MONEY TALKS IN THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE
Weisbord, Warren W. Eisenberg and Marvin R.
MONEY TALKS in the City of Brotherly Love by WARREN W. EISENBERG and MARVIN R. WEISBORD "TTave you heard?" said one Main. Line dowager to another at a Philadelphia civic luncheon last winter....
...Indeed, unlike many movements, this one is spectacularly short of men willing to take or share the credit for its success...
...WARREN W. EISENBERG is editor of The Pennsylvania Guardian, a liberal weekly newspaper of politics and public affairs published in Philadelphia...
...There will soon be operations like ours in 300 cities," boasted one Philadelphia minister...
...A one-month deadline seemed especially unfair to Sun officials because the year before the firm had hired a couple of Negro clerks (in a total of 1,500 office workers) and had called in consultants— among them one of the ministers—to advise on the hiring and upgrading of Negro employes...
...Most of the companies have numerous Negro employes...
...Most employers say they agree with the principle of non-discrimination, but many feel they have done and are doing their best...
...There is no dearth of Negro truck drivers...
...We figure about ten per cent of the nation's population is Negro," said one minister, explaining how the A&P's office quota was arrived at, "but it would be unreasonable to demand that twenty-five Negroes be hired...
...It's not that...
...Its sales often experience a dramatic dip, starting the next day...
...This is more effective than a boycott," one minister said, "because it's broadly based on a grass roots movement...
...N6w we tell them, 'Look, you can be a secretary with Gulf Oil or Sun, or a supermarket manager...
...Negroes in Atlantic City, Boston, Providence, New Haven, and Chattanooga are trying now to achieve a movement as dynamic as Philadelphia's...
...Like several other companies The Bulletin did, in the end, hire more Negroes than the ministers had demanded...
...Within eight weeks the A&P had added eighty colored employes—not errand boys, but cashiers, apprentice butchers, and office workers, the positions specifically requested by the ministers...
...It would be like throwing kerosene on the fire," one said...
...The Bulletin had to go to Washington, D.C., for a Negro reporter, to Alabama for a man to work in its mechanical department, and to one of the local Negro papers for a linotype operator...
...Louis and Atlanta on organizational missions...
...The fact that so many firms exceeded their quotas would seem to refute the charge, made by some employers, that there are -not enough Negroes qualified for semi-skilled or skilled jobs...
...But if the loss of business more than offsets new salaries, then hiring is kind of like buying insurance...
...They cut across every line—economic, cultural, educational...
...After all," said one who is close to the boycotts, "nobody's forcing any company to hire people it doesn't need...
...A man's color becomes of much less consequence when he achieves a responsible job, steady income, community status, and self respect...
...Thus, to each company they present a list of job "requests," which though few in number are prestige jobs previously associated only with white skins...
...The reason this movement holds together is that we have no leaders...
...Probably this news came as a shock to some companies which thought they could do nicely without Negro business...
...And, although most Negro girls did not in the past aspire to secretarial work, many of them learned the necessary skills in high school because it seemed even less realistic to aspire to college...
...Well," replied her friend, "I know I shouldn't want to work where I wasn't wanted...
...A firm that does not hire the requested number of Negroes (six did not, at first) becomes the chief topic of conversation in 400 Negro churches the following Sunday...
...In Atlanta, under the auspices of the Reverend Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Negroes have come up with "Operation Breadbasket," a boycott of major bakeries which they hope to spread throughout the South...
...It is one thing to boycott image-conscious manufacturers of nationally-known products and something else to challenge an influential newspaper with the power to release or withhold news favorable or unfavorable to Negroes...
...It had many Negro employes, but the ministers specifically asked the company to hire two Negroes as driver-salesmen, two as clerical workers, and three or four in the cake-icing department...
...In Baltimore, nine companies have met job requests from 200 ministers claiming to influence the buying habits of 100,000 Negroes...
...MARVIN R. WEISBORD is a free lance writer whose articles have appeared in The New Republic, The Reporter, Parents, and other magazines...
...I don't have a chance.' And we didn't have much comeback...
...The consumer boycotts have proved, in a way dramatized by no other mass movement, the degree to which Negroes have become an important part of the American economy...
...Posters appeared in stores and in beauty and barber shops warning Negroes against buying the firm's cakes or pies...
...Selective patronage has not only opened up job opportunities but has awakened hope in a new Negro generation...
...Unfortunately, this bold concept—equaled in no other American city—was until recently much too strong for the city council, the labor unions, and Mayor James H. J. Tate, the unimaginative successor of reform Mayor Richardson Dilworth...
...The paper struck back...
...It is much more ambitious...
...The ministers claim that pressure, actual or potential, from advertisers is the true reason for the newspaper blackout...
...The Philadelphia ministers have taught their method to delegations from other cities...
...They reject the word "boycott," which they say connotes an organized, somehow conspiratorial venture...
...Although Negro income continues to lag far behind that of whites, diet and living habits have given Negroes economic leverage in some areas of the economy out of proportion to their eleven per cent of the national population...
...Said one Philadelphia minister thoughtfully, "Our children used to say, 'Why should I study...
