The Black Friday hoax is historical claim about the origin of the term " Black Friday." The term denotes the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, a day that traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season.

"Black Friday"

The term “Black Friday” was first used in relation to a 19th-century financial crisis.

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

financiers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk attempted to corner the gold market and failed after their conspiracy was derailed. On Friday the 24th of September 1869, the gold market crashed and caused the stock market to suffer losses affecting practically everyone in the nation, many to the point of

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

. The link between the term and retailing begins in 1939, when U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation, subsequently reinforced by an

act of Congress An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by the United States Congress. Acts may apply only to individual entities (called Public and private bills, private laws), or to the general public (Public and private bills, public laws). For a Bill (law) ...

, which set the day of Thanksgiving to be the fourth Thursday in November rather than the last Thursday as it was until then. The change, in effect, lengthened the Christmas shopping season with whose start Thanksgiving had been traditionally tied. In the 1950s, "Black Friday" became associated with a specific social disturbance, and indirectly with retail finances. The annual Army-Navy football game was traditionally held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving and was drawing a significant number of visitors. Local retailers began offering significant discounts the day before the game to attract these new potential customers. Philadelphia police began calling the day as "Black Friday" because of the headaches the large crowds caused for them. As the discounting practice spread, followed by sales' increases, many businesses subsequently started using the term "Black Friday" to denote the day when their accounting logs went "from red ink to black." In the late 1980s, the term was re-invented and promoted by retailers to denote the discounts offered to the seasonal shoppers and it spread nationwide across the United States. Through the years, discount-offer days using the "Black Friday" moniker were used for additional dates of the year, such as Amazon's "Black Friday in July" of 2015. Additionally, the use of the term for discount-offer Fridays spread beyond the U.S. It remains the prevalent use of the term.Retailers have tried to avoid the "negative" adjective "Black" and tried for "Big Friday" but the name did not catch on. See BBC (2014)

The hoax

In 2018 and again in 2019, Facebook posts appeared recirculating the claim that the term was originally used for a day "after Thanksgiving" when slave traders sold slaves at a discount. One of the posts was accompanied by a "1904 photo" it claimed shows African slaves in America. The photo actually depicts

Aboriginal Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of several groups of indigenous peoples, see ...

prisoners in Wyndham,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and was taken between 1898 and 1906. It is one of many "fanciful" claims that have surfaced over time due to the term's distant and convoluted historical provenance but it caught on and remains a viral phenomenon that regularly appears around the time of the eponymous holiday, on various social media platforms, including Twitter. The claim has been debunked as a

hoax A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...

by experts and the media, including African online media and fact-checking websites, but remains popular.

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{{reflist Internet Deception Fraud Human rights abuses Slavery in the United States African-American-related controversies

"Black Friday"

The hoax

See also

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References