CMA Nation Wide Expansion
Courtesy of The New York Amsterdam News
By 1930, the NNBL dedicate itself to a threefold strategy: create a training program for CMA merchants; studying black consumerism; connecting black wholesalers and retailers. Remodeling stores served as the most important instructions given to merchants joining the CMA. The CMA had 12 stores in Montgomery Alabama, 11 in Selma, Alabama, 25 in Dallas, Texas, 15 in Jackson, Mississippi, 31 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and 24 in New York City for a total of 818 stores in its cooperative. The CMA had plans to have new member stores in Chicago, Dayton, Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Little Rock, Arkansas, Jacksonville, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Birmingham, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, and other smaller southern cities. According to a March 1, 1930 edition of the New Journal and Guide, African-Americans combined spent $200,000 on groceries. An organized black consumer is a far more powerful consumer able to make hiring and promotion demands.
