Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year as successful stores employ marketing strategies to offer deep discounts and attract large crowds, leading to considerable profits for businesses. However, do you know the stories behind the term "Black Friday" and the tradition that followed for decades? Let's delve into it!
In 1869, two well-known Wall Street investors, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy as much gold as they could, hoping to drive the gold price sky-high and sell it for jaw-dropping profits. But their plans fell apart due to President Ulysses S. Grant's intervention on Friday, September 24, 1869, causing the stock market to plummet and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street investors to farmers.
Another commonly repeated story behind the Thanksgiving shopping spree relates to retailers. It is said that after a year of operating losses, considered to be "Red", businesses would supposedly earn profits, considered to be "Black," on the day after Thanksgiving as holiday shoppers blew so much money on discounted merchandise. Although retail companies do record their losses in Red and Profits in Black, this version of Black Friday's story is ambiguous but officially sanctioned.
Lastly, the actual history behind Black Friday is not as cheerful as retailers may want people to think. In the 1950s, Philadelphia City police used the term to describe the chaos caused by large crowds of suburban shoppers and tourists flooding into the city for the big Army-Navy football game held on that Saturday every year. The cops had to work extra-long hours dealing with the hordes of suburban people and tourists. Shoplifters took advantage of the hubbub, adding to the chaos. By 1961, the term Black Friday became popular in the City of Philadelphia, and the City's merchants attempted to change it to Big Friday to make it sound more positive, but that effort was unsuccessful. In the late 1980s, businesses tried to reinvent the term Black Friday positively to attract their customers. The result was "red to Black," and the notion was to turn the country's businesses into profits on the day after Thanksgiving.
The Black Friday story stuck, and the term's darker roots in the City of Philadelphia were largely forgotten. Since then, the one-day sales event has expanded into a four-day event, and now shopaholics can head out right after their Thanksgiving meal.
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