Michael Schwerner's boycott won a store's first Black hire

Person: Michael Schwerner
Lived: 1939–1964
Field: Civil rights
From: American

The story

Meridian, the largest city in eastern Mississippi, was strictly segregated when Michael Schwerner and his wife Rita arrived there in early 1964 to run the Congress of Racial Equality's field office. Black residents were shut out of voting, and they were also shut out of many jobs, even in businesses that depended on their money.

Schwerner had come to Mississippi as a CORE field worker paid $9.80 a week, and he quickly took on economic discrimination as well as voting rights. A popular local variety store sold mostly to Black customers but employed no Black workers. He saw that this was a lever Meridian's Black community could pull for itself.

He organised a boycott by Black shoppers under the principle "don't shop where you can't work". It worked because the store needed those customers. The boycott continued until the store hired its first African American employee. It was a concrete gain that local people could see for themselves: a job behind the counter of a shop that relied on their custom.

The victory showed Meridian's Black community the power of organised, peaceful action. It also made Schwerner a target. According to the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Famous Trials project, the boycott quickly earned him the hatred of the local Ku Klux Klan, who called him "Goatee". He carried on regardless, pressing forward with his determined efforts to register Black citizens to vote and working alongside a young local man, James Chaney.

The state was watching too. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a taxpayer-funded agency, paid spies to track activists and organised economic pressure against them. Schwerner kept working despite hate mail, threatening phone calls and police harassment.

The boycott was one of the first visible results of his time in Meridian, and it pointed to a larger truth that the movement would prove again and again: ordinary people acting together could change the rules of their town. Linking spending power to fair hiring has remained a tool of civil rights and community groups ever since.

Why it matters

The boycott opened a job to Black workers in Meridian and showed how collective consumer action could break down discrimination in the Deep South.

About Michael Schwerner

New York social worker who organised Black voter registration in Mississippi for CORE and was murdered by the Klan with James Chaney and Andrew Goodman in 1964.

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Michael Schwerner

1939–1964 · Civil rights

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