"Trade With Your Friends"

In 1957, local government officials in Tuskegee, Alabama sought to gerrymander the city's limits to diminish the number of black votes in upcoming elections. Alabama state senator Sam Engelhardt sponsored Act 140, which transformed Tuskegee's boundaries into a twenty-eight-sided shape and disenfranchised the majority of the city's black voters in city elections. On June 25, over 3,000 black citizens met at Butler Chapel AME Zion Church in support of the Tuskegee Civic Association and its proposed boycott of white owned businesses. Called "trade with your friends," the boycott continued for four years until the United States Supreme Court ruled that the State of Alabama had violated the 15th Amendment in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960). The city's boundaries were then returned to their original positions in early 1961. The boycott proved economically devastating for white owned businesses that preferred to go out of business rather than give blacks the right to vote.

Tuskegee, Alabama · United States