Business: THE NEGRO MARKET

How to Tap 15 Billion in Sales

In the rathskeller of Milwaukee’s Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co., a Koda-chrome-Color movie had its premiere last fortnight. The cast included Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks, Commentator Robert Trout, and a score of Negro actors. The movie’s title: The Secret of Selling the Negro.

The movie was made by Chicago’s Johnson Publishing Co., which puts out the Negro magazines Ebony, Jet, Tan, Copper and Hue. It will be shown to businessmen around the U.S. to drive home the point that the Negro market is huge and profitable. In support of this Secretary Weeks quoted Census Bureau figures showing that the Negroes’ total income has quadrupled since 1940. Their median income has shot up even faster. For non-whites (96% of whom are Negroes) the median annual income has risen almost four times, from $489 in 1939 to $1,943 in 1951, while the income of whites has increased less than three times, from $1,325 in 1939 to $3,673 in 1951. Overall, the Negro market is estimated at $15 billion a year.

Such figures are making businessmen everywhere sit up and take notice. They are paying more and more attention to the long-ignored Negro customer, notably in the South, where two-thirds of the 15 million U.S.

Negroes live.

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The Birmingham News recently made a survey showing that the city’s 130,000 Negroes (40% of the total population) have an average family income of $1,849 a year, and are regular buyers of everything from baby food to electric refrigerators. To help tap this market, some Southerners have begun employing Negro salesmen, e.g., a Negro hired by a Packard dealer in Charleston,. S.C. sold two new and three used cars in his first 15 days. The month before, the entire staff had sold Negroes only four used cars.

Some 374 U.S. radio stations now broadcast special programs to sell to Negroes. Some employ Negro disk jockeys to chat about Negro social life and play records (mostly jazz, spirituals and blues) that Negro fans request.

But any mention of race is taboo. One hair-lotion manufacturer wanted to begin a commercial: “Attention Negro women!” but was promptly turned down. The station manager knew any such blatant approach would alienate listeners.

Ads in Negro magazines are the same as in other slick magazines except that models are usually Negroes.

This ad field is growing so fast that Manhattan’s Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn hired a Negro two years ago as special consultant on the Negro market, and has since boosted its accounts in the field from 2 to 40.

Market surveys show that the Negro customer responds best to an advertisement emphasizing quality and prestige. A long history of exploitation makes him wary of cheap, shoddy goods. Thus, a Negro buyer is likely to spend more of his salary on high-priced goods than a white man, partly because it gives him prestige before his friends. A tobacco company aimed an ad campaign at the Negro market and, taking into account his lower income, featured its 10¢ brand. The campaign flopped. Admen found the Negroes resented the implication of economic inferiority, had gone right on buying their favorite top-quality brands.

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The economic rise of the Negro has not only helped break down many segregation barriers; it has also helped dissipate the widely held belief that Negro customers are necessarily poor credit risks. In many stores Negroes still find it hard to get credit. But the Credit Bureau of Greater New York makes no distinction between races, and the National Association of Real Estate Boards says Negroes keep up house payments faithfully. For the first time, Dallas insurance companies have started to buy up mortgages in a development of new homes built for and purchased by Negroes.

In New York and Chicago department stores sales clerks treat the Negro shopper the same as the whites.

Some Southern stores are also beginning to pull down the barriers, e.g., quietly passing the word that from now on Negroes are to be addressed as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” One Birmingham store has abandoned the practice of tagging “col” on charge-a-plates. In Dallas Negro women are now permitted to try on hats and dresses.

∙ The Negro shopper, retailers have found, does not want special handling, but he does want to be treated like any other shopper. The trend toward equality of purchasing power with whites is helping him find the same equality at the sales counter. Most retailers feel that even in Southern stores discrimination will disappear gradually, wiped out by the legal pressure against segregation and the economic rise of the South. Eventually, the Negro market will merge into and become undistinguishable from the overall market.