Mail Order Day and the Sears Catalog's Significance to Black Americans

August 18th is National Mail Order Catalog Day, to celebrate the old-fashioned way of shopping by selecting items in a printed catalog, and ordering and paying for it by mail or over the telephone. This ability to order items from a catalog, and not having to rely on the limited inventory of small-town stores, was significant not only for the convenience and a wider availability of “stuff” to go into American homes. Mail order’s success brought changes to American society, and these changes were especially important for African Americans, particularly in the South. 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 actually been sold by catalog and delivery back to the beginnings of the country, but what made mail order available to the masses were new 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. After six years of experimentation, in limited locales, Rural Free Delivery became a permanent service effective July 1, 1902. The word “free” was dropped in 1906, since it was understood, and rural delivery arrived in Bossier Parish in 1907. Mail order’s growth was hindered though, by a restriction that anything over four pounds could not be sent through the postal service, it had to go through a private delivery service. But once the US Postal Service’s “Parcel Post” began in 1913, mail order’s growth was nearly boundless.  

In what was called “The Jim Crow Era” of post-Reconstruction through the 1960’s, laws and statutes as well as implied social rules, especially in the South, segregated, marginalized and attempted to intimidate African Americans. (The name Jim Crow came from a minstrel character). Under Jim Crow, a trip for African Americans to conduct business anywhere outside of their home was fraught with limitations, humiliations and dangers, which could include going into town and being forced to ride in the back of the bus, or walking to town but always being expected to defer to white people on the side walk, going into a store by using separate entrances, and/or separate hours, while being watched suspiciously by staff, who will not permit African Americans to use the store’s lunch counter or restroom. 

If an African American family was headed by a sharecropper, their landlord was often the owner of the local store as well, and would only reconcile their accounts once the cotton crop came in, typically trapping the consumer in a cycle of debt. Sears, however would allow an African American customer 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 and anonymously.  

Please come to the History Center to see some of the historic or reproduction catalogs in our collection at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. Or, go online to our collections database and search for “Catalogs” at http://bossier.pastperfectonline.com/ 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

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to visit the History and Genealogy Resources page at Bossierlibrary.org or follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Images: 

• Cartoon in response to the growth of mail-order catalogs business from The St. Helena Echo, Greensburg, Louisiana • Fri, Feb 15, 1907
• Rural mail carriers delivering mail in Plain Dealing, La. The bags on their shoulders are saddlebags and are being put onto their horses. C. 1910

Article by: Pam Carlisle