Discussions of African American consumers in major advertising trade publications like Printers’ Ink in the late 1920s and early 1930s were based largely on racist speculation, not actual market research, until the publication of the first mainstream book of consumer research about African American consumers in 1932: The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer by Paul K. Edwards.
Black businesspeople were routinely marginalized and excluded from major trade associations and publications throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The book Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century by Robert E. Weems, Jr. (1998) is a useful survey of the 20th century, has tables of statistics and citations, and replicates the National Negro Business League Black Consumer Questionnaire of 1931 in its appendix. The National Negro Business League (NNBL) commissioned surveys and collected valuable data about Black consumers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Colored Merchants Association, founded in 1928 by A. C. Brown of Montgomery, AL and affiliated with the NNBL, aided local Black-owned grocery stories in Mobile, Alabama to pool their advertising budgets in 1928/29 and make a marketing campaign to counter consumers' shift towards chain groceries like A & P. In 1929, the marketing campaign "Buy Where You Can Work" or "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" encouraged Black consumers to only shop at businesses that hire Black employees.1
More generally, major Black newspapers and periodicals (like the Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, Memphis Tri-State Defender, Michigan Chronicle, The Crisis and other publications) have been a great source for historical advertisements, if not statistics. The Associated Negro Press (ANP), founded in 1919 by Claude Barnett, provided members, 95% of which were Black newspapers, with national news items in order to help standardize and provide equitable access to major news stories. Barnett also saw the untapped potential in the largely ignored Black consumer market and encouraged all American businesses to advertise in Black newspapers to reach Black consumers.2
The following are a sampling of historical sources, books, and articles related to advertising Black businesses and advertising to Black consumers during the Great Depression.
These historical books discuss advertising to Black consumers or advertising by Black businesses and are primary sources published shortly before or during the Great Depression.
The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.
These historical articles discuss advertising to Black consumers or advertising by Black businesses and are primary sources published shortly before or during the Great Depression. The following articles are linked to their location on their journals homepage or other stable URL. At times, a subscription may be required to access the full text of the article. When available, a link is provided to the journal's Library of Congress catalog record and/or subscription where the article can be found.
There are a number of publications and archival collections from 1929-1933 that can be searched to find examples of advertising to Black consumer and/or by Black businesses during that time period. The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.
These are books published more recently about advertising to Black consumers or advertising by Black businesses during the 1930s. The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.
These are articles published more recently (at least decades after the Great Depression) about advertising to Black consumers or advertising by Black businesses during the 1930s. The following articles are linked to their location on their journal's homepage or other stable URL. At times, a subscription may be required to access the full text of the article. When available, a link is provided to the journal's Library of Congress catalog record and/or subscription where the article can be found.