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FROM ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE TO POLITICAL ADVOCACY

Cooperation and the Nineteenth-Century Black Populist Movement

Generation after generation, ethnic and class alliances arose in the [Delta] region with the aim of expanding social and economic democracy, only to be ignored, dismissed, and defeated. These defeats were followed by arrogant attempts to purge such heroic movements from both historical texts and popular memory. Yet even in defeat these movements transformed the policies of the plantation bloc and informed daily life, community-building activities, and subsequent movements.

—WOODS (1998, 4)

The story of the African American cooperative movement in the United States is also a story of unionization, organized labor’s early efforts at cooperative development, and populism. The Cooperative Workers of America and the Knights of Labor, integrated unions operating in the South, supported small farmers, laborers, and the grassroots Black rural sector (Ali 2003, 44–45). The Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union continued their legacy, challenging White supremacy and establishing cooperatives in a hostile environment. In the late nineteenth century, the cooperative movement was part of the populist movement for the rights of small farmers and laborers, working for political power, economic survival, and control over production.

The Knights of Labor

According to Steve Leikin, the Knights of Labor (KOL) was the American organization that came closest to replicating the experience of European cooperative movements, starting immediately after the Civil War years, an era in which the American Federation of Labor specifically rejected cooperatives as a strategy of labor reform (1999, 2). The cooperative movement in the United States was not closely aligned with organized labor, as in Europe, although there were exceptions, including advocacy, on the part of some labor unions, for worker, consumer, and producer cooperatives, such as cooperatively owned mills, factories, craft production, and retail stores. In 1836, for example, the National Trades Union, after prolonged struggles with employers, recommended cooperation as a solution to strikes and the dilution of craft skills (6), sponsoring about eighteen production cooperatives; and in the 1840s, the associationist movement produced twenty-two industrial cooperatives (Curl 2009, 4). Cooperative ideals revived in the 1860s, immediately after the Civil War.

Rochdale cooperatives had emerged by 1863 and began to attract supporters within the American labor movement.¹ Hundreds of cooperatives had been launched in the United States by the early 1870s (Curl 2009; see also Leikin 1999). The Iron Molders union, for example, organized cooperative foundries in Troy, New York, and Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1866. The National Labor Union (NLU), the first national union federation in the country, “threw all its weight behind the cooperative movement” in the late 1860s, in addition to promoting the eight-hour day, rights for women, and Black and White labor solidarity (Curl 2009, 65). The NLU advocated that all states should pass cooperative incorporation laws, and organized more than 180 production cooperatives between the late 1860s and the 1870s. The Sovereigns of Industry, a “reform organization” of industrial workers (1874–79), began advocating for cooperative stores in its more than three hundred local chapters across the Northeast and midwestern and central United States (Leikin 1999, 9; Curl 2009, 80–81). A decade later, the Knights of Labor supplanted the Sovereigns of Industry and operated cooperatives from their local chapters. By the 1880s, 334 worker cooperatives had been organized in the United States.² Two hundred were part of a chain of industrial cooperatives organized by the Knights of Labor between 1886 and 1888 (Curl 2009, 4). The KOL envisioned widespread adoption of economic democracy and the development of a “cooperative commonwealth.” Leikin notes that at least five hundred cooperative workshops and factories opened in the twenty-five years following the Civil War (1999, 10). KOL cooperatives were concentrated in the East and Midwest. Most were mines, foundries, mills, and factories making barrels, clothes, shoes, and soap, but KOL cooperatives also included printers, laundries, furniture makers, potters, and lumberjacks (Curl 2009, 92). In Virginia, KOL locals organized a cooperative building, a soap factory, and an underwear factory (Rachleff 2012). Products made in KOL cooperatives carried the KOL label. African American members of the KOL operated a cooperative cotton gin in Stewart’s Station, Alabama, and built cooperative villages near Birmingham (Curl 2009, 101).

