The New Negro Alliance was an organization of black men and women based in Washington DC. It was founded in 1933 and its goal was to organize pickets, boycotts and other forms of nonviolent protest to combat racial inequality and segregation. In other words, they would rather throw a rope into a tree and hang their own selves before spending their hard-earned dough fornicating with racist who only viewed them as meal tickets and second-class citizens. Known as the NNA, it wasn’t the only organization using these tactics against racism, but it was the largest in DC at the time.
It was founded by a man named John Audrey Davis in August 1933. So, what happened was that Davis organized a boycott of the Hamburger Grill. The joint was in a black neighborhood and had fired all three of its black employees and replaced them with whites. Black folks were like… “WHUT?” but no one did anything about it until Davis got some brothers together and picketed in front of the grill. Soon after that, folks stopped going there. Of course, the owner was madder than a Trump supporter winning Taylor Swift concert tickets, but the nigra had him by the dollars. Back in the day, him and a couple of the boys would have known exactly what to do with that jigaboo… toes would have been dangling and Nigras would have been singing “Amazing Grace”… but this was 1933, so he hired the three black men back. I guess Davis thought, “Y’all ain’t going back there putting anything in my food and smiling in my face…”
Anyway, with the success of the picket and boycott, the NNA was born. Davis was twenty-one years old at the time and he would go on to argue one of the most significant if lease celebrated civil rights cases of the last 80 years in front of the Supreme Court… New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co.
High Level…
So, in order to tell the story of the New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co., we have to go back a few years before the NNA was created… back to 1915. It started with a man named S.M Skaggs. Skaggs owned a small grocery store that was located in the town of American Falls, “You Missed A Spot Nigra,” Idaho. Now anyone who knows anything about the mid-west, knows that there are not a lot of “boots” out there. There are not a lot of “boots out there now and there wasn’t a lot of “boots” out there in 1915. So, “boot” was another term for African Americans, and it was primarily used by African Americans. I don’t know where the term came from and I have tried to find out, but there is no reference to it that I can find. When I was a young boy back in the early sixties, while sitting around listening to grown folks talk, I heard the term frequently.
Mom: “Harry are there many boots working out there with you?”
Dad: “No honey, I’m the only boot.
Friend: “You know there is not going to be that many boots working around them white folks…”
Me: “Ain’t that many boots at our school either mamma…”
Mom: “Harry… take off your belt…”
“Harry, take off your belt,” was code for me to leave the area immediately and stop listening to grown folks talk, or suffer a high level, painful azz whooping that people will be talking about for years. Back in the day, the surest way to decrease your lifespan, was to sit around listening to grown folks talk. Anyway, if any of you have heard the saying before and can shed some light on its origins, please drop us a line.
Like I said, Skaggs took over his father’s business, and he then turned it into a regional success. So why did, I bring up Skaggs and his “negroless” stores? Because Skaggs stores would eventually become a household name in the future and would be at the center of the New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. case.
A Dogs Life…
Safeway was founded during the Great Depression by M.B Skaggs, S.M Skaggs son. It used to be called Skaggs Cash Store. In the years leading up to the Great Depression, the store was run by S.M Skaggs, a Baptist preacher. It was S.M Skaggs, who saw credit as a growing evil which kept people in perpetual debt. I’m talking about in the 1920s, when the United States loosened its credit rates. Everybody was buying things on credit. As a matter of fact, they were buying more things on credit than they could afford. I mean WWI was over and they needed a way to stimulate the economy. Thats one reason they called that era the “Roaring Twenties.” People were riding around in Rolls Royeses working as janitors… buying houses and paying for them selling vacuums and toilet bowl cleaners door to door. It was crazy! Anyway, after the stock market crashed, that was their regular azz. M.B Skaggs saw this as an opportunity. Although all the other stores still allowed credit, Safeway stores did not. That was the reason it was named “Safeway.” The “safe way” was to buy with cash instead of credit. Money was the only thing they accepted as payment at Safeway stores. Like his father, M.B believed that “installment purchasing,” increased prices and made customers overly dependent on those grocers and storekeepers.
M.B Skaggs was one of 15 children. His father had opened the grocery store as a way of feeding his family. Under M.B., by 1926 the store had expanded into 10 states and had over 400 stores. In 1921, they moved the headquarters from Idaho to Portland, “Ain’t That Many Negras There Either, Oregon. It was in Oregon that they almost doubled their size when they, merged with 322 Sam Seelig Company stores after winning a contest to rename the Seelig chain. Why did the Seelig company want to change their name? Beats me, maybe because it sounded too much like “Sieg heil,” I mean Hitler was out there… who’s to say… but M.B submitted Safeway and won.
