The dark history of Black Friday

The actual history of Black Friday is far darker than most may know, with the first mention of the term and its roots set deep in a scheme started in the heart of the financial sector of the United States of America – Wall Street.

The story goes that Wall Street financiers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk teamed up to carry out a master plan to buy all of the nation’s gold in the hopes of sending the prices of the commodity sky-rocketing – once done, the duo planned to sell the gold for an astounding profit.

That faithful day of September 25, 1869 became known as Black Friday, a day which saw the stock market spiral into a free-fall with the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor all being bankrupted.

Another story popping up around the term Black Friday is that of its links to retailers, who after an entire year of operating at losses, stores would bounce back and earn huge profits the day after the US tradition of Thanksgiving, because shoppers would spend exorbitant amounts of money on marked down items.

In other circles, mention is made of an even darker connection to the tradition of Black Friday which dates back to the 1800s.

Plantation owners operating in the southern states of America would put on offer slaves at discounted prices after the day of Thanksgiving.

However, History.com has indicated that the true history of the tradition was started in the 1950s when police in Philadelphia used the term ‘Black Friday’ in order to describe the sheer chaos of hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists who had flooded the city in advance of the annual big Army-Naval football game.

Law enforcement would not be allowed to take the day off, and often worked extra long hours in order to manage large crowds and traffic – shoplifting also became a huge problem.

Come 1961, the term had become widely popularised despite attempts to change it to “Big Friday’ with the hope of hiding it’s dark history.

Enter the 1980s, retailers successfully reinvented Black Friday by linking it to the previously mentioned connection of the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy displayed by consumers on the hunt for bargains, resulting in the original roots of Black Friday nearly becoming completely wiped from the history books.

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