A message from Cynthia Pinchback-Hines, Racial Justice Educator & Co-op Developer for Co-op Cincy, to mark Black History Month
Three amendments to the U.S. Constitution paved the way for collective cooperation in the African American community during Reconstruction, the period following the abolishment of slavery. The 13th Amendment, ratified by Congress in 1865, abolished slavery. The 14th Amendment, ratified by Congress in 1868, granted citizenship rights to all individuals born and naturalized in the United States. Finally, the 15th Amendment, ratified by Congress in 1870, gave Black men the right to vote and accelerated progress and wealth in the Black community.
Zebulon Elijah (1836 or 1838 to 1910) became a state legislator and government official in Florida after having been enslaved. He was born in Santa Rosa County, Florida.
During Reconstruction, 16 African Americans served in the U.S. Congress, more than 600 more were elected to the state legislatures, and hundreds more held local offices across the South. Political power provided space for Blacks to plant seeds of prosperity. Black communities practiced collective cooperation, which helped them to make a modest living.
From a historical perspective, Black collective cooperation has gone through cycles of prosperity and despair, and each cycle has coincided with a significant era: Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and the post-Obama presidency. Whenever African Americans made progress and contributed to a hopeful historical narrative, there was a subsequent regression, creating a counternarrative of despair.
Reconstruction
Enslaved Africans arrived on the shores of Virginia in the 1600s, and many possessed knowledge, skills, and customs that they relied on for survival. Whether raising livestock, cultivating rice fields, introducing a cooking style, or smelting iron, enslaved Africans were forced to work for free, which generated wealth throughout the South for slave owners. After the Emancipation Proclamation (1865), many Blacks chose to remain in effective servitude to their owners because they were afraid of losing the means to take care of their basic needs. Others left their slave masters and chose to “labor faithfully for reasonable wages.”
A sharecropper in Montgomery County, Alabama in 1937.
After 1865, Blacks seeking work did not need a résumé. They had proven their worth picking cotton, harvesting tobacco and sugar cane, planting and harvesting rice, building railroads, driving coaches, weaving, butchering, preserving, cooking, etc. White business owners welcomed hiring a skilled Black workforce for low wages, but this led to a discontented poor white population that was fearful of losing their livelihood to freed Blacks. Fear turned into anger and anger into terrorism and violence targeting Black men and women. The Ku Klux Klan became the first official terrorist group to attack Black people and their businesses as punishment for creating a white underclass.
A grocery store in Washington D.C. owned by a Mr. J. Benjamin on a Saturday afternoon in 1942.
Other freed Blacks chose a different path for survival. Instead of being at the mercy of white business owners, they banded together to form Black-owned mutual aid societies, grocery stores, and other businesses. Collective cooperation was key to owning land, buildings, and houses. Each day of working together brought Black businesses closer to realizing the American dream. However, they too encountered violence from angry whites who destroyed whole communities and struck fear in Black people. Forced to rely on white business owners, thousands of Blacks turned to sharecropping and menial jobs to get by.
A hotel after the 1921 Tulsa massacre.
The plunder and destruction hit the Black community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, particularly hard. On June 1, 1921, "Black Wall Street", one of the wealthiest Black communities, was attacked. Thirty-five blocks were looted and burned, destroying 190 businesses and leaving 10,000 people homeless. What triggered the attack was a white woman accusing a Black man of touching her shoulder when he tripped and fell in the elevator.
Jim Crow laws were put in place to squelch any progress for Blacks. Their political power had diminished, their personal freedoms had declined, and their protections had disappeared or were not enforced. At the time, lynchings were commonplace throughout the South.
The Civil Rights Movement
The 1963 March on Washington.
The Civil Rights movement ushered in an era of pride in the Black community. Attempts to quiet the cries of “freedom and justice” failed. The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom spotlighted injustices, and President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing racial segregation in public accommodations, including hotels, restaurants, theaters, and stores, and making employment discrimination illegal. The Civil Rights Act, along with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, opened doors to economic opportunities for African Americans. Affirmative action policies designed to “even the playing field” were enforced, increasing diversity in the workplace at all levels. As a result, the number of Black-owned businesses grew exponentially. A devastating blow to the progress was the tragic loss of four beacons of hope, all within a span of five years: President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Striking down each of these icons in the prime of life sent shockwaves throughout the nation and produced stagnation within the African American business community.
Post-Obama
President Barack Obama in 2010.
Barack Hussein Obama was the first United States president to hold a national briefing on cooperatives at the White House. Vernon Oakes, former President of the National Association of Housing Cooperatives (NAHC) and recent graduate of Co-op Cincy’s Power in Numbers: Black Co-op U, attended the briefing and reported, “I felt that they heard us and they will do what they can. The responsibility for promoting the cooperative business is ours. We have to create our own database and promote with and through them. I met some new friends in the co-op world.” Vernon is co-founder of Everything Co-op, a weekly radio broadcast that promotes African American cooperatives.
The team behind Hopes Fulfilled Farm 2 Table Co-op.
President Obama also signed the Global Food Security Act, which was intended to help cooperatives like Hopes Fulfilled, Queen Mother’s Market, and Growing Black Power end food insecurity in marginalized communities in Cincinnati and across the world.
Sadly, forces that systematically seek to deny economic justice to African Americans will continue, creating discouraging counternarratives. The good news is that African Americans are successfully pressing forward, creating hopeful narratives of progress.
