Let me warn you, the Wanamaker store was not the best store for ethnic people. They did not have an open policy of “you all come.”
—Trudy Haynes, former reporter, KYW-TV
Across the country, department stores projected an image of catering to all customers’ income levels. Practically every store housed a designer salon featuring Paris originals on one of its upper floors, and most included a Budget Basement or a Downstairs Store that accommodated those with a thriftier budget. However, African Americans were not entirely welcome in department stores. This was not just the policy in the Southern stores; it was also the sentiment across the United States.
In most cases, African Americans were allowed to walk through the stores and look at the merchandise. Many stores wouldn’t let African Americans try on clothes unless they intended to buy them. Trudy Haynes saw Wanamaker’s as “having the best clothing in town.” But it was not a comfortable store for her to shop in. Employees followed her through the departments asking, “Are you really going to buy this?” In the 1950s, Trudy Haynes went to look for employment at Wanamaker’s and was told that the only job available for her was that of an elevator operator.
African Americans were treated more fairly in some of Philadelphia’s other department stores. Gimbels had experience running a store in New York, a city that was home to people of many different backgrounds. In New York, people from all different ethnic backgrounds walked the same streets and shopped the same stores. “Philadelphia is a little ‘Quaker Town’ that had its parameters set up,” says Haynes.66
Of all of the Philadelphia department stores, Lit Brothers was the most accommodating to African Americans. Lits hired employees of all backgrounds and appealed to a more urban clientele. “Lit Brothers became sort of my hangout,” says Trudy Haynes. Lit Brothers had a history of operating stores in urban settings. It opened its Trenton store when it purchased Swern & Company in 1949. It served Trenton’s working-class, inner-city core until 1967, when the store became too antiquated to warrant further operations. Across the river from Philadelphia, Lits opened a large 180,000-square-foot outlet in the heart of Camden. The store occupied the site of the former Camden County Courthouse. Lits opened the Camden branch in October 1955, just as the city began its long spiral downward. It catered to a down-market customer, and the area surrounding the store reflected it. In January 1970, Lits announced that the Camden store would close its doors. However, store management and the Camden mayor’s office reached an agreement that enabled the store to remain open. The city agreed to improve exterior lighting and increase visible police protection around the store. But Lits never survived the aftermath of the August 1971 riots, as residents and shoppers fled Camden. In April 1972, Lits decided that it was not economically feasible to continue business in Camden and the store closed. Lits’ store in downtown Atlantic City also served a predominantly urban shopper. By the early 1970s, downtown Atlantic City was a challenging retail environment. Young vandals frequently targeted the store. In 1974, the city’s Department of Inspections cited the store for the physical deterioration of the building. The doors of the Atlantic City store remained open until April 1977, just a few months before casino gambling began in the shore resort. In its heyday, Lit Brothers was an extremely popular store. The company knew its customers, and it was one of the few department stores in the Philadelphia area where everybody was truly welcome.
African Americans were not the only group that faced discrimination at Wanamaker’s. A number of large American department stores did not hire Jews for positions of higher rank than salesperson. Along with Wanamaker’s, stores like Chicago’s Marshall Field, Detroit’s Hudson’s and Minneapolis’s Dayton’s also followed similar discriminatory hiring guidelines. It wasn’t until after World War II that these policies were reversed.67
By the late 1950s, the country began to feel the full effect of the atomic age. In February 1958, Wanamaker’s displayed a large collection of toy missiles in the Grand Court. The Falcon, an air-to-air missile; the Rascal, an air-to surface rocket; the Redstone, a ground-to-ground missile; and the Hawk, a missile that can be fired to a moving aircraft, were all proudly exhibited. Officials from General Electric, Time magazine and the Army, Navy, and Air Corps sponsored the show.
The Camden, New Jersey Lit Brothers store opened in 1955, just before the large New York Shipbuilding Corporation began to eliminate thousands of jobs in this industrial city. The store held its own but closed its doors in 1972, shortly after the Puerto Rican riots of August 1971. Courtesy of the author.
On November 22, 1963, KYW news anchor Pat Ciarrocchi was shopping with her mother at the Wilmington Wanamaker’s. As they shopped, a loud speaker interrupted with, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have an announcement to make: the President has been shot.”
“At first I thought they were fooling. I thought that it couldn’t possibly be true,” says Ciarrocchi. “Everybody just went stone cold. It was a really upsetting thing to hear. I remember them saying it a second time and everybody kind of scattered.”68 President Kennedy’s death will always be associated with the Wilmington store for Pat Ciarrocchi. She gets goose bumps just thinking about it again.