Was it an annual day on which slaves were on sale at discounted prices? Hahaha No.
Some Form of Black Friday Has Been Around for Well Over 100 Years.
Back in the late 1800s, many stores sponsored Thanksgiving parades. At the end of the parades, the stores opened their doors and the holiday shopping season commenced. By the beginning of the 20th century, it was common for retailers to start their holiday-season sales as soon as Thanksgiving ended.
Black Friday Really Got Going in the 1940s.
Thanksgiving used to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. But when a five-Thursday November rolled around in 1939, business leaders asked President FDR to move the holiday back a week so the holiday shopping season could start earlier. Roosevelt agreed and, after several years of confusion, Americans settled in to celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November, ensuring retailers can always start their holiday sales before December.
The Black Friday Name Comes from Philadelphia.
You may have heard that the “black” in Black Friday refers to the day’s power to push retailers “into the black,” a reference to the black ink used on handwritten ledgers to denote profit. This story, however, was concocted by retailers to make the name sound more favorable. The real origin of the Black Friday moniker comes from Philadelphia, where the Army-Navy football game is played on the Saturday following Thanksgiving every year. In the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, the game brought in hordes of people, most of whom arrived on Friday. This caused a major headache for the police, who had to deal with all kinds of mischief and mayhem. It was such a pain, they began referring to the day as Black Friday. Retailers in Philadelphia, who typically saw a sales spike from all the people in town, started calling the day Black Friday as well. In the 1980s, the name went national, shedding its less-than-glamorous origins and adopting the myth of black ink (profits in the ledger books).
