‘Cooperative’ Businesses.” In addition, starting in the late nineteenth century, African Americans organized cooperatively owned and democratically governed enterprises that followed the “Rochdale Principles of Cooperation,” first set out by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in Rochdale, England, in 1844 and adopted by the International Co-operative Alliance in 1895. Hope (1940) refers to these as Rochdale cooperatives, and I follow his tradition. The first such cooperatives were farm co-ops and cooperative marketing boards, consumer cooperative grocery stores, cooperative schools, and credit unions. The Mercantile Cooperative Company (Ruthville, Virginia) is the earliest detailed example I found of an African American Rochdale cooperative. Black capitalism was a strategy of racial economic solidarity and cooperation, as was Negro joint-stock ownership. This chapter looks at the businesses of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement in New York; the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company and the Lexington Savings Bank in Baltimore; and the Coleman Manufacturing Company in Concord, North Carolina.
Chapter 4, “Strategy, Advocacy, and Practice: Black Study Circles and Co-op Education on the Front Lines,” begins part II of this volume. This chapter documents the strategic importance of education to cooperative development and the sustainability of cooperatives. The study-circle strategy used by most African Americans in the early stages of starting a cooperative is highlighted, along with the importance of self-education as an economic resource in cooperatives. The Negro Cooperative Guild, though short-lived, was an early example of the deliberate use of a national study circle to inspire Black cooperative business development around the country. The variety of ways in which Black co-ops educate their members and communities, particularly about cooperative economics, democratic participation, and business development, are identified, with a focus on the education program of the Consumers’ Cooperative Trading Company in Gary, Indiana, and the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
The Young Negroes’ Co-operative League is the focus of chapter 5. The 1930s were an active time for cooperative development for both Blacks and Whites. The YNCL, founded in December 1930 by twenty-five or thirty African American youths in response to a call by George Schuyler (Schuyler 1930b, 1932, n.d.), first published in the Pittsburgh Courier, was strong in five cities by the early 1930s. Several cooperatives were developed through the league. The leadership of both Schuyler and Ella Baker (the league’s executive director) was significant for different reasons, which are explored in this chapter.
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
