The other economic lever available to the Negro is as a consumer. As long ago as 1932, in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out that “boycotts against banks which discriminate against Negroes in quantity credit, against stores which refuse to employ Negroes while serving Negro trade, and against public service corporations which practice racial discrimination, would undoubtedly be crowned with some measure of success.”1 These words have proved to be prophetic, for we have been seeing the success of this approach in the last few years.
