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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 14. The Negro in Business, the Professions, Public Service and Other White Collar Occupations - 2. The Negro in Business
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Chapter 14. The Negro in Business 313
there were few persons of the moneyed class who had any close contact
with individual Negroes so that they might judge a Negro on the basis
of his personal qualifications.
A comparatively recent development which may have some influence
on the Negro’s position in business is the ^Mon’t buy where you can’t work”
campaign which started over a decade ago.® On its face, this movement is
an attempt to get Negro workers into white-owned stores, but it may be
considered here because, in part, it is stimulated by Negro businessmen who
hope to attract Negro customers away from white-owned business. The
right of the Negro to boycott and picket establishments which discriminate
against him was long contested from a legal standpoint. It was not until
1938 that this right was finally established through a decision by the
Supreme Court.^^ This made it possible for the movement to develop.
The direct purpose of the movement is to increase the number of
Negroes employed in white-owned stores, movie theaters and other estab-
lishments in Negro districts. Since usually the aim is not to remove white
workers already employed but only to make the establishments hire some
proportion of Negroes when new workers are taken on, the results cannot
immediately be of great quantitative significance for Negro employment.
The comparatively small number of white collar workers in most stores
with large Negro patronage indicates that even the complete success of
the movement must be rather limited. There may be some secondary
results, however, in that a number of Negroes receive practical training in
efficiently managed businesses—a training which is badly needed but for
which there has been little opportunity so far. It may eventually broaden
the basis for the recruiting of Negro entrepreneurs. Reid points out that
this boycott movement has been used mainly in the urban North where
the Negro has greater political and citizenship rights than in the South.^®
Too, it is probably principally in the North that there are a great number
of white-owned stores in Negro areas which are large enough to have any
employees of white collar status.^®
Since the boycott movement has had but a few years of full freedom
from legal restraint—and in the South, of course, is still met with severe
intimidation—one can, perhaps, expect more from it in the future, partic-
ularly if the organizations behind it become stronger and more permanent.
But we should not forget the limitations of this strategy. Even if all jobs
in white stores in Negro sections were given to Negroes, it would be just
a drop in the bucket compared with the number of jobs Negroes need to
have. The Negro’s main concern must be to break down job segregation
and job discrimination in the white economy. He might even—as some
Negro writers point out^®—^jeopardize this greater objective by asking for
‘From an ideological and organizational point of view this movement will be treated
in Chapters 38 and 39.
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