Atlanta Daily World

Trickery for Gain is Charged Store

NEW YORK, June 7.-A charge of discrimination against the Wallach Brothers store in Harlem located at 246 W. 125th street, was made by Gardner D. Pinkett, last Saturday when he said he had been forced to quit work there because he was not recognized as a salesman on the floor as he had been allowed to advertise among his friends and in the colored newspapers. Pinkett said when he was in the store he was kept in the background and not allowed to approach a customer, and the only way he could wait on a customer was the customer had to ask for him personally as he entered the store before saying what he wanted to buy. If the customer made a purchase and then said he wanted Pinkett to have credit for the sale, he was not given the credit, he said.

Pinkett's original agreement with the store called for his working on salary the first month, during which time he was to solicit new customers outside as well as serve certain hours in the store as a salesman. But he found, he said that he was not a salesman in the true sense of the word, but more like a bell boy. He said he believes the store meant from the start to hire him as their first colored salesman, and on the strength of that get a wave of favorable publicity and then let him go. That is exactly what happened, he says.