ABSTRACT
Politically weak populations with focused goals have historically found boycotts and other consumer protests immensely useful. Walter White, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), focused on religion in negotiations with Baltimore department stores over better treatment of African American patrons. Black activists in depression-era Harlem waged a "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaign to obtain white-collar jobs in local stores for African American residents. "Anti-Semitism is regrettable", asserted a 1938 Amsterdam News editorial, "but the Jew himself is its author, insofar as it concerns the American Negro". Anti-Semitism proved a compelling tactic in many ways. Restrictive housing covenants, a complex form of political consumer action in which individuals used the market to achieve political aims, rested on the principle that discrimination was a legitimate and desirable goal for a community.
