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This catalog from the Colored Mail Order Corporation of America dates to around 1939. The company was founded in Kansas City, Missouri by Chester Arthur Franklin (1880-1955), a local businessman and the editor and publisher of the Kansas City Call, the city's weekly newspaper covering issues of interest to the city's Black community. The company was Black-owned and operated, and marketed clothes, housewares, and other products to Black consumers across the country.
The company, which promoted itself as being "the largest business of its kind" operated with a mission statement that aimed to persuade its customers that "If you want more jobs for yourselves and your children, if you want greater opportunity for training in business, if you realize that colored people must provide for their own economic growth and security through mutual cooperation ..."
Franklin and his wife, Ada Crogman Franklin, who ran the Kansas City Call with him before taking it over entirely, were also active in local and statewide campaigns for civil rights, and used their access to the press and other resources to advocate for better housing, employment opportunities, and access to schools and other public resources for Black Americans. In particular, the paper's editorials were widely credited were forcing courts to stop banning Black people from jury service.
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