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

Chapter 6: Out of Necessity: The Great Depression and “Consumers’ Cooperation Among Negroes”

I still believe that black people in the United States could lift the burden of economic exploitation from their backs by organizing a nationwide system of cooperative businesses through which they could produce and distribute to themselves and others, such consumer needs as food, clothing, household goods and credit. Such a system would include . . . credit unions, . . . consumer cooperative retail stores, . . . producer cooperatives. —reddix (1974, 119) We are certain that many Journal [Journal of Negro Education] readers are interested in the Cooperative Movement. It is likely that a number are participating in consumers ’ cooperative projects and credit unions. They will therefore grant the advisability and timeliness of an article in this section of the Journal which takes note of a movement that is making steady strides across the American continent and that has taken firm roots in several European countries. —washington (1939a, 104) The African American cooperative movement in the 1930s was an especially active time for the discussion and creation of Black cooperative businesses. Scholars and activists alike were advocating the cooperative way and experimenting with co-op development. Interest in cooperative economics was so strong that the NAACP’s Crisis magazine, the UNIA’s Negro World, and the Pittsburgh Courier periodically covered the cooperative movement in Black communities. In addition, the Journal of Negro Education included articles on cooperatives and cooperative economics in more than six separate articles and columns starting in 1935 and added consumer cooperation to their regular section on rural education for two issues in 1939 (Washington 1939a, 1939b). These articles and columns in the JNE included an extensive list of readings about cooperative economics and consumer cooperation as well as firsthand accounts of co-op businesses and conferences—“all with the hope of awakening new interest in the subject, or feeding that which already exists” (Washington 1939a). Alethea Washington began her “Consumers Coopera6 out of necessity The Great Depression and “Consumers’ Cooperation Among Negroes” out of necessity 127 tion” column with the second epigraph to this chapter, which sums up the interest and involvement of Blacks in cooperatives during the 1930s. In this chapter I continue to explore this unique period of time in African American co-op history, and evaluate the strategy and the accomplishments of African American cooperative development during the Great Depression, particularly in urban areas. This part of the narrative starts with the Colored Merchants Association of the National Negro Business League in 1927 and moves through the variety of cooperatives influenced by the Young Negroes’ Co-operative League, the Committee on the Church and Cooperatives of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and other Black community organizations. The story of this prolific period of African American cooperative development continues in chapter 7 with a discussion of the cooperatives developed by the Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and other co-op initiatives by African American women. As we have seen, a variety of cooperatives sprang up in the 1930s and ’40s. The best documentation we have comes from an article by John Hope II, materials found in the Ella Baker Papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, and the two columns by Alethea H. Washington. Overview Examples of African American co-ops during this period include the Consumers ’ Cooperative Trading Company (Gary, Indiana), the Red Circle Cooperative (Richmond, Virginia), the Aberdeen Gardens Association (Hampton, Virginia), the People’s Consumer Cooperative, Inc. (Chicago), and Cooperative Industries of Washington, D.C. (discussed in chapter 7). Of the brief information provided by Washington (1939a), the list of Negro consumers’ cooperatives was obtained from correspondence with Mrs. Hugh O. Cook (Kansas City, Missouri) and Nannie H. Burroughs (Washington, D.C.). None of the co-ops is named, but some information, particularly about where they were located, is provided. The “successful” five-year-old co-op grocery and meat market in Gary, Indiana (presumably Consumers’ Cooperative Trading Company) is first on the list. The Rosenwald Gardens Cooperative in Chicago is listed next (probably the same as the People’s Consumer Cooperative, Inc., although unnamed in Washington’s account). The report noted that the co-op was two years old, had 450 members and gross sales of $3,000, and was large and well equipped. There were smaller cooperatives in Toledo and 128 deliberative cooperative economic development Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition, the list includes three co...