Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice

Time Line of African American Cooperative History, 1780–2012: Selected Events

1780 Establishment of the African Mutual Aid Society in Rhode Island by the African Methodist Church. 1787 The Free African Society is founded in Philadelphia by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, the second African American mutual-aid society to open in the United States. 1790s Women’s mutual-aid societies proliferate. 1825 The Nashoba Commune is founded by Frances Wright for Blacks in Tennessee . It is an established community that divides hours between academic work and manual labor and prepares African American members for freedom and colonization outside the United States. 1830 The Negro convention movement in Philadelphia is an important stimulus to the growth of beneficial societies across the nation. 1831 The Wilberforce Colony in Ontario, Canada, is a Black self-sustaining commune , owning livestock, land, and a school. 1837 The Dawn Settlement in Dresden, Ontario, Canada, is founded by Josiah Henson, who escaped from enslavement in the United States. 1842 The Northampton Association of Education and Industry, founded in Northampton, Massachusetts, is an intentional, racially integrated community based around a communally owned silk mill. 1863 The Combahee River Colony, a collective in the South Carolina Sea Islands, is established by several hundred African American women during the Civil War (it remained relatively self-sufficient and semiautonomous). 1865 The Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company is established by the African American community of Baltimore as a “cooperative” joint-stock shipyard and caulking company, to provide work for skilled Blacks. It closes in 1883 after eighteen years, for a variety of reasons, including financial and management challenges. 1867 The Independent Order of Saint Luke, an African American women’s sickness and death mutual-benefit association, is established in Maryland. Maggie Lena Walker becomes grand secretary in 1899, when the headquarters is reestablished in Richmond, Virginia. Mid-1870s The Colored Farmers Association is established in Texas. Time Line of African American Cooperative History, 1780–2012: Selected Events 240 timeline 1880 The Colored Grange of Tennessee is established. 1881 The Grand United Order of the True Reformers is established in Richmond, Virginia. Its branches grow throughout the South and East. This Black mutual-aid society owns real estate and a premium insurance company, and conducts banking services. 1882 The Negro Farmers’ Alliance (or the Negro Alliance of Arkansas) is organized in Prairie County, Arkansas. Other African American farmers’ alliances follow in other states, such as Texas. 1886 Colored Agricultural Wheels organize in the South, focusing on economic cooperation in addition to political and economic rights. They spread particularly in Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Cooperative Workers of America is established in South Carolina, as is the Colored Alliance in Texas. The Knights of Labor, a racially integrated union, expands significantly in the South and includes goals for the development of a “cooperative commonwealth .” In September an all–African American chapter of the Knights of Labor convenes. Leonora Barry is elected head of the new department of women’s work at the Knights of Labor convention (Barry is the first professional woman labor organizer in U.S. history). Between 1886 and 1888 the Knights establish two hundred industrial co-ops, including an African American–owned cotton gin in Alabama and African American co-op villages in Birmingham. Haymarket strike of 1886. Knights of Labor co-ops begin to decline economically as railroads refuse to haul their products, manufacturers refuse to sell them machinery, and wholesalers refuse them raw materials. Banks will not lend them money. The White National Farmers Alliance opposes and physically attacks the African American alliances. The Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Co-operative Union (1886–91) forms in Houston County, Texas, to join the various local and statewide alliances , assist African Americans with marketing and mortgage payments, and protect African American farmers from the Ku Klux Klan and exploitive practices . It holds its first national meeting in 1888, and has more than a million members at its peak. It establishes exchanges (co-op stores) in African American communities in Norfolk, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, and Houston. 1894 The Workers’ Mutual Aid Association is organized in Virginia. 1895 Lexington Savings Bank is incorporated in Baltimore with $10,000 raised by Black leaders. The International Co-operative Alliance is founded in Europe and codifies the Rochdale principles, a set of ideals for operating cooperatives. 1896 The National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (a partmutual -aid association) is founded in Tennessee, advocating for reparations for ex-slaves. 1897 The Coleman Manufacturing Company of Concord, North...