The KOL achieved its greatest victory in 1885, when it won union representation against the Union Pacific Railroad. At its height, the KOL was the largest labor organization in the world, with almost one million members (Curl 2009, 4, 102). It was also one of the few racially integrated unions. According to Sidney Kessler, “tens of thousands of Negroes” who had never been in the labor movement before joined the KOL in the 1880s. In 1886 there were an estimated sixty thousand African Americans in the Knights of Labor, although some estimate that by 1887 there were closer to ninety or ninety-five thousand. “More than any other union of the eighteen eighties, the Knights of Labor realized that the self-interest of its white members was in the organization of Negro Labor” (Kessler 1952, 272, 275).

An example of the way in which Blacks and Whites worked together in the KOL can be seen in Richmond, Virginia, where small KOL locals began forming in 1881 on the basis of workplace, trade, neighborhood, or fraternal or mutual-aid ties. White and Black workers organized separate locals, and in 1884 and early 1885 established local district assemblies, which combined the small locals. Twelve African American locals organized District Assembly 92; six weeks later, in March 1885, eleven White locals organized District Assembly 84. District Assembly 92 had more than five hundred members and was the first African American KOL district assembly in the United States, according to Rachleff (2012). An integrated KOL campaign in Richmond organized the Workingmen’s Reform Party, which won control of the municipal government in 1886, electing Black candidates. This new administration in Richmond proceeded to build a new city hall with a racially integrated, unionized local workforce. This was actually a biracial coalition of men and women laborers, with Black and White members organizing separately for a linked campaign with shared goals (Rachleff 2012, 34). As significant as the integrated coalition was, the gender equality was equally remarkable, especially given that women could not vote. Women participated in the KOL’s campaigns and boycotts (often as leaders), and in the cooperatives as workers and consumers.

A major issue for the Richmond Knights of Labor was the construction of the new city hall—the old one had been burned down by the Confederate government as it abandoned Richmond in April 1865. In the early 1880s, the reigning conservative White city government solicited bids for the reconstruction of the building. In 1885 the KOL submitted a petition requesting that the hall be built with local materials by local workers employed directly by the city, who would be paid union wages and work eight-hour days. The petition also specified that all jobs, skilled as well as unskilled, should “be open to the employment of ‘colored’ workers” (Rachleff 2012, 35). This was of particular concern because the city had been contracting with workers from the Virginia State Penitentiary and using convict labor. KOL coopers in Virginia were skilled workers and among the most racially integrated of the trades. In the early 1880s the penitentiary housed a mechanized barrel factory within its walls and used convicts to make the barrels. This had a large negative impact on the local Black and White coopers, and the two KOL district assemblies in Virginia mounted a campaign to close the factory. Rachleff notes that not only was the strategy—boycotts, petitions, and electing KOL members to city government—successful, but it also transformed “their labor organization into a political and social movement” (35). Richmond Blacks, for example, convened a statewide Black political convention in October 1885, calling for an end to convict labor and a suspension of support for the Republican Party if it did not agree to this plan.

The Role of Women in Early Union Co-ops

The early union cooperatives were often relatively conservative politically and limited the rights and mobility of women and unskilled workers in their operation and decision making (Leikin 1999, 16). As women entered the labor movement, they began to challenge the gender bias of established cooperative values. Curl notes that co-op women attempted to incorporate “feminine” ideals of mutual aid and volunteerism as central to their cooperative visions (2009, 17). Black women, who had a long and impressive history in the mutual-aid movement, pursued the same goal, and brought time-honored strategies and skills to African American cooperatives. In 1886, Leonora Barry was elected head of the new department of women’s work at the KOL convention (101). Barry was the first female professional labor organizer in U.S. history, and supported the KOL’s vision of cooperative development.³ Women members of the KOL set up cooperative garment factories in Chicago, St. Louis, and Indianapolis.

