Word: stores
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Chicago's Marshall Field & Co. is a 101-year-old pioneer in retailing practices; charge accounts, low-priced basement floor, free deliveries, and a money-back policy for dissatisfied shoppers. One area where Field's did no pioneering was race relations; in its century and more, the store had never hired a Negro in its huge retail operations...
...bellwether of State Street's big four (the other three-Mandel Brothers, Inc., The Fair, and Carson, Pirie Scott & Co.-also hired no Negroes). Field's would not budge, though, ironically, Colgan's program had financial backing from Marshall Field Jr., grandson of the store's founder and president of the Chicago Sun-Times. Undaunted, Colgan worked quietly on the other stores. In July 1950, Carson's cracked the color bar by hiring a Negro administrative aide, then some other Negroes as office workers, and finally even Negro sales clerks. Most other State Streeters followed...
...finance or merchandising, stated his qualifications (B.S. and M.A. degrees in research economics from Duquesne University), but neglected to say that he was a Negro. After encouraging replies, Dowdy went to Chicago only to be told by Field's that it was "lamentable but true" that the store hired no Negroes. Dowdy's complaint was handed to Chicago's Commission on Human Relations, whose enforcement powers are limited to public contract but whose public hearings can be powerful in dealing with private business. Field's, faced with an implied threat of public hearings and a supertight...
Last week the word leaked out that slim, taciturn Audrey Harper has been working as a clerk-typist at Field's since mid-July as the store's first Negro employee (Dowdy was not hired), and that five other Negroes had followed her on the payroll. Mrs. Harper, 26, a high-school graduate with three years of business-school training, said: "It's a great achievement for Negroes, but I don't think it's anything to talk about too much. Fuss makes trouble, not progress...
Kaffeeklatsch. Al Rothschild, president of the Rothschild Co. department store, second largest in Rock Island, Ill. (pop. 48,710), has served 40,000 cups of coffee and 40,000 cookies free to shoppers since last October. Starting his plan as a goodwill gesture, Rothschild offered $125 a month to any women's church group that would volunteer to do the serving, has had plenty of takers. The snack is served from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, has helped boost sales in Rothschild's 16-month-old store as much...