48 Photos Depicting What American Grocery Stores Looked Like Throughout the Decades

Forrest City, Arkansas, dubbed “The Jewel of the Delta,” grappled with deep-seated segregation in the late 1930s. Named after Confederate leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, the city hesitated to embrace change.

A scene unfolds of an African American individual buying groceries from a traveling store, a vital solution in the segregated South. These mobile markets were crucial for those barred from ‘all-White’ town stores.