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“Catering To The Local Trade”: Jewish-Owned Grocery Stores In Columbia, South Carolina, Olivia Brown

Theses and Dissertations

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe fled persecution, anti-Semitism, and violence in search of the “American dream.” Both the Rivkin family and the Kligman/Baker family found their way to Columbia, South Carolina, rather than staying in urban centers like New York and Philadelphia. While both families eventually operated grocery stores in Columbia, their respective roles within their communities were very different.

Jacob Rivkin, and later his son Caba, originally ran a grocery in the heart of the Jewish community that sold kosher products unavailable elsewhere in the city. The popularity of Rivkin’s Grocery led to …