Using one’s buying power to support causes one believes in and to effect change is not new. During the years leading up to the Civil War, Bronwen Everill tells us, many supported the end of slavery by purchasing products that didn’t use slave labor. Her new book, Not Made by Slaves: Ethical Capitalism in the Age of Abolition, will be published in September.
Black-owned bookstores. Apps to find Black-owned businesses near you. Pledges from corporations large and small to stock products from Black-owned producers.
As the world reels in the aftermath of the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, many have taken to social media to ask how they can support Black people and to make sure that this time is different.
What isn’t different this time, though, is the use of positive purchasing to try to effect change.
Attempts to use “Buying Black” to improve the circumstances of people in the Black diaspora date back to the late eighteenth century, and by the mid-nineteenth century both white and black activists were involved in promoting active consumption to try to combat the institution of slavery.
From the start of the movements against the transatlantic slave trade in places like Britain, the U.S., and West Africa, abstention and non-consumption (what we know as boycotts) were a popular way of withdrawing support of the slave trade. People abstained from sugar in Britain, they refused to import British slaves in the North American colonies, or they refused to export slaves in West Africa. They argued that if consumer purchases were responsible for the production of sugar by enslaved labor, then consumers could change that production by withholding their money.
But it would be even more effective if they could then actively support another way of producing that good, one that didn’t rely on slavery. Pretty soon, people began to argue that you could replace the item you were refusing to purchase on political grounds with a more ethically-sourced version: East India “free labor” sugar instead of the West India sugar produced by enslaved laborers; products like palm oil and timber from West Africa, instead of enslaved captives; and Nigerian cotton instead of Mississippi cotton.
And so people who didn’t want to support slavery with their spending sought out shops and suppliers who could guarantee the ethical origins of their goods. One of those guarantees was a label saying that a good was made by “escaped slaves.” Another was to advertise its origin in Haiti or Liberia. In shops like George W. Taylor’s Philadelphia Free Labor Warehouse, consumers who wanted to undermine the slave system could by Liberian and Haitian coffee. William Whipper’s or James Pierce’s Philadelphia stores, run by members of the Colored Free Produce Society, sold tobacco produced by Black farmers in Ohio, Kentucky, and Connecticut. “Buying Black” in this sense not only guaranteed a supply chain free of enslaved labor, but also supported the economic empowerment of formerly enslaved people around the Atlantic World.
And just like now, other companies also felt compelled to alert their customer base to their values. In recent days, a wide variety of local, national, and international companies, retailers, brands, and institutions have issued declarations of support for racial justice and a commitment to bringing that into the heart of their culture. But what does this mean for “Buying Black”? Is this just an example of woke market segmentation? Or is it a true commitment to change? And what does it mean for consumer behavior if a favorite brand commits to change: should one still feel as compelled to shop at Black-owned bookstores if a big retailer with next-day delivery issues a statement in support of racial justice? Is it enough to buy from a company that supports ethical goals, or is it more important for the consumer’s dollar to go directly to the effected community?
In the decades before the Civil War, members of the Colored Free Produce Association and other groups active in Black civic activism confronted these kinds of questions as the shops and suppliers providing “free labor” goods—especially cotton—increasingly turned to white, Quaker producers as a guarantee of a slave-free supply chain. Shopping at these stores was certainly one way of supporting the fight against slavery. But was a dollar spent there worth more in the fight than a dollar spent in a Black-owned business? If one had to choose between Black-owned businesses that sold regular cotton, and George W. Taylor’s warehouse, with its “free labor” cotton, which was the more ethical purchase?
In the end, while Black-owned business often thrived within the Black community, the positive purchasing campaigns advocated by the free produce movement during the antebellum period prioritized white abolitionists’ desire to get the most people possible involved in the movement. Abstaining from slave-produced cotton would really only be effective in eliminating the “financial inducements” to own enslaved people if enough people participated, for a sustained period. They believed this had to be a mass consumer movement, or link itself to one.
And so in order to achieve their goal of the abolition of slavery, the consumer-driven free produce movement narrowed their focus and broadened their message: undermine the economics of slavery; support free labor and free soil. For those who were convinced to use their consumer power against slavery as the movement grew in the 1850s, buying from Black-owned businesses became less important than simply buying from any producer who was free.
Positive purchasing allowed black and white abolitionist consumers to feel like they had power in an economic system they objected to. They felt, as so many who are just turning to “Buying Black” feel now, that they should “put their money where their mouth is.” But then, as now, it was easy to elide the goals of the movement and gloss over the complexity of second-order effects as campaigners weighed up different, but ultimately not equal, ways of using the power of consumer demand to change an economic system built on inequality.