The Legacy of the Knights of Labor

The Knights of Labor connected workplace issues and labor rights with local, state, and federal policies, and was active in politics and mutual aid as well as economic development. The KOL connected and built upon earlier activities and organizations, and encouraged and promoted women’s and African American involvement. Black members were known for their militancy, and were eventually forced underground in the face of antiunion and racist intimidation and violence (Ali 2003). Many militant White members also went underground in the face of violent opposition from conservatives and the corporate sector (Curl 2009). After the famous Haymarket strike of 1886 in Chicago, the decline of the Knights of Labor was felt most strongly among the cooperatives. As Curl observes, “The entire economic system came down hard on the Knight cooperatives: railroads refused to haul their products; manufacturers refused to sell them needed machinery; wholesalers refused them raw materials and supplies; banks wouldn’t lend” (2009, 106). Most of the cooperatives were forced to close by the end of 1888. The Knights of Labor led a movement that tore through the country, mostly the South. It had a significant impact but then went underground and resurfaced in other forms.

The Cooperative Workers of America

In South Carolina, the Cooperative Workers of America (CWA) built on the foundation laid by the Knights of Labor. Hiram F. Hoover (or Hover), a former KOL member in North Carolina, was president and chief organizer of the CWA. Much of the leadership of the CWA in South Carolina was African American. Most were landless farm laborers with large families. The Hoover movement was strongest where cotton was important and the Black population was highest. Here again, women were admitted with equal status to men (Ali 2003, 62; Baker 1999, 284, 270).

The CWA focused on starting cooperative stores and a free cooperative school system, and addressed issues of wages, work conditions, and electoral reform. The organization’s goal was to strengthen the position of workers, especially Black workers, by decreasing their dependence on the credit system. The CWA used Black organizers (though Hoover was White) and connected the movement to Black Baptist and Methodist churches, union leagues, Black fraternal orders, and other mutual-benefit societies that continued after Reconstruction and often met in secret for protection. As with other African American movements, a strong connection to mutual-benefit societies was important (Ali 2003, 63; Baker 1999, 284, 264).

Locals assembled in clubs, where they studied the organization’s constitution. The initiation fee was fifty-five cents, and for another dollar a member could contribute to the establishment of a cooperative store “where all the members could trade and buy at wholesale rates” (Baker 1999, 264). One noted CWA attempt to establish a cooperative store was unsuccessful because of lack of funds, a shortage of time, and insufficient membership (Ali 2003, 64; Baker 1999, 285). The CWA advanced a progressive platform that included repeal of the poll tax and of all unjust laws against labor, weekly wage guarantees, and “implementation of a free cooperative school system” (Ali 2003, 65). According to Ali, White attempts at infiltration of the CWA failed, but “terroristic suppression” was successful in many areas, especially after rumors of a strike. Also, differences within the Black community led to the organization’s demise after a vigilante attack in the CWA stronghold of Fairview, South Carolina, in early July 1887 (Baker 1999, 279, 282, 283, 285).

The Populist Movement

The populist movement developed out of the experiences—including the failures—of the early unions and the growing National Farmers Alliance in the late 1880s, as well as other grassroots farmers’ movements such as the Patrons of Husbandry, better known as the Grange, in the 1870s. In 1887, the three-million-strong Farmers Alliance opened its first cooperative, intended to be part of a network of organized agricultural cooperatives in an extensive cooperative economic system (Curl 2009, 5). The Farmers Alliance in South Carolina, for example, arrived in that state “only a few months after the demise of the CWA [in 1887, and] also centered its efforts on cooperation. The Farmers’ Alliance, however, ‘whose members were primarily landowning farmers,’ had far more resources upon which to draw than did the rural, black day-laborers who made up the bulk of the membership of the CWA” (Baker 1999, 280). In the face of rising costs, falling prices, and rural isolation, White and Black farmers in the South in the late 1880s were joining farmers’ fraternal organizations such as the Grange, the Agricultural Wheels, state farmers’ unions, and the Southern Farmers’ Alliance. The Southern Farmers’ Alliance emerged as the most significant agricultural organization in the South, but it did not accept Negro membership and at best promoted separate Black chapters (Reynolds 2002). African Americans formed their own organization, the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union (CFNACU), which worked with the Southern Farmers’ Alliance but remained a separate organization.

