This summer the Connecticut Historical Society is hosting an exhibition called Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow. It’s a traveling show that originated at the New-York Historical Society. The exhibition explores the struggle for full citizenship and racial equality that unfolded after the Civil War. Even though northern states like Connecticut did not institute Jim Crow segregation by law, discrimination and segregation were the norm in many public spaces, including elegant department stores like New York City’s Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Hartford’s G. Fox. In this episode, Dr. Traci Parker of the University of Massachusetts, with some editorial commentary from host Natalie Belanger talk about what department stores like G. Fox meant to consumers and retail workers alike, and how they become sites of struggle in the civil rights movement.

 

 

Dr. Parker’s new book is Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s published by the University of North Carolina Press. For more information about G. Fox Dept Store, contact the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.

 

This episode was produced by Natalie Belanger and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan.

 

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