Black History Month: The Sears Catalog

February is Black History Month. Here’s a story that both celebrates the old-fashioned way of shopping for (or wishing for) items in a printed catalog, and shines a small light on one challenging aspect of everyday life for African Americans in the segregated South. The ability to order items from a catalog, as opposed to relying on the limited inventory of small-town stores, brought convenience and a wider availability of “stuff” to make it into American homes, even rural ones. This success brought changes to American society, changes that were especially important for African Americans.

The first really successful, widely used mail order catalog was Montgomery Ward’s, which issued its first catalog on August 18, 1872. It was printed on one piece of paper and offered 163 different items. About a year later, the Sears and Roebuck catalog successfully jumped in to serve the mail order market, offering watches and some jewelry, but eventually grew to sell almost anything an American home could need, including a kit for the home itself.

Items had been sold by catalog and delivery from the beginnings of the country, but what made mail order available to the masses were new U.S. postal regulations and services, especially Rural Free Delivery. Rural Free Delivery allowed rural Americans, not just big-city dwellers, to have their mail delivered directly to them. Rural Free Delivery was permanently established effective July 1, 1902, and the service arrived in Bossier Parish in 1907. Mail order’s growth was still hindered by a 4-pound weight limit. Anything over four pounds had to be sent through a private delivery service. That restriction changed with the advent of the U.S. Postal Service’s “Parcel Post” in 1913, when mail order’s growth became nearly boundless.

Under the “Jim Crow” laws of the post-Reconstruction South through at least the 1960’s, a trip for African Americans to conduct business anywhere outside of their home was fraught with limitations, humiliations and dangers. Named after a minstrel show character, Jim Crow laws and social rules segregated, marginalized and attempted to intimidate African Americans.

A trip to a store could include being forced to ride in the back of the bus, or stepping off a sidewalk to let white shoppers pass by. The shopping trip could also mean having to enter store by separate entrances, and/or during separate, limited hours. And even though limited transportation and long distances could mean a shopping trip to town took the better part of a day, Black patrons faced not being permitted to use the store’s lunch counter or restrooms.

Moreover, if a Black family was headed by a sharecropper, their landlord was often the owner of the local store, and would only reconcile accounts once the cotton crop came in. This opaque accounting system typically trapped the consumer in a cycle of debt. Sears, however, gave African American customers an alternative way to buy on credit. The mail order business suddenly allowed African Americans to have more access to the consumer goods of the American middle class by allowing them to shop conveniently, anonymously and with a credit system that was not tied to a crop cycle.

Local merchants, of course, resented the business they were losing from mail order customers. One way to combat this loss was to appeal to the “Jim Crow” mindset of white Southerners, and a rumor was spread that Richard Sears was Black. Others said that Alvah Roebuck, the lesser-known business partner of Sears, Roebuck and Company, was Black. This assertion also spread, and in some cases have persisted, among African American communities. Neither is actually true, though the CEO of Sears Julius Rosenwald, a successor of Alvah Roebuck and later Sears himself, was a Jewish man who famously championed the cause of education and “uplift” for African Americans, putting his vast fortune from his success at the helm of Sears behind the effort. His foundation provided seed money and architectural plans for rural schoolhouses across the South in the early to mid-19th century, including close to 20 school buildings in Bossier Parish and over twice as many in Caddo Parish.

Come to the History Center to see some of the historic or reproduction catalogs in our collection, or to see the Black History Month photo display in our main hallway. We are located in the Bossier Central Library Complex at 7204 Hutchison Drive in Bossier City, LA. 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. Or, go online to our collections database and search for “Catalogs” at http://bossier.pastperfectonline.com/

Please note the new hours for the History Center: M-Fri 9-6. Saturdays we are open by appointment. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Alvah Curtis Roebuck. Sears Archives.
• Cartoon in response to the growth of mail-order catalogs business from The St. Helena Echo, Greensburg, Louisiana, Feb. 15, 1907.
• Lindsey Bros. Dealers in General Merchandise in Benton, La. C. 1900, Bossier Parish Libraries History Center Collection.

