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The Hill reports:
The announcement of the closing of Sears stores as a consequence of a bankruptcy filing ends a chapter in the life of this retail giant that should earn it a place of honor in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Sears’ retail sales strategy was to develop a nationwide mail-order catalog, which became an iconic staple in American homes. Though this option to order goods by phone and mail may not have been established intentionally to benefit black Americans, it had significant impact in relieving some of the humiliating experiences blacks endured as they shopped for clothes and household items during the days of the Jim Crow South. They could shop on an equal level with whites, whereas in white-owned stores they had to wait for their purchases until all whites were served, and they often had access only to merchandise of inferior quality at higher prices.
There's more:
In the 1920s, the gap in educational attainment between black and white males in the South was three years. Blacks had an average of fifth-grade education, compared to eighth grade for whites. By the 1940s, that gap had closed to just six months — in an era when the local government funding for black schools was a fraction of that spent for white schools. This dramatic closing of the educational racial gap largely has been attributed to the Rosenwald schools.
The impact of the schools had a ripple effect that impacted the trajectories of their students:
“First and foremost, they got more education. … But that’s only the beginning. Students who went to Rosenwald schools had higher IQ scores than kids who didn’t. They made more money later in life. They were more likely to travel to the North as part of the Great Migration. They lived a little bit longer. The women delayed marriage and had fewer kids. And crime rates in the area of the schools went down.”
Imagine that.
