DC’s Attorney General Is Suing Amazon for Secretly Excluding Majority-Black Neighborhoods From Prime Deliveries

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

December 5, 2024

By Damare Baker, Washingtonian

Amazon is facing a legal case after halting deliveries in some Washington DC neighborhoods (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Amazon, alleging the online retailer secretly stopped providing its fast delivery service to Amazon Prime customers residing in two majority-Black Ward 7 and 8 neighborhoods.

The lawsuit, filed in DC Superior Court, alleges Amazon has been excluding two zip codes east of the Anacostia River (20019 and 20020) from receiving its advertised two-day service, instead exclusively using slower third-party services like UPS and the US Postal Service.

The Attorney General’s office says Amazon should reverse its “exclusion” and pay financial damages to the 48,000 residents of the affected neighborhoods who bought Prime memberships.

“Amazon is charging tens of thousands of hard-working Ward 7 and 8 for an expedited delivery service it promises but does not provide,” Schwalb said in a statement. “While Amazon has every right to make operational changes, it cannot covertly decide that a dollar in one zip code is worth less than a dollar in another.”

Amazon refuted any claims of discrimination as “categorically false,” in a statement to Washingtonian. “We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers,” said Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for the company.

Keep reading to learn why Amazon felt this was necessary.

Many Black people live in specific neighborhoods because of redlining.

More breaking news.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.