Epilogue

Abstract

The department store movement succeeded in opening this world to African Americans and provided them with the means with which to make claims to middle-class citizenship, but it certainly did not foresee the dramatic decline of these retail institutions. The struggle for racial equity in work and consumption, thus, continues. Racial discrimination in the retail industry persists in ways that are consistent with early forms of discrimination—not hiring African Americans in skilled and status positions, and limited black consumers’ mobility in and access to retail institutions. Discrimination is also shaped by and reflective of the changing nature of American retailing, employment, and consumption in the twenty-first century—in that African Americans are hired in sales vis-à-vis cashiering and denied managerial, supervisory, and executive positions.