“People are People in a New Sense”: Race, Markets, Foundations, and Paul K. Edwards’s The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer

Abstract

This article uncovers the story behind the first systematic study of the African-American consumer market, Paul K. Edwards’s The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer (1932). Apparently the work of single researcher working at a small African-American college, Fisk University, The Southern Urban Negro as a Consumer was in fact the product an unlikely intersection of larger developments in early twentieth century America: the growing industry producing market research and ambitious philanthropic foundations that aimed to reform the American South. The book’s purpose was not merely to map an untapped market but to demonstrate that African-Americans were viable consumers, in order to win them a new and improved status in American society.