The Detroit Tribune

Selective Buying Pays Off In Charleston S. C.

CHARLESTON, S. C. — The NAACP- spearheaded selective buying drive here has resulted in the hiring of Negro sales personnel by at least seven downtown merchants.

Employment of Negro cashiers and clerks by these stores was called "the biggest breakthrough of Negroes into white-collar jobs in the city, and probably in the state," by Charles Wickenberg, writing in THE CHARLOTTE (N. C.) OBSERVER.

The NAACP drive, under leadership of J. Arthur Brown, state conference president and Rev. B. J. Glover, local branch president, has been under-way for seven weeks.

THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, a major southern daily, reported that the NAACP campaign "is the first sustained Negro effort to desegregate employment, and has had more success than the sporadic lunch-counter 'sit-ins' in the past two years."

Daily newspapers have been ignoring the NAACP drive to secure employment and equal treatment of Negroes by the local merchants.

Mr. Brown explained that pictures of individual Negroes "who have ignored the boycott have been taken and displayed at the rallies.

"Handbills have told Negroes that buying from white merchants who haven't hired Negroes in jobs of dignity is like Judas betraying Jesus."

NAACP members man picket lines in orderly fashion on Fridays and Saturdays, the heaviest days for shopping. Many of the pickets are children.

"Young people are still as interested in desegregation as we older ones," said Mr. Brown.

"We are going to keep it up until we break it down."

He estimated that business is off 25 per cent in the King Street section of town, which is the main shopping district.