...The ministers, four or five at a time, approach only the largest manufacturers or distributors of consumer products, each company a part of a big industry...
...Colored Philadelphians now work in sales, clerical, mechanical, and other jobs for which many major bakeries, oil companies, dairies, bottlers, food markets, and newspapers had never hired Negroes before...
...Both quickly conceded jobs when, in the first case, heating contracts were canceled, and, in the second, dealers cut down or cut out soft drink orders...
...The principle of non-discrimination is the core of The Bulletin's employment policy," the newspaper editorialized on Page One, citing fifty Negro white-collar workers on its staff of more than 2,000...
...The ministers asked The Bulletin for five truck drivers, eight mechanical employes, and fifteen office and editorial workers...
...When the ministers took on The Evening Bulletin a year ago, some observers thought they might have over-reached themselves...
...Nobody knows how much circulation the paper lost during the eight-week boycott...
...Relative to their numbers, Negroes spend much less than whites on travel, hotels, restaurants, but much more on certain types of consumer goods...
...It ended when the company hired the required number of Negroes plus two additional cake-icers, and promised the ministers to consider all applicants, regardless of race, for all jobs in the future...
...Sun began interviewing Negroes, but when the deadline arrived the prescribed quota had not been reached...
...But the ministers are not interested in mere quantity...
...The ministers call their operation "selective patronage...
...In one Philadelphia survey, forty-three per cent of Negroes interviewed had charge accounts in local department stores—a statistic that goes far toward explaining why one so often sees Negro salespersons in Wana-maker's, Gimbels, and Lord & Taylor in recent years...
...They have perfectly lovely produce...
...It's not enough any more to preach milk and honey in heaven...
...Tasty Baking Company, for example, was among the first firms the ministers approached in 1960...
...We believe it is our Christian duty to advise our people how to get some of that milk and honey here on earth...
...Considering the amount of buying power behind them, the ministers' "requests" have been modest enough...
...Gulf Oil Company and Pepsi-Cola held out only a few days against the economic threat of selective patronage...
...The Bulletin, for example, did not have one Negro among its 500 mechanical employes...
...Sun Oil, in its own defense, pointed out that a brochure of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission features one of Sun's Negro supervisors...
...All 250 employes in A&P's main office were white...
...when the jobs result, each individual feels he had a hand in it...
...They invite individual participation on the widest scale with the least risk...
...The boycott lasted eight weeks...
...Instead, they are trying to break down a century old habit-of-mind—the concept that Negroes are acceptable as janitors or maids, for example, but not as salesmen or secretaries...
...They want jobs," the other informed her...
...Tasty Baking Company's president, Paul Kaiser, pointed to the many Negroes his firm has hired over the years and observed, "Such a record is not achieved by just living up to the requirements of the law . . . but is the result of affirmative action on our part to promote equality of opportunity in our plant...
...The ministers called a boycott, the first to be reported in the daily press...
...Into this chaotic picture stepped the ministers...
...You can't sue 400 clergymen for advising their congregations which companies discriminate in the hiring of our people...
...So effective is their program that these clergymen, in the last three years, have brought to the local Negro community more than a thousand "prestige" jobs and an estimated $4 million increase in buying power...
...Philadelphia ministers have flown to St...
...Oh," said her companion, "I can't imagine why not...
...We Don't Sell It and We Don't Buy It," said a sign in a Negro grocery...
...How many weeks would it take to pay the salaries for a year of all the people we asked them to hire...
...The Negroes aren't buying at the A&P...
...Never having discriminated against Negroes, said The Bulletin, it would not now discriminate in their favor...
...The ministers say this was enough to hurt...
...The consumer boycotts involve no picketing, no sit-ins, no marches, no violence, no legal assistance, no politics, no fund-raising, no white help, no formal organization, no conspicuous leadership—and have created only token opposition...
...Yet, this quiet program has been so overshadowed by more dramatic Negro action that most white Philadelphians still know little or nothing about it...
...The most insidious threat of segregation is that it reduces the motivation of Negro children to stay in school, to do better work, to learn useful skills, to aspire to responsible citizenship...
...With the same unity and pragmatism displayed in selective patronage, by late June they had forced the city to support its Human Relations Commission in a drive to desegregate labor unions...
...The immorality charge stems from the submission of quotas, the imposition of deadlines, and the implication of "blackmail...
...It seemed likely that their influence, entrenched by selective patronage, would help break the color barrier in Philadelphia's building trades unions...
...Despite the number of citizens involved, Philadelphia's newspapers persistently ignore the boycotts...
...Not one has chosen to take such losses for long, greatly preferring to hire more colored employes...
...I am not the spokesman for the group or its leader," insisted one of the most active ministers...
...However, picketing and sit-ins by CORE and the NAACP forced the city to recognize that the non-discrimination clause in its contracts for municipal projects must be transformed into something more than a paper policy...
...We suspect that a boycott simply pushes employers to do what they always knew they should, but never had sufficient motivation for doing," said George Schermer, until recently the Commission's widely-respected executive director...
...The eleven per cent of the population that is Negro buys forty-one per cent of all fruit drinks...
...The ministers dismiss this as hair-splitting...