Article by: Pam Carlisle

A Blast From the Past – Snow Days in Bossier Parish

At the time of my writing of this article, the forecast is predicting several inches of snow this coming Saturday, January 24th. It seems as though every few years there is a bout of snowstorms that bring the region to a halt, and this time looks like it will be no different. As such, this has me thinking about some of the historical snowstorms here in Bossier Parish. 

                                                   

The first example we’ll be looking at today is the December 31, 2000, nicknamed the “Snow Bowl.” Across the river, during the twenty-fifth annual Independence Bowl, Texas A&M and Mississippi State played for the title on a field of white. The snow was so plentiful that plows were needed to tell where the endzone was, and many of the spectators in the stands left at half-time. According to the National Weather Service, much of Bossier Parish received three to six inches of snow during the storm. What shocked the NWS most, however, was not the winter storm itself, but that much of the precipitation was actually snow. Thus came a game for the history books, and Mississippi State took the victory over Texas A&M.

    

Another strong storm struck in mid-January of 1975, blanketing the region with roughly two-and-a-half inches of snow. This may not have been much in the grand scheme of yearly precipitation levels (after all Bossier Parish receives on average 51 inches of rain a year), but it was certainly enough to cover the parish. Parish residents even put the sculpting skills to the test, building sculptures like the dinosaur seen in the photo. This snowfall, however, is nothing compared to one of the greatest amounts of snowfall here in Bossier Parish. Nearly 100 years ago, during late 1929, the greatest amount of snowfall struck the ArkLaTex region, according to the National Weather Service. According to the Bossier Banner-Progress, the snow lasted much of December 21st, accumulating on average twelve inches of snow and as much as fifteen inches in some places. For reference, the February 2021 storm brought similar amounts of snow and sleet, though that was spread over several days’ worth of accumulation. This was the most snow accumulated since December of 1876, where in turn the region was struck with “14 inches on a dead level – some say 16 to 20 inches,” as reported by the Bossier Banner in the January 7, 1877, issue. The 1876 storm is interesting as while the Banner reported its existence, there is no mention in any of the NWS information I was able to get access to. Certainly, the 1929 storm struck the region, but the earlier instance of a foot-and-a-half seems lost to the wider historical audience. 

     

For Bossier Parish, snow might be an uncommon sight, but it is not unknown. Every few years a winter storm will strike the region and bring a new wave of cold and snow. Hopefully this time will be uneventful, giving us just enough for some winter fun.

If you have any photos or other information relating to the history of Bossier City or Bossier Parish, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ and http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/   

Images: 

Photo of Bossier City (Bossier Press – 16 Jan, 1975)

Photo Outside 2nd Air Force HQ (The Observer – 12 Jan, 1962)

Plain Dealing Street covered in Snow (BPL HC – 1997.062.116)

Plain Dealing Boys Building a Snowman (BPL HC – 1997.062.006)

Dinosaur Snow Sculpture (Bossier Tribune – 16 Jan, 1975)

A Korean War-time History for National Blood Donor Month

Fifty-five years ago, on December 31, 1969, President Richard Nixon proclaimed the first National Blood Donor Month in January 1970 to honor voluntary blood donors and to encourage people to give blood.

World War II was the first war in which the banking and transporting of blood products to battlefields and military hospitals saved countless lives, when physician-scientist Dr. Charles Richard Drew developed new and practical methods to separate blood plasma, which, unlike whole blood, had a shelf life of two months. He also developed infrastructure like stateside community donation centers in store fronts, factory floors and “bloodmobiles,” and the know-how to ship blood products overseas and onto battlefields and field hospitals, no matter how remote.

World War II was also the time when the Shreveport Memorial Blood Bank (now LifeShare Blood Center) opened to serve Northwest Louisiana as one of the country’s first community blood banks, using their own blood banking machine, a dried plasma system. However, blood collected there was intended for homefront use by local hospitals, and was banked in case of a regional emergency.

