BIRMINGHAM
HUNTER'S FURNITURE Birmingham On a side street in Birmingham's now faded downtown, Hunter's Furniture, founded in 1920, still does a brisk business. In the late 1910s, young white Alabamian Mr. Walter Hunter started an insurance route in African American neighborhoods around Birmingham. In 1920, he decided to open a furniture store, and many of the people he knew from his route became his customers.
	During the early part of the twentieth century, customers liked light-colored woods for beds and "chesterfields," or sofas. With an originally 100% African American clientelle, Hunter's remained for years the only furniture store in Birmingham that offered credit to blacks. Moreover, within a culture of institutionalized racism and wholesale discrimination, Mr. Walter Hunter dealt fairly with all of his clients, treating them as equals, and many friendships developed between the Hunter family and their customers
When Walter Hunter retired, his two sons took over the operation of the family store. Now Mr. Bob Hunter runs the store, and welcomes in long-term customers, as well as strangers, with the easy joviality he learned from his father.	Mr. Bob Hunter	Now 75 % of the clientele is African American, and Mr. Bob Hunter frequently visits his customers, like long-term friend Lola Robinson, at their homes in Titusville or in other predominantly African American neighborhoods around the city. Some of these customers, now in their 90s, can remember running around the Hunter showroom floor as children.

INDUSTRIAL HIGH SCHOOL Birmmingham December 1924: A group of girls at the Industrial High School in Birmingham, later called Parker High School, furnished a five-room model apartment. Located in the "Girls Building," the apartment contained rugs, curtains, lamps, linoleum and other basic furnishings, according to the following model. When the girls presented the "living room" in May, they wore "lovely party frocks of taffeta, voile, and canton crepe in all the pastel shades," and each "girl's derss was built along lines appropriate for her type of beauty." (Industrial High School Record, May, 1925.)

KITCHEN White-enameled cabinet RECEPTION HALL Console mirror BEDROOM A walnut period suite: a four-poster bed, vanity dresser, a "low boy," two chairs DINING ROOM An oak suite with buffet, pedestal table, six leather bottomed chairs LIVING ROOM A 3-pieced brown mahogany suite in grey and blue velour with cane back, a "lovely davenport," a rocker of the same material, a chrome console mirror, a rose-shaded bridge lamp

Gilded and ornate, the furniture in the picture to the right typifies the selection in stores in the Deep South. Employers from furniture stores in Pittsburgh and Birmingham confirmed that stores in the South sell many more floral patterns, and find that colors like rose and mint are very popular. The store at the right was located in Ensley, a neighborhood in Birmingham where African Americans flocked to Tuxedo Junction in the early and mid parts of the century. This store sold only to whites until the late 1960s.

Employers at Belmont's Furniture in Pittsburgh, pictured above and to the right, confirmed that stores in the North tend to carry furniture in darker shades and subtler patterns, with plaids and stripes especially popular.

Edlis Barber Supply Co., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Opened in the 19th Century, Pittsburgh's Edlis Barber Supply Company has made furniture for barber shops and beauty salons, as well as general hair products, and still operates today.	Images are from the Edlis catalogues, early 20th century