were racially integrated; some equally effective organizations were strictly segregated by race.
• Many of these organizations spun off additional organizations and more formal businesses. Statewide, regional, and national federations and networks often developed around these local movements. Mutual insurance companies grew out of mutual-aid societies, and Black-owned banks developed from insurance companies.
• These organizations used meetings, conventions, newsletters, and newspapers to provide information, promote dialogue, and connect members to one another.
• Many if not all of these efforts were targeted for destruction by White supremacists, unsympathetic (often fearful) Whites, and/or White economic competitors (the plantation bloc and/or corporatists). White competitors used slander, violence, murder, physical destruction, and economic sabotage. They burned down the offices, farms, and houses owned by these organizations or their members. They shot and lynched leaders, members, and their families. They accused Black leaders of mail fraud and treason, jailed them, and initiated federal indictments. They denied loans to fledgling businesses. They established their own businesses to undercut and outcompete the Black products and services. They even passed laws to outlaw the activities in which Black organizations and collectives were engaged.
• African Americans involved in collective economic activities often found that they needed also to engage in political activity to enact public policies or counteract White blocs and racially discriminatory legislation. In addition, African Americans often found it necessary to engage in collective economic practices in order to achieve or maintain the independence they needed to assert themselves politically.
• Lessons learned from the African American–owned businesses that were formal cooperative ventures include the need for education and training of members, leaders, and managers; stable and adequate capitalization and clientele; the building of trust and solidarity among members; and support from the community.
EARLY BLACK ECONOMIC COOPERATION
Intentional Communities, Communes, and Mutual Aid
This tendency toward mutual helpfulness appeared even among the slaves. Wherever Negroes had their own churches benevolence developed as the handmaiden of religion. They looked out for the sick, provided them nourishment which the common fare of the plantation did not afford, and often nursed and treated such patients until they were reestablished in health. Free Negroes of the South were well known for their mutual helpfulness.
—WOODSON (1929, 202)
The history of community control in the United States has several different components, but in terms of providing the roots for the emergence of community ownership, the most important of these is the history of black “organized communities” of the nineteenth century.
—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