The American Red Cross (ARC) collected blood for wartime military use at collection centers in major cities – not Shreveport or Bossier. The nearest centers during World War II were the blood banks in Dallas and Fort Worth, opening in 1945. By the time of the Korean War, the ARC’s collection for military use did expand to Northwest Louisiana and was temporarily located in 1951 at Barksdale Air Force Base. By early 1952, the ARC’s Ark-La-Tex blood collection efforts were anchored by a “Defense Blood Center” in the science building at Centenary College in Shreveport.

From this Defense Blood Center in Shreveport, a mobile blood donation unit operated within a 100-mile radius throughout the Ark-La-Tex. In fact, post blood-drive statistics often showed that the amount of blood collected was often inversely proportional to the size of the community where the blood mobile stopped, when smaller communities, like Daingerfield TX or Plain Dealing LA collected the most pints. Bossier City, however, was proud to be the recipient of this mobile unit’s very first trip, when it was stationed at Bossier High School on January 11, 1952. The visit was coordinated by V. V. Whittington, president of the Bossier Bank and Trust Company, who recruited the Bossier Bearkat football team to recruit as many fellow students, and teachers, as possible.

The February 1, 1953, Shreveport Times reported that the mobile unit of the blood center was also recruiting donations from the students and staff of Bossier City Colored High School, later known as Charlotte Mitchell High School. Principal Jack Strong pledged to be the first in line from the school. Although the American Red Cross had ended its policy to require segregating blood by race by 1950, it did not disallow the practice in states like Louisiana, where segregation was the norm in schools and elsewhere until as late as the early 1970’s.

For the Shreveport blood drives, many promotions were used to entice people to come to the donation center, such as using popular musicians through the Shreveport-based Louisiana Hayride radio show, or an appearance by the Wilson and Company six-horse hitch demonstration team of Clydesdales. Despite the papers’ reports of the enthusiasm generated for the early blood drives, especially at high schools and colleges like Centenary, as well as certain workplaces, the March 25, 1952, Shreveport Times reported that the amount of donations at both the center and through the blood mobile did not reach capacity. The donor recruitment chair for the region urged people to contact Shreveport’s Defense Blood Center to make an appointment by pointing out that the center had no blood to send to aid the victims of tornadoes that had ripped through six southern states the previous week. Though the Defense Blood Center’s priority was to provide blood to the military, the center’s secondary function was to have a stockpile of blood plasma available for use in “widespread civil emergencies.”

One exceptional drive was promoted in the December 21, 1952, Shreveport Times with an announcement that on December 29th, donors with Type O blood (the universal donor type) were asked to donate by the ARC southeast region headquarters in Atlanta in order to have their blood flown in refrigerated containers to Travis Air Force Base near San Franciso. The containers would then be transferred to a waiting Military Air Transport Service plane to take off immediately for Korea.

Normally, blood donations from Shreveport were separated for its plasma, which has a much longer shelf life than whole blood (2 months versus one week). Plasma is invaluable in many trauma situations, but some needs weren’t adequately met without whole blood. Normally, whole-blood donations were taken from donors on the west coast, eliminating some of the travel time for the perishable blood. However, at that moment, the need for whole blood by American troops in Korea was greater than what could be provided on the west coast alone.

In contrast, the Shreveport Times of August 6, 1953, reported that the need for blood had decreased following the Korean Armistice Agreement, which was signed July 27, 1953, and that Shreveport’s Defense Blood Center would close at the end of the month. The paper reported that a total of 36,454 pints of blood had been collected by the center from 30 parishes and counties since December of 1951.

If you have local Korean War, medical history or other family photos or stories to share (we will also scan and return originals if that is your preference), please visit or contact us at the History Center. We are located in the Bossier Central Library Complex at 7204 Hutchison Drive in Bossier City, LA. Please note the new hours for the History Center: M-Fri 9-6. Saturdays we are open by appointment. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB and @bplhistorycenter on TikTok.

