Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement by Parker Traci;

Author:Parker, Traci;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press

FIGURE 8 Fair-Minded Americans Stay Out of Hecht’s leaflet. Coordinating Committee for the Enforcement of the D.C. Anti-Discrimination Laws Records, 1949–1954, Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

Given this premise, the picket line became virtually a site of identity formation. On his first day on the picket line, Marvin Caplan, a CCEAD member, recalled that even in the sweltering heat of August, demonstrators looked to be “dressed for church or some other formal occasion. They wore ties and jackets. A couple of them wore felt hats. The half-dozen women on the line, both black and white, were even more fashionably dressed.… All of them wore pretty summer dresses and summer hats.”25 Not everyone was able to observe the dress code, however. In a letter to Stein, Alice Trigg, chair of the boycott, wrote that on one picket line a woman had “a dress on up to her knees and she was no small or good looking person at best, with a slip hanging about three inches all around, and the way she was rocking on those heels I wondered when she would sprawl.” Before Trigg had an opportunity to speak with the woman about her inappropriate attire, a fellow protester stopped her. The protester surmised that the woman likely was wearing her “working attire,” as “lots [of demonstrators] came from work … [and because] white people were always giving [blacks] that inferior feeling and [they] would be playing right into their hands” if they asked the woman to leave the picket line for her attire.26 Although this working-class woman was not reprimanded for her dress, others like her were probably instructed on the finer points of middle-class consumption and behavior via observation or direct conversation with a CCEAD leader or member.

In Washington, D.C., the scholar Beverly Jones argues, “picketing became not only an effective device for forcing Hecht’s to negotiate but also an instrument of education.”27 Not only were protesters coached on being middle class, but black and white passersby were informed about the injustices perpetuated against the store’s “respectable, well-behaved” customers and persuaded to join the boycott. One woman vowed not to buy much-needed curtains for her new apartment until Hecht’s submitted. She stated, “I can’t afford to pay cash for curtains. But Hecht’s is the only place where I have a charge account. But I’ll be darned if I’m going to let Hecht’s get away with making Negroes go hungry.”28 Another protester sitting-in at Hecht’s lunch counter recounted the following story:

A high-ranking [white] officer sat down next to me. The clerk offered to serve him, but the officer stated that “this other man was here before me, serve him, I am in no hurry.” The waitress replied, “He can not be served because he is colored.” The officer ordered a coke. When it was brought, he ordered another and another, until there were six cokes in front of me. The waitress called the manager, who could do nothing about the cokes that had been already served to me. But he did order the waitress not take another order from the white officer.

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