Project Title

The Price of Freedom: Race, Consumption, and the Long Black Freedom Struggle, 1915-1970

Project Description

My monograph places Black shoppers at the center of histories of consumption and the Civil Rights Movement. In the wake of WWI, the rapid expansion of chain stores destabilized the racial norms governing shopping in the South.  Black customers experienced less discrimination in chains as a byproduct of their efforts to standardize the shopping experience. The history of chains demonstrates that race-neutral racism, often associated with the post-civil rights era, has roots in the early twentieth century. The Price of Freedom is also a history of Black anti-racist consumer activism. I track how activists incorporated shifting attitudes towards consumption into their advocacy. Amid the Cold War, the United States held out mass consumption as proof of the benefits of capitalism and democracy. In response, activists framed the racial inequities Black shoppers encountered as a potent symbol of their exclusion from first class citizenship. Black southerners understood consumption as a key battle within the broader war for racial equality.