condemn this lack of unity, the absence of carefully planned and laboriously executed effort among these people, as a voluntary omission – a bit of carelessness. It is far more than this, it is lack of social education, of group training, and the lack can only be supplied by a long, slow process of growth. And the chief value of the organizations studies is that they are evidences of growth. Of actual accomplishment they have, to be sure, something to show, but nothing to boast of inordinately…And yet all these and the other agencies have accomplished much, and their greatest accomplishment is stimulation of effort to further and more effective organization among a disorganized and headless host….The present efforts of Negroes in working together along various lines are peculiarly promising for the future of both races.”