Images: Centenary Conglomerate, February 20, 1952. Centenary College of Louisiana Archives and Special Collections

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Shed Road Holds Unique Place in Bossier History

Although Shed Road is a well-known thoroughfare in Bossier City, its history and name origin may not be so familiar. Established more than 150 years ago, the original roadway was “unique in the annals of road construction,” states the Bossier Press newspaper of November 15, 1957. But what made it so distinctive, and why is it still worth noting today?

In the early 1870s, much of today’s North Bossier was, at times, swamp-like. The area extending east from Red River for approximately nine miles was low-lying and often impassable, particularly during inclement weather. An article in the June 28, 1934 issue of the Bossier Banner-Progress describes it as “merely a swampy flat, and when it was wet, the soil was just about like paste. Mules would sink in it to their bellies, and wagons would go down to the axles. When rains came in the fall, all transportation stopped until late the following spring or early summer.” For merchants and farmers wanting to get goods to market in Shreveport or downriver to New Orleans, not being able to travel through this quagmire was a major problem.

A man named John Watkins, an attorney and judge living in Minden, thought he had a solution. Although not trained as an engineer, this native Kentuckian sought and received a charter from Congress to construct a roadway with a shed roof, a novel idea for keeping the ground dry and preventing boggy conditions. And apparently an idea that had occurred to no one else. In his book, “Bossier Parish History – The First 150 Years 1843 - 1993,” Bossier Parish Historian Cliff Cardin wrote of the project, “This road was perhaps the first covered roadway, that did not use roadbed planking, constructed in the United States.” The November 15, 1957 Bossier Press called it “probably America’s first super highway.”

Construction of the road was privately funded, and although some sources claim work began in late 1872, others say it started in the spring of 1874. Workers dug parallel drainage ditches about 20 feet apart along the right-of-way and piled the dirt between the ditches on the road-bed, raising the bed enough to keep out surface water. Posts made from cypress were used to support roofing joists that held a center beam across which planks were bent to form the shed. The structure was wide enough to allow wagons and stagecoaches to pass each other, and despite having open sides, it prevented rain from turning the road to mud. As sections of the roadway were finished, travelers made use of them. The whole of Shed Road was completed in 1880.

                                 

When finished, this notable innovation was said to have stretched northeast from approximately where the Texas Street Bridge is located, along Shed’s present course between Benton Road and Airline Drive and continued straight east, ending on the north side of today’s Highway 80, just beyond the location of Louisiana Downs horse racing track. The Shreveport Daily Standard newspaper, in its July 20, 1880 edition, hailed the achievement, saying that it would “bring to our market a vast amount of cotton and trade from North Louisiana and Southern Arkansas, which has heretofore stopped at Minden or found its way to Camden (AR), and Monroe and other points on the Ouachita River. Judge Watkins should be presented with some substantial token of their appreciation … by our merchants.”

But it wasn’t simply pats-on-the-back and accolades from business people that Judge Watkins was seeking. He intended to turn a profit on this venture by charging tolls for use of the road. In the History Center collection is a book titled “Louisiana History Bossier Parish” by Samuel J. Touchstone that lists the amounts of some of the tolls. It states the driver or drivers of a team of four oxen and wagon was charged $1.50, while a team of four mules would cost $1. Simply walking on the road would set you back a nickel. According to the 1934 Bossier Banner-Progress article, these tolls were estimated to have generated a profit of $20,000 each year of Shed’s time as a private highway.

Eventually, another transportation highway – one of steel – opened and led to the roofed road’s demise. In 1884, the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad was completed through Bossier Parish, running the same direction as Shed Road, and as Mr. Cardin writes in his book, it “created many points … from which to ship goods and greatly decreased the need for the all-weather road.” By that time, portions of the shed structure had also apparently fallen into disrepair. In the August 10, 1882 issue of the Bossier Banner-Progress is the following item: “We hear a great deal of complaint from the citizens of Bossier, who have occasion to use it, about the shed road. If reports are correct, it is in a deplorable condition, and it is unjust to collect tolls for the privilege of using it. We hope Judge Watkins will look into the matter at once.” By 1887, Watkins had transferred ownership of the road to the parish. High costs of making repairs to the structure, coupled with its declining use for commerce, forced the parish to have the shed demolished by the end of that decade. Sadly, no photos of old Shed Road are known to exist.