There were disparate Black agrarian groups before the CFNACU, such as the Colored Farmers Association in Texas (mid-1870s), the Colored Grange of Tennessee (1880), and the Negro Alliance of Arkansas (1882) (Ali 2003). The Mississippi Union Leagues were also “hatcheries of radical economic experiments” (Woods 2007, 55). The Colored Agricultural Wheels expressed Black populism in the mid-1880s. “Colored Wheels were non-partisan agrarian groups that focused on economic cooperation while pressing for economic and political reforms,” according to Ali, and by the late 1880s were spreading in Alabama and Tennessee as well as Arkansas (2003, 45).

According to Berry, in the 1880s, depressed economic conditions for poor farmers led them to join radical agrarian organizations (2005, 26–27). Radicals preached solidarity for poor Black and White farmers. The Populist Party tried to protect African Americans to ensure the equal application of voting procedures in 1892. Democrats forced African Americans who worked for them to vote Democratic and used riots and murder to maintain political power. “The Populists feared that they would not always be able to control African Americans if they were permitted to behave as allies and not subordinates, and they also feared Democratic control of black voters and efforts to disfranchise poor whites. Poor whites, the planter class, and industrialists joined together in forcing African Americans out of the political arena in the 1890s” (Berry 2005, 27). Similarly, Ali observes that “the inherent conflict between the poor African American agrarian base of black Populism (drawn from the approximately 92% of the rural southern black population that was virtually landless) and the relatively affluent white leadership of the Populist movement would continue into the early 1890s” (2003, 56–57). Violence and intimidation were frequently used to suppress the growth of Black populism, as the movement spearheaded plantation strikes.

Woods describes this period as one in which African Americans wanted to dismantle the plantation regime, establish self-governing communities, and become landowners, both individually and collectively. By the 1880s, a mass movement of Blacks and Whites had arisen under the populist banner. Populists identified northern industrial capitalists and southern plantation monopolists as “enemies of cooperatively based community development” (Woods 1998, 7). African Americans pushed their community-development agenda by building schools, establishing new towns, buying land, and protesting the denial of civil and human rights, even though they were essentially voteless and increasingly segregated. “Out of necessity,” Woods observes, “many of those who remained in the South focused again on the land and labor reform agenda by organizing rural unions to end peonage, to improve wages, and to end the thievery associated with year-end settlements” (9).

This is the context in which the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union matured and operated. It tried to promote political action among African Americans to ensure economic opportunity and stability (Ali 2003). “Dominated by small land-owners, this movement engaged in independent party politics while simultaneously building an economic infrastructure for a new society” (Woods 1998, 8).

The Black populist movement was heavily influenced by the attempts of racially integrated unions to develop a cooperative commonwealth in the late nineteenth century. The CFNACU pulled together elements of the Black populist movement in the 1880s and ’90s. The colored alliances also continued the cooperative development that the Knights of Labor began. From the beginning, the CFNACU presented itself as a mutual-benefit organization devoted to improving the lives of Black farmers and agrarian laborers through education and economic cooperation. Its members became as militant as the Knights of Labor and led “some of the most ambitious strikes and boycotts,” which made Black populism “even more of a threat to the establishment” (Ali 2003, 61n107).

The Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union

As the earlier populist organizations disbanded and went underground, the CFNACU began to pull together grassroots efforts and form a network of regional and national organizations. Like the mutual-aid societies, many were connected with and relied on churches (Ali 2003, 70). The first Negro alliance was organized in Arkansas in 1882 (76n3). Members of local chapters shared agricultural techniques and innovations and coordinated cooperative efforts for planting and harvesting (77). Similarly, in Macon, Georgia, at a meeting of 350 African Americans, a Reverend Love offered a resolution to form “cooperative associations, cooperative farms, and storehouses.”⁴

