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

Sears Had Long History in Bossier City

Walking through Pierre Bossier Mall, there is no indication that its east end was home to Sears. Gone is the Sears sign that once hung above the mall entrance to the store, that entrance now blocked by a security gate. Beyond the gate, darkness inhabits the space once filled with everything from clothing and homewares to appliances and tools. Sears’ ending stands in stark contrast to its beginning in Bossier City sixty-nine years ago.

A simple, straight-to-the-point headline appeared in the November 30, 1956 edition of the Bossier Press newspaper, “Sears Opens Bossier Store.” The Heart of Bossier Shopping Center, at the intersection of Old Minden and Benton Roads, had been chosen as the store’s site. The accompanying article described the structure: “The 18,000 square foot building is in the same architectural model as the rest of the Big Chain Center of which it is a part. Modern in every detail, it includes a super service station, a customer catalog desk, and 18 complete departments.” Store advertisements featured products like 21-inch television sets for $148 that brought a “photo-sharp picture right into your living room” and Kenmore automatic washers for $188 that were “like having 2 washers in 1 with one speed for regular fabrics and a slower speed for delicate fabrics.”

That the word modern was applied to the store was no surprise. According to the Bossier Press article, the store was designed by the firm founded by noted modernist architect William B. Wiener. He and his half-brother Samuel were responsible for bringing the European Modernist style of design to Shreveport and Bossier. The article called the store “an important new milestone in the commercial history of Bossier City.” Hired to manage this milestone was Texas native Forest Vaughn, who, according to the same Bossier Press article, had previously worked as an assistant manager for Sears in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Sears began in 1892 as a mail-order watch and jewelry business founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in Chicago. The business quickly grew, thanks in no small part to its ever-expanding catalog. In 1933, the first Christmas Wish Book was published. An article from July 25, 2017 in Smithsonian Magazine states, “By the early 20th century, Sears was already a household name across the United States, one that represented rural thrift and industry as well as material abundance and consumer pleasures.” Across the country, Sears stores began springing up. According to the magazine article, more than 700 stores were in operation in the U.S. by the mid-1950s.

The Bossier store moved into a larger building in the Heart of Bossier in 1966 with nearly 50,000 square feet of floor space and another 7,700 square feet for an automotive service center. Bossier newspaper accounts of the move quoted Forest Vaughn stating the store’s size reflected the company’s confidence in Bossier’s continued growth. “We feel sure that our Bossier City friends, on visiting the new store, will agree with our slogan, ‘Sears has everything’,” he said. The store served customers at that location for the next 16 years until moving into Pierre Bossier Mall in March 1982.

With much fanfare, Sears was the first store to open in the mall. A ribbon cutting was held and grand opening sales were offered. For 36 years, Sears was an anchor store for the mall. But as Sears corporate fortunes declined, so too did those of the Bossier store and many Sears locations around the country. By the summer of 2018, local newspapers were carrying advertisements for the Bossier and Shreveport

Sears stores, proclaiming in bold type, “Store Closing,” “Everything Priced to Sell.” By September that year, the stores were history. The changing landscape of how we purchase goods and services was a factor in the demise of this former icon of American business. Oh, to be a kid again looking at the toys in the Christmas Wish Book one more time.

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: 

•  Former entrance to Sears in Pierre Bossier Mall/Kevin Flowers
• Advertisement for new Sears location in Bossier/Bossier Press, Nov. 30, 1956

Article by: Kevin Flowers