Another up and comer that was instrumental in orchestrating the merger was Charles E. Merrill. We know his company today as Merrill Lynch. They got one of them cut off after being caught cooking the books for Enron. Enron was an energy trading company that perpetrated one of the biggest financial frauds in corporate history. Enron falling was like Rome falling… it all burned down to the ground. Everybody went to jail… even the dog. Anyway, that’s another story. So, Charles took Safeway public in 1928. At one time he left his position at Merrill Lynch to run Safeway back in the 1930s. Safeway was eventually sold to Lingan A. Warren in 1934, making Skaggs and Lynch very wealthy men. That’s some pretty sketchy stuff right there. An investment banker takes over as president of your company and the next this you know… “BAM,” your company is for sale. But Ima leaves that alone because I don’t know why they sold it. I do know that their lawyers stump it all the way into the ground… “Nigra!! Yo’ Name is Toby!!” So, Ima apologize right now and take it all back… can’t we just all get along?
So, before we move on as to how Safeway faqued up, just a few side notes. Back in the old days when you went grocery shopping, a clerk would get your stuff. A lot of stuff they kept behind the counters. Safeway pioneered the self-service model. They put everything on shelves, and you picked it up yourself… put it in a basket and brought it to be checked out at the front of the store. They also were the ones that came up with “sell-by,” dates. Not sure if that was a good thing or bad thing, but that was them that came up with it. Lastly, they introduced parking lots at their stores. Before then, you parked wherever you could, even if that meant leaving your car in “their” neighborhood.
Blackman: You need somebody to watch yo car?
Shopper: Why would I need somebody to watch my car?
Blackman: (Just standing there looking at the shopper…)
Shopper: Okay… how much?
Alright I’m joking.
Anyway, that brings us to us to how Safeway was at the center of one of the most important civil rights cases in American history.
(John Audrey Davis pictured on left)
So, in 1936, the Sanitary Grocery Store opened up a new store at in a predominately black area in Washington D.C. at 1936, 11th St. N.W.. Sanitary Grocery Store was owned by Safeway. Now, this location is in the heart of Chocolate City, on the U street corridor. Back in the 30’s wasn’t nothing white down there but the crosswalks. I’m saying that to say it was a blackity-black neighborhood. At the present time this historically black neighborhood has undergone changes and has transitioned from a black neighborhood to a multi-cultural one, but back then it was just Amos, Andy and Me. For those who don’t know who Amos and Andy was here is a link to the black vaudeville stars TV show.
So yeah, they put a store right down there. After they opened the store in the middle of one of the blackest cities in America and in the blackest neighborhood in that city, they refused to hire black folks. John Davis and his NNA crew was all over that shat. They were in front of that store day and night protesting their azzes off.
NNA: WHAT DO WE WANT??!!
CROWD: CHICKEN WITH GRAVY!!!
NNA: No… No… that’s not why we are here… let’s try this again… WHAT DO WE WANT??!!
CROWD: CHICKEN AND BISCUITS!!!
NNA: NO!!… NO!!… Somebody go tell them what we want… Okay… you sure they got it? Okay… WHAT DO WE WANT??!!
CROWD: NIGRAS WORKING!!
NNA: WHEN DO WE WANT IT??!!
CROWD: RIGHT NOW!!??
So yeah, they were protesting, and people were starting to avoid the place. Now, this is where the lawyers start coming out with the long knives. ” Y’all need to leave from in front of this business before we start cutting some off. Well, the NNA refused to leave and then they called the PoPo. Do you know what happened to black folks in the 30s protesting in front of a white man’s store stopping him from getting his loot??!! It was ugly… azz was all over the street… Anyway, that didn’t stop the NNA. They took Sanitary to court! They told the court; “They had a first amendment right to protest.” Safeway countered; ” And we got a tall tree that trumps your first amendment rights!” Okay no they didn’t… they said that the people protesting their business were not employees of the business and had no say in who they hired. The court disagreed;
“According to the United States Congress “peaceful and orderly dissemination of information by those defined as persons interested in a labor dispute concerning ‘terms and conditions of employment’ in an industry or a plant or a place of business should be lawful; that, short of fraud, breach of the peace, violence, or conduct otherwise unlawful, those having a direct or indirect interest in such terms and conditions of employment should be at liberty to advertise and disseminate facts and information with respect to terms and conditions of employment, and peacefully to persuade others to concur in their views respecting an employer’s practices.”
1936 11th Street N.W… As It Is Today.
It was one of the most sweeping labor law rulings to come out of the Supreme Court in a generation. Anyone could picket anybody, for any reason at their place of business. Of course, you could still get yo’ azz shot off if you do… but that’s another story. The ruling opened the door for the boycotts and protest of the 1960s Civil Rights movement… and it all started at a little store on 11th Street N.W. in Washington. D.C.
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