For the Records: How African American Consumers and Music Retailers Created Commercial Public Space in the 1960s and 1970s South

[...] African American consumers could make suggestions about a black-owned store's inventory, or express displeasure with its policies and practices, all without fear of retaliation or being denied service. [...] any meaningful analysis of black businesses must extend beyond purely economic considerations in order to acknowledge the many benefits small black retailers-and not just rare, multimillion-dollar corporations like Motown- provided to their communities.4 Although black-owned record stores spread across the South in the second half of the twentieth century, their stories largely have been lost or obscured.\n These days, most record stores can utilize two strategies for survival: by serving as boutiques for the most devoted of music fans or by selling considerable stock online, and often independent stores do both.