Officially founded by J. J. Shuffer, H. L. Spencer, and R. M. Humphrey in 1886 in Houston County, Texas, the CFNACU spread to establish chapters in every state in the South (Curl 2009, 111; Holmes n.d.). In March 1888, the alliance held its first national meeting in Lovelady, Texas (Humphrey 1891; Miller 1972; Spriggs 1979; Ali 2003). The CFNACU consolidated several Black-focused agrarian organizations in the South—the Colored Agricultural Wheels, the Knights of Labor, the Cooperative Workers of America, and the Florida Farmers Union⁵—into a regional coalition. “The focus of these early groups was on relief through collectivizing resources, and collective bargaining through boycotts and strikes” (Ali 2005, 5). By 1891 the CFNACU boasted a membership of more than one million (Ali 2003), though, according to Curl, the alliance “had one and a quarter million members, making it the largest-ever organization of black Americans, most of them sharecroppers and tenant farmers” (2009, 111). Most accounts, however, suggest that the total was closer to four or five hundred thousand members (Holmes 1973). In any case, the CFNACU was indisputably the largest African American organization of its time. While its local leaders were Black, the state and regional organizers were largely White, headed by the White founder Reverend Humphrey, who was general superintendent. Whites were able to organize openly in places where Blacks would be physically attacked (Curl 2009, 112).

The CFNACU was a self-help organization that encouraged members to work hard and sacrifice to uplift themselves. Some state chapters raised money to keep Black public schools open for longer terms, founded academies, and solicited funds to help the sick and disabled. In many ways, the CFNACU was another mutual-aid society. But it was also formed to increase Black political participation, and it advocated a political agenda. It often mirrored its White counterpart, the Southern Farmers’ Alliance (a branch of the National Farmers Alliance and Industrial Union, referred to as the Southern Alliance), in terms of philosophy and program, supporting most of the same policies (Holmes 1973). For example, in 1890 the CFNACU supported the Southern Alliance’s subtreasury plan, hoping that it would provide low-interest loans for farmers and high prices for agricultural produce (Holmes 1973, 269; Reynolds 2002; Ali 2003). The CFNACU also supported policies that the Southern Alliance did not, such as the Lodge election bill to provide federal protection to safeguard voting rights in the South, and the 1891 cotton pickers’ strike.

While some Black members owned small farms, many were sharecroppers and field hands on White plantations. The CFNACU urged members to improve their farming methods and learn new techniques, purchase their own land and homes, and improve their education (Holmes 1973, 268). It promoted collectivizing resources (Ali 2005). “Before being violently suppressed, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance advocated the expansion of land ownership and the creation of cooperative stores designed to pool African American resources while boycotting stores owned by planters or allied merchants and commissaries” (Woods 1998, 8). Branches established exchanges (cooperative stores/warehouses and credit outlets) in the ports of Norfolk, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, and Houston where members could buy goods at reduced prices and borrow money from the organization to buy land and equipment or pay off a loan (Ali 2003, 89; Holmes 1973 and n.d.). In some areas, the CFNACU shared an exchange with the Southern Alliance, although these were tenuous collaborations and often short-lived. The CFNACU communicated through branch newspapers to provide information about discriminatory legislation, monopolies and their effects on African Americans, and the latest initiatives of the organization, such as cooperative exchange projects, lobbying efforts, credit programs, and cost-saving measures (Ali 2003, 80–81). The organization sustained almost continuous opposition to its very existence from the White plantation bloc and even from Southern Alliance members.

The Leflore Massacre

“The troubles in Leflore County sprang largely from the attempts by blacks to improve themselves financially” (Holmes 1973, 268). In Leflore County, Mississippi, the CFNACU shared an exchange with the White Southern Alliance. One Oliver Cromwell began organizing chapters of the CFNACU in Leflore County in 1889. Holmes credits Cromwell with persuading Blacks to stop trading with local merchants and use the Farmers’ Alliance cooperative store in the nearby town of Durant. White Leflore County merchants were losing Black business (and debt) and began to try to undermine Cromwell and the CFNACU. They defamed Cromwell, threatened him, and started rumors that he had embezzled CFNACU funds. The CFNACU men rallied to defend him. The White citizens were fearful of a rebellion and requested that the governor send troops to protect them. While the rest of the account is confused and contradictory, the governor did send three companies of troops, and local armed Whites patrolled the county. It appears that local militias or posses massacred at least twenty-five Blacks. Accounts, including Black newspaper accounts, reported as many as a hundred African Americans murdered. While CFNACU men rallied, most accounts agree that they had little ammunition; no Whites were killed. The incident was not actually well publicized at the time. Neither state nor county officials took any action in response to the mass killings. “The killings in Laflore County illustrate a condition then widespread in the South” (Holmes 1973, 274).

