—DEFILIPPIS (2004, 38)
The history of African American cooperative economic activity begins with solidarity and collective action (economic and social) in the face of oppression, racial violence, discrimination, and sometimes betrayal. Even though separated from their clans and nations in Africa, enslaved as well as the few free African Americans continued African practices during the antebellum period—cooperating economically to till small garden plots to provide more variety and a healthier diet for their families. For two centuries they did not earn a regular wage or even own their own bodies, but they often saved what money they could and pooled their savings to help buy their own and one another’s freedom (especially among family members and spouses) (Du Bois 1907; Douglass 1882). Free African Americans pooled their resources to purchase operating farms toward the end of and immediately after the Civil War, in order to own land and make a living (Du Bois 1907; Jones 1985). Freedmen and enslaved alike formed mutual-aid, burial, and beneficial societies, pooling their dues to take care of their sick, look after widows and children, and bury their dead. These mutual-aid societies were often organized and led by women (Jones 1985) and connected to religious institutions (Du Bois 1898, 1907; Weare 1993). Blacks often formed their own intentional communities to work together for mutual benefit. Some consisted of free Blacks, but many were organized by groups of fugitives from enslavement. Sometimes White benefactors created Black communities to paternalistically help African Americans learn how to be good citizens. Finally, some White intentional communities welcomed a few Blacks to integrate their communities. This chapter provides an overview of all these of precursors to formal cooperatives among African Americans.
Early African American cooperative economic action took many forms: mutual-aid and beneficial societies, mutual insurance organizations, fraternal organizations and secret societies, buying clubs, joint-stock ownership among African Americans, and collective farming. W. E. B. Du Bois, in Some Efforts of American Negroes for Their Own Social Betterment (1898) and Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans (1907), documents myriad examples of economic cooperation. In his early work on the subject at the turn of the century, Du Bois used the term “cooperative business” loosely, even though he was familiar with the growing cooperative economics movement in Europe and the United States and corresponded with its leaders. The president of the Co-operative League of America (CLUSA), J. P. Warbasse, wrote an article in Du Bois’s Crisis magazine in 1918. Du Bois’s correspondence with Warbasse (DuBois 1925; Warbasse 1925) also indicates that Du Bois knew about the Co-operative League of America,1 and therefore eventually understood the formal definition of a cooperative business. CLUSA did not, however, form until 1916, so that in 1898 and 1907, when Du Bois first wrote about cooperative efforts among Blacks, it is conceivable that formal, well-developed definitions of cooperative economics and cooperative businesses had not yet become standard in the United States. On the other hand, Du Bois studied in Europe in the 1890s, and the International Co-operative Alliance was established there in 1895, so he may have had some familiarity with the formal definition of cooperative businesses that was developing during that time. That said, his intention in these early studies appears to be to document the variety of ways in which African Americans shared the costs, risks, and benefits of economic activity that helped Black families and communities, and to illustrate joint Black business and economic successes. Later in his career, Du Bois proposed Rochdale cooperative organizations as an important economic strategy for African Americans, and in 1918 he organized the Negro Cooperative Guild (see chapter 4) to promote Black cooperative economic development.
Collective Resistance
Africans in the Americas and African Americans have showed throughout history their willingness and ability to organize themselves in order to survive enslavement and poverty. They have organized myriad strategies of emancipation, including buying their freedom, work slowdowns, the creation of escape paths, and the formation of separate communities. Du Bois (1898) notes the importance of collective resistance and organization for resistance and escape. The Underground Railroad was also a type of economic and social cooperation. The Underground Railroad has been much described and researched, so I will only mention here that Du Bois and others wrote about the ways in which the design and implementation of escape routes throughout the United States and into Canada were examples of high-level social and economic cooperation and collaboration among African Americans and between Blacks and Whites. The Underground Railroad system also linked independent Black communities to one another and connected fugitives from slavery to Black and White support systems.
Curl similarly notes the ways in which mutual aid and cooperation for survival “both among slaves and among servants were almost universal”(1980, 4). While their cooperative networks were mostly invisible to masters, African Americans used them as channels for organized resistance. In addition, the communal settlements and villages organized by fugitives from enslavement were used “as bases for guerrilla raids on the slavers. These ‘maroon’ outlaw communes, many with both Black and Indian members, appeared wherever slavery spread” (Curl 1980, 4). Like Du Bois, Curl notes that religious gatherings were also mutual-aid gatherings and often served as planning meetings for revolts and escapes. For Du Bois, religious camaraderie was the basis for African American economic cooperation, and churches, secret societies, and mutual-aid societies among enslaved and free alike created the beginnings of economic cooperation. In terms of official organization, mutual-aid societies actually predate independent African American churches (Hine, Hine, and Harrold 2010), but not Black religious activity. However, more important than what came first are the many ways in which African Americans used cooperation to survive enslavement, gain freedom, and advance economically.
Black Communities or Communes and Utopian Ideals
Runaways from enslavement formed their own communities where they eluded or fought off bounty hunters, took on the identity of Maroons, and lived collective existences in relative isolation. Du Bois notes that the African American “spirit of revolt” used cooperation in the form of insurrection to establish “widespread organization for the rescue of fugitive slaves.” This in turn developed, in both the North and the South, into “various co-operative efforts toward economic emancipation and land buying,” and those efforts led to cooperative businesses, building-and-loan associations, and trade unions (1907, 26).
In addition, abolitionists and abolitionist societies deliberately established Negro-organized communities and communes to house freed African Americans and to teach them how to live as free people, earn a living and an education, and run their own communities. They raised money and often managed these communal farms. These communities created spaces of isolation and independence from racism, used mutual aid and assistance, and pooled Black and White resources until African Americans could manage on their own. While not exactly centers of Black self-help (because African Americans were so dependent on White benefactors), they are early examples of African American communalism. Such communities were scattered throughout the American Midwest—in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin—and southern Ontario, Canada (DeFilippis 2004, 38; Pease and Pease 1963). The first communities were recorded in 1830 and were gone by the end of the Civil War, with emancipation. Weare (1993) notes that Negro-led societies were organized only after White groups refused to allow Black leaders to join them.
While most of the successful communes were located in Canada, some took root in the United States. The Wilberforce Colony in Ontario was nearly self-sustaining in 1831. Black inhabitants owned their own sawmill and one hundred head of cattle, as well as pigs and horses. They had a system of schools for their children that were so successful that neighboring Whites sent their own children there (Pease and Pease 1963, 50). However, the families remained poor, their homes were tiny and not well kept up, and they spent time and money on “endless controversies and lawsuits with their U.S. agent” (51). The Dawn Settlement near Dresden, Ontario, another Black community, developed around the British-American Institute. Josiah Henson, a fugitive from enslavement in the United States, was one of the founders and an early leader. Founded in 1837, the first tract of land, of two hundred acres, was bought in 1841 (64). In December 1842 the manual-labor school opened. The community developed to serve the school and operated “formally,