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Episode: "Beyond Piggly Wiggly" by Lisa Tolbert
Description: The Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain remains with us today but when Piggly Wiggly first appeared on the scene in 1916 it was part of a whole new concept in retailing: the self-service store.Lisa Tolbert, a professor at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, explores the Piggly Wiggly phenomenon through 1940 at which time the self-service approach had become commonly accepted, she noted.Tolbert describes how the self-service store was "a starkly different experience" than shopping in a counter-service store. She also tells the story of Piggly Wiggly founder Clarence Saunders, a white supremacist who courted African-American customers...