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

Cooperative enterprises, however, modify capitalist principles by limiting the amount of dividends earned, limiting

and the development of communal societies. The mutual-aid movement involved a large proportion of the Black community and continued for centuries. I chronicle the myriad Black mutual-aid societies that sprang up during and after enslavement and examine their accomplishments, effectiveness, and the special role of African American women in founding

than be slaves to market forces (Du Bois 1933b).

Haynes and I have also identified the elements of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in northern Spain that are replicable and illustrate networked cooperative economic development

the case that what we called Du Bois’s theory of racial cooperative economic development,7 combined with Hogan’s theory of Black self-help and the model of Mondragon Cooperative Corporation among the Basque people in northern Spain,

voting power, and limiting the number of shares any one member may own (Emelianoff 1995, 83). In cooperative enterprises, the three major interests of any business—ownership, control, and beneficiary—are all “vested directly in the hands of the user” (ICA 2007). Cooperatives are organizations

Du Bois argued that cooperatives would provide the economic opportunities denied to African Americans, and would allow Blacks to serve the common good rather

2012b). Cooperatives range across the globe from small-scale to multi-million-dollar businesses. There are more than one billion members of cooperatives throughout

use. Although they were not a well-publicized economic structure before 2012, cooperatives are a significant force in the world economy. Building on the successful year of cooperatives, the ICA and UN have now declared the following ten years to be the international decade of cooperatives.