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Part One

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 buying. Gradually these efforts led to co-operative business, building and loan associations and trade unions.

—DU BOIS (1907, 26)

Early African American cooperative roots include collective benevolence, grassroots economic organizing, and cooperative agriculture. Part I of this book provides examples of many of the efforts at grassroots economic organizing and collective ownership among African Americans, starting from enslavement and focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Included in part I are efforts of African Americans to buy their own freedom collectively or escape enslavement collectively, as well as highlights of the Black mutual-aid movement, the Black utopian communities movement, early activities of Black trade unionists (particularly in the South), and early Black-owned businesses (particularly mutual insurance companies and joint-stock companies). These efforts illuminate the perseverance of African Americans in finding alternative economic strategies to promote economic stability and economic independence in the face of fierce competition, racial discrimination, and White supremacist violence and sabotage.

The first chapter reviews the history of Black cooperative communities and communes, and focuses on the history of African American mutual-aid and beneficial societies. Black cooperative agriculture and the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union form the basis of chapter 2, about cooperatives and the African American populist movement. Much of this history is fraught with examples of efforts at collective economic action that were thwarted by racial discrimination, White supremacist sabotage, and violence. Such efforts to undermine African American cooperative development persisted throughout the centuries (Du Bois 1907; Woods 1998).

Part I ends with a discussion of early African American–owned businesses that were at least jointly owned and often collectively or democratically governed, some according to the Rochdale principles, codified in Europe in 1895. Chapter 3 also includes a discussion of the economic ventures of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in the United States and Marcus Garvey’s interest in economic democracy. It remains difficult to distinguish formal cooperative businesses from Du Bois’s descriptions of joint economic ownership in his two early books, as well as in the discussion of the Universal Negro Improvement Association’s joint-stock businesses. I discuss both cases as examples of economic cooperation and solidarity. Where possible, I mention specifically which examples in this chapter intentionally follow Rochdale principles of cooperative business ownership.

What we learn from this history is that economic cooperation was natural and continuous in the Black community of the United States. There were periods of rapid and successful cooperative effort and periods of relative dormancy, though there seems to be no period in U.S. history where African Americans were not involved in economic cooperation of some type.

Lessons Learned from Early Cooperative Efforts

Many different kinds of cooperative ventures have been tried in the Black community. A few of them are featured in part I. What do we learn from these early collective economic efforts, which led to the development and ownership of cooperative businesses, often based on the Rochdale principles, among African Americans? The lessons can be summarized as follows:

• In every period of American history, African Americans pooled resources to solve personal, family, social, political, and economic challenges. They often addressed freedom, health, child development, education, burial, employment, and investment in cooperative ventures in ways that leveraged and maximized returns and reduced risks.

• African Americans formed distinct, purposive, and formal (as well as informal) organizations through which to coordinate and channel collective action and joint ownership. Many of these were stable collective organizations that lasted for decades.

• African Americans used existing connections and affiliations—religious, fraternal, geographical, and political—to develop new organizations or promote new missions. These existing networks provided the sense of trust and solidarity that often helped solidify the new effort. Racial solidarity, for example, became a major resource for these and future Black organizations and businesses.

• African American women played significant roles, held leadership positions, and often formed their own organizations throughout these periods and across almost every kind of organization. As founders and main participants in many mutual-aid societies, women were instrumental in organizational development, fund-raising, day-to-day coordination, and networking for cooperatives as well as other organizations.

• These activities developed among diverse groups and in diverse settings: in urban and rural areas among farmers, landholders, sharecroppers, day laborers, domestic workers, industrial workers, and the unemployed, as well as small business owners and professionals. Geography had little impact on depressing the cooperative spirit and seemed not to stand in the way of collective economic activity. Similarly, while some organizations were class based and exclusive, many more began as grassroots self-help movements, open to all—and were sometimes all the stronger because multiple classes were represented. In addition, these collective activities took place among ideologies of both racial separation and integration. Some of the stronger efforts 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.