Kress Drug Sign
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Kress Drug Sign
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Photography
Description
Kress opened his first stationery and notions store in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania, in 1887. The chain of S. H. Kress & Co. 5-10-25 Cent Stores was established in 1896 in Memphis, Tennessee. In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Kress, who died in 1955, sold a house label of phonograph records under the Romeo trademark.
The company's exclusion of African Americans from its lunch counters made Kress a target for civil rights protests during the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, along with Woolworth's, Rexall and other national chains. In Nashville, Tennessee, Kress repeatedly refused to serve the protesters but eventually agreed to integrate the downtown store in reaction to a consumer boycott. The Greensboro, North Carolina Kress was included in the first civil rights demonstrations in the South. In Adickes v. S.H. Kress Co., the U.S. Supreme Court threw out convictions for vagrancy resulting from a sit-in at a Kress lunch counter in Mississippi. The Kress store in Baton Rouge was the site of that city's first civil rights sit-in an event that helped save it from demolition 45 years later.
In 1964, Genesco, Inc., acquired Kress. The company abandoned its center-city stores and moved to shopping malls. Genesco began liquidating Kress and closing down the Kress stores in 1980. The remaining Kress stores were sold to McCrory Stores on January 1, 1981. Most continued to operate under the Kress name until McCrory Stores went out of business in 2001.
Tiendas Kress, the subsidiary chain in Puerto Rico, survived the parent company and is still in business there. The Kress Foundation, a philanthropic organization promoting art, was established by Kress in 1929 and also survives the parent company.
Some digital effects were applied to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition.
Image copyright 2024 Jon Burch Photography
Uploaded
January 9th, 2024
Embed
Share