A post from Cynthia Pinchback-Hines, Co-op Cincy’s Racial Justice Educator & Co-op Developer, to honor Black History Month
W.E.B. DuBois, one of the most celebrated Black cooperators and outspoken scholars of the 20th Century, devoted much of his life to promoting economic cooperation. In fact, he claimed that economic cooperation was among his most important post World War I activities. He argued “that cooperatives would provide economic opportunities denied to African Americans and would allow Blacks to serve the common good rather than be slaves to market forces,” according to Jessica Gordon Nembhard’s Collective Courage.
Furthermore, DuBois asserted that Blacks were a consumer class which necessitated a plan for creating racial economic cooperatives, starting with neighborhood groups buying wholesale from white-owned factories until they could “form their own large-scale wholesale and manufacturing organizations.” This would involve local Black-owned stores stocking food, clothing, and household goods. Stores would raise money by selling stocks at low cost, and each shareholding member would have one vote, guaranteeing fixed interest on shares and returns from profits on the amount of purchases.
“W.E.B. Dubois argued ‘that cooperatives would provide economic opportunities denied to African Americans and would allow Blacks to serve the common good rather than be slaves to market forces.’ ”
Cynthia Pinchback-Hines, Racial Justice Educator and Co-op Developer for Co-op Cincy
During his life, DuBois advocated for various active cooperatives, including for church denominations, educational purposes, and mutual aid societies, to name a few. After the stock market crash of 1929, DuBois imagined African Americans at the forefront of the country’s new economic structure. Instead, the African American community remains locked in today’s consumer economy. Black wealth is an elusive proposition, with the average white family having eight times the wealth of the average Black family and five times the wealth of the typical Latino family, according to the Federal Reserve.
Mona Jenkins, co-founder of Queen Mother’s Market (QMM), has taken a giant step toward reversing the fortunes of African Americans. Mona is seeking solutions to dire situations affecting her community, with food insecurity being one of her greatest concerns.
Mona’s neighborhood of Walnut Hills lost its only grocery store in 2017, leaving many residents with limited access to healthy, nutritious, and affordable food. In the wake of the grocery store’s closure, residents participated in a survey and community engagement sessions, exploring solutions to their food dilemma. They decided on the short-term solution of a food delivery service with ride shares. For a long-term solution, they wanted to create a food cooperative. This led to the creation of QMM, which was founded by three Black women: Mona Jenkins, Theresa Martin, and Krista Greenlee.
The team behind Queen Mothers’ Market
According to Mona, QMM “will operate an 11,700 square-foot, full-service grocery store that will provide healthy and affordable staples and perishable food to Walnut Hills, the other nearby underserved and food insecure communities of Avondale and Evanston, and surrounding Cincinnati neighborhoods. [It] will be easily accessible by public transit and walkable for many low-income residents who lack vehicles currently needed to drive to the next nearest grocery store.”
No doubt, DuBois would have commended the founders of QMM for addressing a need in their own neighborhood through cooperative means. Local, Black-led businesses like A Touch of TLC, Hopes Fulfilled, Body by Bodji, and Heritage Hill have learned lessons from the DuBois playbook of promoting economic freedom and joined the ranks of cooperative worker-owners who are building community and, as Heritage Hill would say, “making their ancestors proud.”
Co-op Cincy plays an important role in developing and supporting Black-led co-ops through training, coaching, fundraising, and other wrap-around services. Aligned with DuBois’s views on economic cooperation, Co-op Cincy’s mission is “creating an economy that works for all.”