...The companies generally are given a few weeks to comply...
...Because of the fuzzy legal aspects, the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission officially disapproves of quotas, but Commission staff members express sympathy with the ministers' goals and frankly admit that the boycotts have made it easier to enforce the fair employment practices law and educate people regarding its principles...
...In both instances Negroes were hired for office and sales jobs, and the companies promised strict non-discriminatory hiring in the future...
...similar boycott plans are being used in the South, the Middle West, and New England...
...The ministers asked Sun Oil Company for nineteen office workers, three truck drivers, and a motor products salesman...
...The A&P was the twenty-first company to capitulate before the challenge of a unique form of direct economic action originated by Philadelphia's Negro ministers...
...One modest estimate is 20,000 to 25,000—a small percentage for a newspaper with 720,000 net paid circulation...
...At fifty-five cents a subscriber they would have lost about $12,000 a week in circulation revenue...
...The boycotts involve the entire Negro community, and act as a unifying force...
...This appears to be only partly true...
...Local editors say they ignore the selective patronage drive to avoid increasing racial tensions...
...We know for a fact that many firms around the city have been quietly upgrading Negroes and hiring others in an effort to head off the ministers...
...The ministers like to retain the myth of "spontaneity...
...The doors are open, but only if you're qualified by your schooling and training...
...In Wilmington, Delaware, a major department store whose home office is in Philadelphia has capitulated...
...The two groups demanded jobs for Negroes from lily-white building trades unions...
...A group of Detroit ministers visited Philadelphia and returned home to organize campaigns against the Borden Company and a local bakery...
...It is impossible to find out who first recognized that this growing Negro buying power might be harnessed to an area-wide job opportunity campaign...
...People who would never think of risking their necks in a Freedom Ride consider it a privilege to switch to another fuel oil or market," one man remarked...
...said one minister...
...Instead, the Commission demanded affirmative signs of integration extending to apprenticeship programs, on-the-job training, and the recruitment and hiring of Negroes...
...The city officially supports Negro economic and educational advancement through the Commission, which only a few weeks ago said it would no longer tolerate a static policy of "non-discrimination" on the part of firms and unions doing business with the city...
...Selective patronage, meanwhile, because of its concrete results and involvement of many people, though overshadowed by more widely heralded civil rights drives, is being used increasingly by Negro groups in other cities...
...The ministers have never broken ranks, nor allowed their evident power to be expended in support of impossible demands or in factional fights among themselves...
...The ministers have called boycotts against only two firms, one a supermarket, the other a chain department store, each lasting only a week...
...They feel it's their fight...
...Even as the women spoke, any reluctance on the part of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company to hire more Negroes was rapidly being transformed into desire...
...Tasty Baking had never employed a Negro icer...
...Nevertheless, Sun Oil found only one of its first nineteen Negro clerical applicants qualified for hire, and it looked a long time before finding the others...
...The Evening Bulletin, America's largest afternoon daily, broke silence only once—to defend its own hiring policies in a front-page editorial, because the ministers had called a boycott against the newspaper itself...
...That's the way it should be...
...Selective patronage should not be confused with "Don't-Buy-Where-You-Can't-Work" campaigns which Negroes have used for years to secure random jobs in local retail stores...
...You can't tell me I must eat this or drink that either...
...We thought twelve would be fair, but ended up asking only half of that, just as a token to show the A&P won't discriminate in the future...
...The most serious criticism of the selective patronage campaign is that the ministers are "using an immoral means to achieve a moral end...
...The subsequent boycott, ultimately extended across the state of Pennsylvania by Negro Masonic lodges, lasted four months...
...any bright high school graduate can learn to be a supermarket checker...
...While the use of selective patronage to achieve these goals is no substitute for non-violent direct action by Negroes seeking full rights against bitter racist opponents, historians of the future may see it as one of the most significant steps taken by Negroes toward their total integration into the American economy...
...Department of Agriculture statistics, for example, show that a Negro man spends thirty-six per cent more of his income than a white man for clothing...
...The mayor, facing election, retreated, and Schermer resigned his post, charging that lack of leadership by Tate was undermining race relations...
...A few days earlier the Philadelphia area's 400 Negro ministers had advised their congregations to stop buying in the chain's 150 local stores...
...Pressed for details, those who will talk at all are likely to respond as one did: "We cannot in good moral conscience remain silent while members of our congregations patronize companies that discriminate in the employment of our people...
...When Tasty balked, 400 ministers spread the news from 400 pulpits...
...The average Negro family spends thirty-six per cent more of its income on frozen foods and twenty-two per cent more on prepared flour mixes than a white family...
...While the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), for example, turns out fifty pickets to protest housing discrimination, the ministers muster countless thousands of silent protesters among the city's 600,000-plus Negroes...
...Many companies met their quotas by advancing Negroes already in their employ, a solution accepted by the ministers, especially since the lesser jobs being vacated were often filled by Negroes...
...Over the years, said a spokesman, The Bulletin had successfully resisted pressure from advertisers, Democrats, Republicans, and every kind of religious or political group, and would certainly resist this "blackmail" too...
Vol. 27 • August 1963 • No. 8
