Anne Fran, just saw this. So at some point in the 1950s or 1960s -- some put the date exactly at 1966 -- the Philadelphia Police Department started to refer to the day after Thanksgiving as “Black Friday,” with the unrealistic hope that people would find the whole shebang distasteful and opt out of the collective consumer madness. At a minimum, it was a derisive way to describe an unpleasant day in the life of a Philly cop. “It was not a happy term.” retail scholar Michael Lisicky told CBS Philly in 2011. “The stores were just too crowded, the streets were crowded, the buses and the police were just on overcall and extra duty.” The term took off in a big way, but not for the reasons the cops hoped. By the 1980s, the idea gained steam that “Black Friday” was named after retailers trying to hop into the black, according to The Telegraph. Then, somewhere along the way, Corporate America joyfully co-opted the phrase for their own purposes. Behold, modern-day repurposing.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:08:51 +0000
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