Manley helped organize and served as treasurer for the landmark Harlem economic boycott campaign demanding jobs for Black workers.
On September 16, 1935, Effa Manley helped organize and served as treasurer for the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" parade and boycott campaign in Harlem, New York City. This grassroots economic justice movement pressured white-owned businesses operating in predominantly Black neighborhoods to hire Black employees, arguing that community spending power should translate into community employment opportunities.
The protest drew thousands of participants and represented one of the earliest large-scale organized economic boycotts in the American civil rights movement, predating the more famous Montgomery Bus Boycott by two decades. Manley's role as treasurer demonstrated her organizational capabilities and her deep commitment to practical, results-oriented activism well before she became known primarily as a baseball executive.
This event is historically significant because it illustrates that Manley's civil rights work preceded and informed her later baseball career; she would go on to use her platform as co-owner of the Newark Eagles to continue advocating for racial justice, linking sports and activism in ways that were unusual for the era. The boycott campaign contributed to a broader wave of Black economic self-determination movements during the Great Depression, when unemployment disproportionately devastated Black communities in urban centers like Harlem.