In the History Center’s collection is a log book for 1880 in which Judge Watkins wrote details of work on the road. Coming later this year, the History Center will have a walk-in replica of old Shed Road. To see it and to learn more about the history of Bossier Parish, visit us during our open hours Monday - Friday 9-6, and Saturday by appointment. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ 

Images: 

• Map courtesy The Times, August 29, 1995
• Illustration courtesy The Shreveport Journal, June 27, 1935

Article by: Kevin Flowers

New Life for Old Voices

 The leaps and bounds that technology has made within the past few decades can be a double-edged sword for preservationists. On the one hand, the widespread adoption of computers and the Internet has made it easier to process new items, and certain materials are more accessible to more people than ever before. On the other hand, some materials are becoming increasingly difficult for even those caring for them to access. Audiovisual materials in particular are at risk of becoming inaccessible, as the technology used to play them becomes obsolete. Fortunately, there are sometimes ways to convert these materials into more accessible formats. The audiocassettes in the Bossier Parish History Center’s care are one such case. The History Center is now able to store the audiocassettes’ content - primarily oral history interviews about historical events and figures - as MP3 files, which can then be stored on its computers and online database, a process known as “digitization.” Content that has previously only been accessible at the History Center can now be sent anywhere in the world. Voices that might not have spoken in decades can be heard once again, with just a couple clicks.

The Bossier Parish History Center has nearly 200 oral histories in our care, which were recorded and collected from the 1990s to the 2010s. Most were recorded by History Center staff members, some on site, some at interviewees homes, or at a location of interest. Many of the interviewees were chosen because of their heavy involvement in the Bossier Parish community. For example, there are multiple interviews of George Dement Jr., restauranteur, innkeeper, and mayor of Bossier City from 1989 to 2005, and one of Joe Maggio of Maggio Grocery & Deli, the oldest neighborhood store in Bossier. Other interviewees were chosen because they had witnessed a certain aspect of history, such as Gypsy Damaris Boston, who was interviewed as part of a project to chronicle Bossier residents’ experiences with the Great Depression, or Nell Charney, a former New Orleans resident who was interviewed about her experiences during Hurricane Katrina.

Some interviewees were recorded because they were historians themselves and quite knowledgeable of a certain subject, or because they had just made a significant donation to the History Center’s collection, such as Samuel J. Touchstone, who was interviewed in 2004 about Civil War relics and maps that he had found and donated to the History Center. A handful of audiocassettes in our collection cannot actually be classified as oral histories, but nevertheless hold historical significance, like a copy of “Union of the World,” an album by the Shreveport-born Ever Ready Gospel Singers, which features the group speaking of their history, as well as several of their songs.

Whatever the reason for its existence, each oral history contains a unique perspective on the history of Bossier Parish and beyond. Their loss would mean the loss of dozens of eyewitness accounts, in some cases of events that no one today is alive to speak of. Thanks to the digitization process, they have not only not been lost, but have actually been made much easier to listen to. There is a chance that in just another decade or two, technology will progress to a point where once again, the History Center must convert the oral histories to another format or risk losing access to them. However, for the moment, it is good to know that we have successfully carried these pieces of the past a little further into the future, into 2026 and beyond.

The Bossier Parish Library History Center wishes you a very happy new year! Please come visit us, and note our new hours. We are open Monday through Friday 9-6, and Saturdays by appointment only. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive, Bossier City, LA, 71111. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ and http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Image: George Dement pictured with believed to be Holiday Inn staff members holding award for being named one of the World’s Top 10 Inns. C.1968. Photo from the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center

Article by: Jaylie Rester, Curator, Bossier Parish Libraries History Center