were influential Black businessmen and White citizens around Concord, North Carolina. After raising the first $50,000, they offered the second $50,000 at $100 per share (payable in installments of 10 percent). The company produced between forty and fifty thousand bricks a day and planned to begin bricklaying for the mill that would employ three to four hundred people. It planned ultimately to establish (on its own or with others) a boardinghouse, truck farm, livery stable, and dairy, according to Coleman’s letter. The White-owned Concord Times enthusiastically reported on March 10, 1898, that
the [Coleman cotton] mill is to have from 7,000 to 10,000 spindles and from 100 to 250 looms, and, by their charter, will be allowed to spin, weave, manufacture, finish and sell warps, yarns, cloth, prints or other fabrics made of cotton, wool or other material. They own at present, in connection with the plant, about 100 acres of land on the main line of the Southern Railway and near the site of the mill. The mill and machinery with all the fixtures complete will represent an outlay of nearly $66,000, and will give employment to a number of hands. (Du Bois 1898, 26–27)
The newspaper projected that the cotton mill would be a successful Negro business. Calling the new board of directors “some of the highest lights of the Negro race,” the Concord Times also noted that it was “the only cotton mill in the world owned, conducted and operated by the Negro race” (27). In the twentieth century, a few cooperative sewing factories owned by African American women in North Carolina would also be successful and important businesses in their communities. Coleman foreshadows these later developments.
The Lexington Savings Bank
The Lexington Savings Bank, in Baltimore, was incorporated in 1895 with $10,000 of capital stock raised by Black leaders in Baltimore (Maryland State Archives 1998). The bank’s president, Everett Waring, was a graduate of Howard University School of Law and reportedly admired Capital Savings Bank in Washington, D.C. According to the Maryland Archives summary, Waring planned to gain as much of the Black savings in Baltimore as possible. Prominent African Americans in Baltimore—businessmen, lawyers, ministers, elected officials—were charter members and stockholders. Depositors came mostly from the Black working class: the bank “was supported entirely by colored people . . . and catered entirely to the poorer classes” (Baltimore Morning Herald, news clipping, ibid.). Several hundred people held deposits in the bank by 1896, and all celebrated the success of its first year.
In the second year there was a major scandal, from which the bank did not recover. This is another example of an attempt to pool Black resources and jointly own a business that would provide needed services to the Black community. It is also an example of mismanagement and apparent lack of transparency and adequate oversight. There are many examples of both throughout the history of African Americans. The failures, especially of Black banks, also feed the collective Black memory of distrust of and aversion to business ownership, which in the twentieth century has limited the willingness of many African Americans to become involved in Black-owned business ventures. The devastating failure, after the Panic of 1873, of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company (signed into law along with the Freedmen’s Bureau at the beginning of Reconstruction) in 1874 (Hine, Hine, and Harrold 2010),4 and the failure of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association business ventures in the early 1900s (see below), also contributed to Black ambivalence and often aversion to business ownership and investment in Black-owned banks. However, there remain many other examples of successful ventures and of people willing to give joint ownership a chance, as we will see in chapter 4.
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association
Shipp (1996) and Martin (1976) report that Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association had a model of cooperative economic development. Shipp writes, “Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) produced an alternative cooperative model for Black community development that has also been utilized by other groups including the Nation of Islam and many Black religious denominations. It shares many characteristics with the Mondragon. Although never fully realized, Garvey’s strategy envisioned the collective economic advancement of African peoples throughout the world” (1996, 86).5 Similarly, Martin contends that Garvey had a “grand design” to link all the UNIA businesses into a “worldwide system of Pan-African economic cooperation.”
Garvey’s attempts to establish economic self-reliance went beyond cooperative business enterprises, for UNIA branches acted as mutual aid friendly societies for the payment of death and other minor benefits to members. In rural areas among poor communities, this aspect of the organization’s operations assumed greater importance. Local divisions also were required to maintain a charitable fund “for the purpose of assisting distressed members or needy individuals of the race,” a fund for “loans of honor” to active members, and an employment bureau to assist members seeking work. (1976, 35–36)
Martin also lists the ways in which the UNIA businesses operated cooperatively. He observes that one manager engaged in cooperative buying for all the stores and restaurants of the Negro Factories Corporation (34). In Colón, Panama, the UNIA ran a cooperative bakery, and in Kingston, Jamaica, the African Communities League Peoples Co-operative Bank sold shares only to UNIA members (35). For Garvey, economic self-reliance was primary, according to Martin. Successful political action required an independent economic base. Blacks needed to be independent producers, not just consumers. Many businesses and assets should be jointly owned by all UNIA members. In the case of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, Garvey claimed that “the ships that are owned by this corporation are the property of the Negro race.”6 Everyone was an owner.
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
