The Universal Negro Improvement Association was originally organized in Jamaica in 1914 as a mutual-benefit society—a “Universal Confraternity among the race”—with a mission to establish educational institutions and improve conditions for Blacks everywhere (Martin 1976, 6). It was incorporated in New York in 1918. At its height, the UNIA was the largest African American political organization in the early twentieth century (Hine, Hine, and Harrold 2010, 452). Interestingly, the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union was the largest Black organization a decade or two earlier. Here again, while at first the Black cooperative movement seems to have been small and inconsequential as well as little acknowledged, it has actually played a part in many of the major movements for Black liberation in the United States. The UNIA’s Negro Factories Corporation was a joint-stock holding company for two uniform assembly factories, a laundry, a printing plant, three restaurants, and three grocery stores (Shipp 1996).7 The Black Star Line was a joint-stock company that handled international shipping; it purchased three ships altogether in the early 1920s but could not maintain them enough to use them for transport (Hine, Hine, and Harrold 2010, 454; Martin 1976). Garvey was indicted for mail fraud for soliciting (selling shares and asking for contributions) through the mail, and the businesses went bankrupt.8 Between 1920 and 1924, however, UNIA businesses employed as many as a thousand employees. Stock certificates for both the Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation sold for $5 per share. Individual member investors could buy up to two hundred shares in the Black Star Line. The UNIA newspaper, the Negro World, posted advertisements for stock in these businesses and published articles describing the progress of the businesses. In promotional documents such as Garvey’s article in the issue of May 24, 1924, Garvey pushed for all members to invest in the Black Cross Navigation Company (Black Star’s parent company) at levels of $100 to $1,000, in order to raise the necessary capital. The headline read, “Negroes Cooperating for Black Steamship Company’s Success” (Garvey 1924). During this time, the Black press, specifically the Negro World, appears to have used the word “cooperation” a lot. On the other hand, Floyd-Thomas notes that “despite Garvey’s endorsement of racial unity and pride as well as collective economic development for African peoples, his social philosophy made quite a stir within the already volatile climate in 1920s Harlem” (2008, 137). Garvey was extremely controversial, and while he used the language of cooperation, it is not clear how fully he embraced cooperative economics.
Another interesting historical note to Garvey’s failed economic attempts, particularly with the Black Star Line, and connections with other economic visions at the time, is Du Bois’s attempt to resurrect the idea of a U.S.-Africa commercial shipping line. Perhaps ironically, Du Bois, basically a critic of Garvey’s economic projects, had a plan to resurrect the Black Star Line in some fashion in 1923. He wrote to the secretary of state, Charles Hughes, about the failure of the U.S. Congress to confirm a Liberian loan in January 1923 (Du Bois 1923). By this time the Black Star Line was bankrupt, but according to Du Bois there was still interest in commerce between the United States and Liberia. He summarized the aftermath of the Black Star Line “fiasco”:
The difficulty with this [the bankruptcy of the Black Star Line] was that its leader, Marcus Garvey, was not a business man and turned out to be a thoroughly impractical visionary, if not a criminal, with grandiose schemes of conquest. The result was that he wasted some eight or nine hundred thousand dollars of the hard-earned pennies of Negro laborers. However, two things are clear; nearly a million dollars of Black Star Line stock of the Garvey movement is now distributed among colored people and is absolutely without value. On the other hand, the United States owns thousands of vessels, any one or two of which might be used to initiate the plan I have spoken of. (261)
Du Bois wanted the U.S. government to provide two ships to begin a commercial trade venture between Liberia and the United States. Moreover, he asked the secretary of state if such a venture could legally be connected to the worthless Black Star stock in “an attempt to restore the confidence of the mass of American Negroes in commercial enterprise with Africa, possibly by having a private company headed by men of highest integrity, both white and colored, to take up and hold in trust, the Black Star Line certificates” (261). There is no record of a reply to that letter. However, this is more evidence of Du Bois’s interest not just in Pan-African commerce but also in redeeming the concept of joint ownership.
Marcus Garvey, much like Booker T. Washington (and like Du Bois, though most of the time they thought they had very different ideas from each other), urged African Americans to find separate economic solutions to their plight and to control their own economic enterprises. Shipp contends that Garvey wanted these businesses to be managed by their members—the stockholders—and operate democratically. Advertisements in Black newspapers connected participation and investment in these enterprises with the uplift of the race, a strategy for Black liberation, and a way to make a profit by supporting Black endeavors (Briggs 2003 provides copies of some of these ads). Shipp maintains that “the cooperative or collective, as implemented by Garvey, would be a part of an expansive market area, beginning with each UNIA chapter and spreading outward to create a Pan-African trading network based on economic cooperation” (1996, 88).
The Negro World did cover cooperative activity in the African American community, reporting on co-op housing, buying clubs, credit unions, and the Colored Merchants Association (see chapter 6). In addition, the December 27, 1924, edition of the Negro World provides in-depth coverage of a new report from the Russell Sage Foundation called “Sharing Management with the Workers” (Negro World 1924). The subhead includes the phrase “Negroes also benefit,” though it is not obvious from reading the article that any of the employees of the Dutchess Bleachery in Wappingers Falls, New York, who benefitted from the partnership plan were Black. The article does suggest that the UNIA considered this kind of information about workplace democracy important to its readers and members.
Shipp contends that Du Bois based his promotion of cooperative economic development for African Americans on Garvey’s philosophy in the 1930s. However, my research and analysis of Du Bois’s theory of economic cooperation (supported by Haynes 1993 and 1999; DeMarco 1974; and Rudwick 1968) find that Du Bois was already discussing economic cooperation and cooperative businesses in 1898. He wrote a book and called a conference on the subject in 1907, and read and was in contact with the major cooperative thinkers in the United States and United Kingdom by the early 1900s. He established the Negro Cooperative Guild in 1918. Du Bois, therefore, developed his cooperative economics philosophy separately from Garvey, and probably before Garvey, although it is not surprising that great minds would light on similar strategies. Indeed, one of the findings of this study is that many African American leaders and scholars supported the concept of cooperative economic development at some point (often early on) in their careers, if not throughout.
Du Bois did recognize the potential that Garvey and the UNIA had amassed. He wrote that Garvey had proved that “American Negroes can, by accumulating and ministering their own capital, organize industry, join the black centers of the south Atlantic by commercial enterprise and in this way ultimately redeem Africa as a fit and free home for black men” (1921, 977; see also Taylor 2002, 47). Also, Du Bois’s letter to the secretary of state in 1923 suggests that he did not consider a venture like the Black Star Line a bad idea, just poorly executed (see also Du Bois 1921). It is also clear that he was very interested in restoring Black people’s faith in joint ownership.
Marcus Garvey may have written and spoken about pooling resources, been philosophically in favor of cooperative economics, and been interested in promoting cooperative ownership in some of his projects, but the economic organizations started by the UNIA were joint-stock companies rather than cooperative businesses as defined by the Rochdale principles, and the majority of stock was owned by the UNIA. Moreover, Garvey rarely practiced financial transparency, a cooperative principle (Du Bois complained of this; see Du Bois 1921), and was known to be authoritative. Like many of the examples from Du Bois’s 1898 and 1907 studies, the UNIA businesses are examples of economic cooperation among Negroes, but they were not cooperative business enterprises. The UNIA businesses had serious management problems,