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Black Friday
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BLACK FRIDAY

First, there’s Thanksgiving — a day to be grateful for all life’s blessings. The next day, Black Friday, encourages you to give way to your greed by spending as much money as possible. Welcome to the official start of the holiday season! But the story of Black Friday is full of “official” and unofficial versions of its origins, starting with the name.

Black Friday originally referred to September 24,1869 when a scheme to manipulate America’s gold markets backfired resulting in numerous bankruptcies across the country. Even more troubling is the unsubstantiated story that southern slave owners allegedly got a “good deal” if they bought slaves on the Friday after Thanksgiving — “Black Friday,” indeed!
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First, there’s Thanksgiving — a day to be grateful for all life’s blessings. The next day, Black Friday, encourages you to give way to your greed by spending as much money as possible. Welcome to the official start of the holiday season! But the story of Black Friday is full of “official” and unofficial versions of its origins, starting with the name. Black Friday originally referred to September 24,1869 when a scheme to manipulate America’s gold markets backfired resulting in numerous bankruptcies across the country. Even more troubling is the unsubstantiated story that southern slave owners allegedly got a “good deal” if they bought slaves on the Friday after Thanksgiving — “Black Friday,” indeed!
The earliest evidence of the phrase Black Friday originated in Philadelphia, dating back to at least 1961, where it was used by police to describe the heavy pedestrian and vehicular traffic that would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.[6][7][8][9] Since early 21st century, there have been attempts by US-based retailers to introduce a retail "Black Friday" to other countries around the world. Retailers outside the US have attempted to promote the day to remain competitive with US-based online retailers.[10] For centuries, the adjective "black" has been applied to days upon which calamities occurred. Many events have been described as "Black Friday", although the most significant such event in American history was the Panic of 1869, which occurred when financiers Jay Gould and James Fisk took advantage of their connections with the Grant Administration in an attempt to corner the gold market. When President Grant learned of this manipulation, he ordered the Treasury to release a large supply of gold, which halted the run and caused prices to drop by eighteen percent. Fortunes were made and lost in a single day, and the president's own brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, was ruined.
While many people believe the term Black Friday finds its roots in the sense of black meaning “showing a profit; not showing any losses,” this isn’t actually the case. Historically, black has been associated with days of economic stress as opposed to days of booming commercial success. The first Black Friday occurred in 1869 after financier Jay Gould and railway businessman James Fisk attempted to corner the gold market, which ultimately resulted in financial panic and the collapse of the market. A little over 60 years later, on October 29, 1929, another stock market crash referred to as Black Tuesday marked the onset of the Great Depression.
Black Friday is highly anticipated nowadays due to the huge discounts it brings, but the history of Black Friday is actually a bit darker and more complex. Over the years, Black Friday has become one of the biggest shopping days of the year, as huge crowds of shoppers flood stores the day after Thanksgiving to buy loads of heavily discounted stuff. However, the real story behind the term "Black Friday" had little to do with price cuts.
Along with the cheesesteak and the hoagie, the term Black Friday is rooted in Philadelphia. In the 1950s, police in The City of Brotherly Love used the term to describe the horde of shoppers from the suburbs that descended into the city for the days after Thanksgiving, according to Bonnie Taylor-Blake, a neuroscience researcher at the University of North Carolina. The city promoted big sales and decorations, ahead of the Army/Navy football game on Saturday. "It was a double whammy. Traffic cops were required to work 12-hour shifts, no one could take off and people would flood the sidewalks, parking lots and streets. The cops had to deal with it all and coined the term."
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