The dark history of Black Friday stretches back centuries of greed and chaos

Black Friday 2024 is finally here, and as shoppers across the country spend hours browsing online and in-store deals, many Americans may not be familiar with the day’s dark and criminal history, which dates back centuries.

“The original term Black Friday actually dates back to September 24, 1869,” financial advisor Bryan Kuderna told Fox News Digital. “What happened that day was a very famous stock market crash … where the stock market fell over 20% in one day.”

Kuderna added that this event was a “huge financial crime” in history, explaining how two notorious American financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, hatched a criminal plan to take over the gold market, resulting in a widespread Panic resulted throughout the country, which drove many to bankruptcy.

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(Rob Stothard/Getty Images/File)

“They were true ‘robber barons’ of the Golden Age,” Kuderna said. “The gold in circulation in the U.S. was about $20 million…so Jay Gould and his friend Jim Fisk thought about it and said, ‘You know what? With a fixed gold circulation of $20 million, if… Some really wealthy people with deep pockets were to try to buy up all the gold, they could effectively corner the market.'”

“They were both very wealthy,” Kuderna said. “They had done a lot of shady deals in the past and said, ‘You know what? Let’s go out and buy up as much gold as we can and actually capture this market.’”

Gould and Fisk wanted to do just that, but they needed a little help from someone in the government.

President Ulysses S. Grant planned to release more gold into the economy and limit the amount of greenbacks (paper dollars) in circulation, which would foil the criminal duo’s plan by driving down the price of gold.

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This illustration shows financier Jay Gould (left) attempting to conquer the gold market, represented by bulls and bears in a cage. On Black Friday, September 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant (in the background) restored prevailing gold prices by having the U.S. Treasury sell $5 million worth of gold, which he brought with him in a bag. (Library of Congress/Currier & Ives, 1869)

“They befriended the president’s brother-in-law and let him in on this plan,” Kuderna said. “They paid them and said, ‘Can you listen to your brother-in-law, the president, and try to get assurances from him that he will not sell any more gold in the market?’

The president listened to his brother-in-law Abel Rathbone Corbin and did not put gold on the market for a while.

“As a result of controlling supply, reducing supply and focusing on just these two people, the price of gold has skyrocketed,” Kuderna said. “And at that time, Jay Gould and his investment partner Jim Fisk set out to corner the market and get their hands on as much gold as they could.”

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James Fisk is illustrated in Harper’s Weekly circa 1869. (Library of Congress)

Jay Gould is shown in the 19th century. (Library of Congress/George Grantham Bain Collection)

President Grant soon became uncomfortable with his brother-in-law’s interest, believing something “rotten” was going on, and ordered the sale of millions of dollars’ worth of gold, Kuderna said. Meanwhile, Gould and Fisk had begun buying up gold.

On September 24, 1869, government gold came onto the market and the price of gold plummeted almost immediately.

“They are flooding the market with gold. The price of gold crashes and at the same time the price in the stock market crashes, which is now known as Black Friday,” Kuderna explained.

The stock market crash affected many people across the country and even drove some into bankruptcy.

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Ulysses S. Grant was a West Point graduate who became the Army’s top general during the Civil War before becoming President of the United States. (Stockmontage/Getty Images)

The next dark period in the history of Black Friday began in Philadelphia in the mid-20th century.

“In the 1950s … between Thanksgiving and the frequent Army-Navy football game the following Saturday, particularly in Philadelphia where the game was held, the city was simply flooded with football fans, tourists and shoppers who had the weekend off,” said Kuderna. “And that was the time when the Philadelphia Police Department was really stretched to its limits and everyone had to work overtime. There was just a lack of manpower… there were a lot of reports of shoplifting, just completely overcrowded stores… and that’s where the term Black Friday kind of started to find its place.”

Kuderna explained that at this point, retailers changed the term from Black Friday to Big Friday.

“It cut out a little bit of the negativity and the connotation of that name and focused it more on the sales, the excitement of the holiday season and us ringing it in with a big Friday,” he said. “Honestly, I wish that term stayed.”

The more recent background of the term “Black Friday” is a financial interpretation that began as it emerged from its historically dark origins.

“The most recent knowledge of the term dates back to the ’80s, when the accountants of all the major retailers said, ‘Okay, before Thanksgiving we may have been in the red, we had losses, and so on.’ This Friday, after Thanksgiving, we would see a huge boom in all our sales.’ And so they would go from red numbers, meaning a loss, to positive numbers, meaning black numbers,” Kuderna said. “This is the Black Friday we all know today.”

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Although Black Friday emerged as a positive highlight of the year and symbolized the start of the holiday shopping season, Kuderna noted the importance of understanding the day’s darker history.

“I would love it if people knew where it actually came from,” he said. “I think it’s important to know where we come from so we don’t make any more mistakes.”