Create Your First Project
Start adding your projects to your portfolio. Click on "Manage Projects" to get started
"To Our Credit Customers" Store Receipt
Collection
The Safekeeping Receipt Collection
Format
Original paper receipt
Date
c. 1924
People
Michael Gladden Jr.; Michael Gladden
Michael Gladden Sr.; Michael Gladden
Location
Apopka, Florida, United States of America.
Historical Background
A surviving message on the back of a standard M. Gladden Staple and Fancy Groceries receipt directed at credit customers, circa 1924. The message on the receipt reads as follows:
"To Our Credit Customers
In extending credit to you we judge you are able to pay.
Pay your account PROMPTLY at time promised and in FULL.
This bill is the most important one you have to pay. You must eat every day. That you have other bills to pay will not excuse you from paying this one promptly as you promised to do. Something to eat comes first.
ERRORS —We make them, so does every-one, but we cheerfully correct them. We want an early opportunity to make right any injustice that we do."
At a time when Black Americans distrusted banks due to racial discrimination and the dawn of the Great Depression (1929-1939), Michael Gladden Jr. stepped up to become the community's safekeeper and banker. Mr. Gladden securely stored these special store receipts in one of three vaults in his storefront, M. Gladden Staple and Fancy Groceries. The earliest evidence of Michael Gladden's monetary safekeeping dates to 1931, when Apopka started to feel the effects of the Depression in full force.