The episode helps to explain “why the Colored Alliance was such a short-lived movement” (Holmes 1973; see also Holmes 1975 and n.d.). After the massacre, White planters held a meeting declaring that the CFNACU had overstepped its bounds. They notified the editor of the Colored Farmers’ Alliance Advocate that distribution of the newspaper to its subscribers in the county would be halted and that and any attempt to distribute the newspaper in Leflore County would be dealt with harshly. The plantation bloc leaders also ordered the cooperative store, the Durant Commercial Company, to “desist from selling goods or loaning money to the Colored Alliance or to any of its members” (Holmes 1973, 274), although it was still allowed to serve the White members of the Southern Alliance. Many of the CFNACU leaders had fled by this time if they hadn’t been killed, and the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union in Leflore County collapsed.

By 1896, all branches of the CFNACU nationwide had dissolved, although other organizations, including the Knights of Labor, continued their work (Reynolds 2002; Ali 2003).

Shift in Focus to Politics

The White and Black populist movements had similar purposes but often used different strategies. African American populists supported White programs when it served their interest, such as patronizing Southern Alliance cooperative stores and lobbying for the same legislation (Ali 2003, 120; Holmes 1973), but they pursued their own policies and actions when it did not. White alliance members tolerated Black support but were intolerant of the organization when it diverged from White aims and control. As Holmes puts it, “As long as the Colored Alliance supported the programs of the Southern Alliance, many whites tolerated its existence. But when it tried to solve problems that contributed directly to the plight of Southern blacks [bettering their economic conditions and lessening their dependence on whites], it conflicted with the economic and racial policies of the white South” (1973, 274).

Many of the CFNACU’s economic efforts were failures, and so members turned to politics. Increasing debt, lack of capital, declining crop prices, and poor wages hurt their members in particular. Also, as with earlier co-op efforts, members of these organizations usually engaged in economic activities, particularly the cooperatives, while on strike, unemployed, or experiencing economic difficulties. Resources were therefore scarce. Running businesses of any kind under these conditions was difficult. In addition, Ali notes that tactical failures, the inability to sustain cooperative stores, and limits to lobbying for agrarian reforms “convinced increasing numbers of black Populist leaders of the need to enter the political arena directly” (2003, 117). While the CFNACU “began as a strictly ‘non-partisan’ mutual benefit association focused on economic cooperation, it developed into one of the most radical organizations of the era, carrying out boycotts and strikes and ultimately helping to create an independent political party, the People’s Party” (81). When efforts to make economic change were thwarted, the CFNACU changed strategies, applying pressure on political candidates. Between 1890 and 1892 there was talk of forming a third national political party. Black and White southerners affiliated with the alliances held a series of meetings with other activists from labor, agrarian, and reform organizations (“including the northern-established Knights of Labor, which de facto became a black organization as it spread into the South”) to discuss the issue (Ali 2005, 6). By 1892 they had formed the national People’s Party, with state-based independent parties in coalition with White independents.

Thwarted Dreams

Like the Knights of Labor, the Cooperative Workers of America, and other farmers’ alliances, whose vision of establishing cooperatives and exchanges was not realized, the CFNACU and its cooperative ventures were short-lived.⁶ At its height, the CFNACU, learning in part from the mutual-aid movement as well as the various Black populist and organized labor movements, used collective action, cooperative economics, economic solidarity, and political action to strengthen the position of Black farmers and farmworkers, form strategies for sustainable farming, and advocate for economic and political rights. All of the Black populist efforts (like the White ones) were targeted by White employers, banks, and railway owners, who sanctioned White vigilantes. Early Black cooperators suffered physical violence—even death—as well as economic sabotage. At the same time, even the unsuccessful campaigns provided invaluable lessons about economic and political organizing at the grassroots level. Both the frustrations and the small victories associated with these efforts would be remembered, and the vision of a cooperative society would continue to surround the Black civil rights and liberation movements.