In the 1930s, scholars and activists alike advocated the cooperative way and experimenting with co-op development. Chapter 6, “Out of Necessity: The Great Depression and ‘Consumers’ Cooperation Among Negroes,’” explores the accomplishments of African American cooperatives during the Great Depression. This part of the history begins with the Colored Merchants Association of the National Negro Business League in 1927. Black involvement with the trade union movement also included support for and establishment of consumer cooperatives in particular. Du Bois and the YNCL were joined by A. Philip Randolph, writing in the Black Worker, in advocating consumer cooperatives among African Americans. I document the range of existing cooperatives in the 1930s and ’40s, from YNCL-inspired co-ops in New York City, to the Consumers’ Cooperative Trading Company in Gary, the Red Circle Cooperative in Richmond, and the Aberdeen Gardens Association in Hampton, to the People’s Consumer Cooperative in Chicago and the Modern Co-op Grocery Store in Harlem.
Chapter 7, “Continuing the Legacy: Nannie Helen Burroughs, Halena Wilson, and the Role of Black Women,” highlights the role of women in the cooperative movement, with a focus on Halena Wilson and the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Nannie Helen Burroughs and Cooperative Industries in Washington, D.C. Women’s roles in Black cooperative development have been strong throughout history, much like their role in the Black mutual-aid movement of the nineteenth century. In addition to early efforts by Black women, Estelle Witherspoon of Alabama (the Freedom Quilting Bee) and Fannie Lou Hamer of Mississippi (Freedom Farm) were leaders of the cooperative movement in their communities in the 1960s and 1970s. The BSCP’s Ladies’ Auxiliary and its international president, Halena Wilson, promoted consumers’ cooperation. That case study provides many insights into the Black cooperative movement, its strengths and challenges, its champions, and its relationships to organized labor and the broader cooperative movement in the United States.
There are also rural examples of African American cooperative development in the early twentieth century. Many small farmers, particularly National Farmers Union members, turned to radical action during the Depression years. The activities of the National Federation of Colored Farmers are chronicled in chapter 8, “Black Rural Cooperative Activity in the Early to Mid-Twentieth Century.” The chapter also examines the organization of the Eastern Carolina Council as well as the North Carolina Council for Credit Unions and Associates.
Founded in 1967, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives has supported cooperative economic development as a way to support and sustain Black farmer ownership and control, the economic viability of farm businesses (especially small, sustainable, and organic farming), and stewardship of African American land and natural resources in rural low-income communities. The early story of the FSC is also the history of the Southwest Alabama Farmers’ Cooperative Association and the Southern Cooperative Development Fund. After merging with the Land Emergency Fund, the organization became the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund. The FSC/LAF is a network of rural cooperatives, credit unions, and state associations of cooperatives and cooperative development centers in the southern United States. Chapter 9, “The Federation of Southern Cooperatives: The Legacy Lives On,” begins part III of this book and includes examples of cooperatives in the federation such as the Freedom Quilting Bee and the North Bolivar County Farm Cooperative. The organization has an important reach throughout the South, is the heart of the present-day African American cooperative movement, and is connected to the larger U.S. cooperative movement.
Cooperation is a deliberate and necessary expansion of in-group solidarity and cohesion. Chapter 10, “Economic Solidarity in the African American Cooperative Movement: Connections, Cohesiveness, and Leadership Development,” traces group solidarity in African American cooperatives through civil rights activities, worker solidarity and leadership development in general, and women’s and youth leadership in particular. Cooperative economic development is also a strategy to engage youths of color in school and community economic development. I analyze programs that involve African American students in community economic development and cooperative business development, such as Food from the ’Hood, and Toxic Soil Busters. While not yet fully achieved, the history of African American cooperative ownership demonstrates that Black Americans have been successful in creating and maintaining collective and cooperatively owned enterprises that not only provided economic stability but also developed many types of human and social capital and economic independence.
The Larger Project
This book is just the beginning of a theoretical analysis of African American cooperative economic development. I focus here on the first part of this journey—finding and documenting Black-owned co-ops in the United States and understanding their achievements and challenges, as well as the philosophy and strategy that African Americans used to foster and develop co-ops. I examine the big picture of co-op movements among African Americans and their organizations and leaders. I focus on the national organizations, the philosophy and strategy behind cooperative economic development, and its broad impacts. I show that cooperative economic thought was integral to most of the major African American leaders, thinkers, and organizations of the past two centuries.
In researching this book, I learned that almost all African American leaders were involved in Black co-ops in some manner: they either promoted or engaged in the practice of cooperative ownership, particularly in their early careers or as part of their vision for a prosperous future without discrimination. In many ways, this cooperative history is also a retelling of African American history in general—a reconstructing of African American history through the lens of the Black cooperative movement. Many of the players are the same. Many of the great African American thinkers, movers, and shakers were also leaders in the Black cooperative movement. That part of their history and thought, however, has been mostly left out, ignored until now. Adding the cooperative movement revitalizes the telling of the African American experience and increases our understanding of African American agency and political economic organizing. This study answers the question of whether African Americans have a cooperative tradition with a resounding yes.
Economic participation in cooperatives increases the capacity to engage in civic and political participation and leadership development. Cooperatives also increase women’s economic participation, control over resources, and economic stability, with important implications. Cooperatives were used heavily during the Great Depression, contributing to community revitalization and saving struggling communities. In fact, the 1930s appear to mark the height of African American cooperative economic activity in the United States. With unemployment and poverty high, and services curtailed or unavailable, African Americans struggled to feed their families. They chose cooperative economics as a solution. Throughout history, especially in trying times, African Americans chose cooperation and often had good results. The current Great Recession has been the second-worst economic crisis in U.S. history. These are times in which many Black communities exist under conditions of high unemployment, deep poverty, and homelessness. Many who had assets were stripped of them. The cooperative solution is one that has addressed these same conditions throughout history. Cooperative ownership helps address the challenges of capitalism, marginalization in labor, capital, and product markets, and the lack of adequate, affordable, quality services. Current conditions require alternative strategies. Cooperatives are again a solution.
EARLY AFRICAN AMERICAN COOPERATIVE ROOTS
Consequently we find that the spirit of revolt which tried to co-operate by means of insurrection led to widespread organization for the rescue of fugitive slaves among Negroes themselves, and developed before the war in the North and during and after the war in the South, into various co-operative efforts toward economic emancipation and land