In the intro to his book, The Underground Lawyer, author Michael Minns tells the story of his grandfather’s move to East Texas during the Great Depression. The elder Minns opened a store in a small Texas town, stocking it with goods he’d purchased from bankrupted stores from around the country for pennies on the dollar. As a result of his shrewd acquisitions, his store had the lowest prices in town.

There was one problem, though. All the other store owners in town required their black customers to enter from side or back doors - if they let them in at all. Minns let everyone in the front door regardless of color, angering the town’s more civic-minded citizens, who decided to boycott his store. But Minns had the best prices in town, so white people started using the back door to avoid being seen by their neighbors.

This angered the civic-minded even more, and things started to get nasty - rocks thrown through windows, vulgar messages painted on his doors, and so on.

Finally, Minns decided to put an end to the harassment. He borrowed $1,000 from the local bank, which, in those days, was a lot of money. All he did with it was deposit it in a bank in San Antonio and wait. After someone burned a cross in his front yard, he went back to the bank from which he’d borrowed the money and told the bank’s president that he would have to default on the loan. The president was shocked and asked if business was bad. No, business had never been better (did I mention that his store had the best prices in town?), but he was concerned for the safety of his family because of the harassment and was being forced to shut down his business and move.

The president said that he had no idea that such things were occurring (which was probably untrue). He declared that he wasn’t without influence in the town and would see what he could do. The harassment instantly stopped.

After that, Minns made sure that he always owed substantial sums to the town’s most prominent citizens and he, his family, and his store lived happily ever after.