The history we stand on. The shoulders we build from.
"CE Coop is not a new concept — it is the latest expression of a tradition that stretches back centuries."
"African Americans started using cooperative economics from the moment they were forcibly brought to the Americas from Africa, at first for practical reasons. They realized that their survival depended on working together and sharing resources."— Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice
The Circular Economy Cooperative is not a new idea. It is the latest expression of a tradition that stretches back centuries — a tradition built by people who understood, long before the word "cooperative" entered the mainstream, that collective ownership, mutual aid, and shared stewardship of land and resources were the only reliable path to freedom, dignity, and lasting community wealth.
This is the history we stand on. These are the shoulders we build from. And when we build our land bank, our CSA partnerships, our renewable energy cooperatives, and our membership governance structure, we are continuing a conversation that has been going on for centuries — a conversation about how communities can own land together, grow food together, generate energy together, and build economic institutions that serve people rather than extract from them.
Long before the Rochdale Pioneers formalized the cooperative model in England in 1844, Black people in America were already practicing its principles out of necessity and wisdom. Enslaved Africans pooled the small earnings some were permitted to keep, buying each other's freedom one person at a time. They shared kitchen gardens to supplement inadequate rations. They organized burial societies and mutual aid networks through churches and fraternal organizations — pooling dues to care for widows, orphans, the sick, and the elderly.
These were not charity programs. They were acts of collective ownership and democratic participation under conditions of extreme oppression. After emancipation, these networks grew into mutual insurance companies, cooperative stores, credit unions, and producer associations. Every one of these institutions was built on the same cooperative principles that the Rochdale Pioneers had articulated in England — but Black Americans had been living those principles for generations before they had a formal name.
The Rochdale Principles (1844) — Already Lived by Black Communities
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw an explosion of Black cooperative organizing, driven by the twin forces of economic exclusion and political terror. When the mainstream economy refused to serve Black communities — denying loans, land titles, market access, and legal protection — those communities built their own parallel economies.
The Colored Farmers' Alliance and Cooperative Union established cooperative warehouses and credit outlets across the South. The Colored Merchants Association — a marketing cooperative of independent Black grocers — was founded in Montgomery, Alabama in 1927. The Bricks Rural Life School in North Carolina launched a comprehensive cooperative development program: a credit union, a jointly-owned tractor, a cooperative store, and a community health program — all built within five years.
At the intellectual center of this movement stood W.E.B. Du Bois, who devoted decades of his life to the cause of Black cooperative economics. In his 1907 report Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans, Du Bois documented hundreds of Black mutual aid societies and cooperative businesses across the country. He organized the Negro Cooperative Guild with a vision of a self-sustaining cooperative economic base for Black America — understanding that political rights without economic power would always be incomplete.
The cooperative model was not limited to farming and commerce. Black communities also turned to cooperative housing as a way to secure shelter in a country that systematically denied them access to mainstream housing markets. Redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and discriminatory lending practices locked Black families out of homeownership and safe rental housing for generations.
In response, Black communities built their own. The Harlem cooperative housing movement of the early 20th century saw Black New Yorkers pooling resources to collectively own and manage apartment buildings, providing stable, affordable housing outside the exploitative landlord system. These housing cooperatives were governed democratically by their members — residents had a voice in how their buildings were maintained, how costs were shared, and how the community was organized.
In the 1960s and 70s, the Black Panther Party took cooperative housing further, establishing the People's Cooperative Housing Program, which provided low-cost, high-quality housing for Black and poor communities. The Panthers understood that housing was not just shelter — it was a foundation for community stability, political organizing, and economic self-determination. Their cooperative housing program was one of dozens of "survival programs" through which the Party applied cooperative and mutual aid principles to meet the immediate needs of their communities.
Perhaps no part of this history has been more thoroughly erased from the mainstream narrative than the true origins of Community Supported Agriculture. The CSA model is widely credited to European and white American farmers who introduced it in the United States in the 1980s. The real story begins two decades earlier, with a Black man from Alabama.
Booker T. Whatley was a horticulturist and agricultural professor at Tuskegee University — the same institution where George Washington Carver had done his transformative work on regenerative agriculture. In the 1960s and 70s, at the height of the civil rights movement, Whatley was counseling Black farmers who were being systematically destroyed by federal policy. The USDA routinely denied Black farmers loans, grants, and technical assistance — a pattern of discrimination so severe that it eventually resulted in a $1 billion class action settlement.
Whatley's response was to design a system that made Black farmers independent of government support entirely. He called it the Clientele Membership Club — customers would pay upfront for a season of food, guaranteeing the farmer income before a single seed was planted. He published these ideas in his 1987 handbook How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres, a guide still used by small farmers today.
"The clientele membership club is the lifeblood of the whole setup. It enables the farmer to plan production, anticipate demand, and, of course, have a guaranteed market."— Booker T. Whatley, Mother Earth News, 1982
The CSA model that spread through white progressive farming communities in the 1980s and 90s was built on foundations that Whatley had laid. His contribution was systematically excluded from the dominant narrative — a pattern that mirrors the broader erasure of Black innovation and leadership from American agricultural history.
No figure better embodies the connection between land, food, cooperative economics, and liberation than Fannie Lou Hamer. A sharecropper's daughter from Sunflower County, Mississippi, Hamer became one of the most powerful voices of the civil rights movement — and she understood from the beginning that the vote alone would not feed her people.
In 1969, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative with a $10,000 donation and a vision: to give Black families in the Mississippi Delta control over their own food supply, their own land, and their own economic future. At its peak, Freedom Farm encompassed 680 acres, a pig bank that distributed pigs to families who agreed to return the first litter to another family, community gardens, a commercial kitchen, a garment factory, and a Head Start program.
It was a complete cooperative ecosystem — land, food, housing, childcare, and economic production, all governed democratically by the community it served. Hamer understood something that CE Coop understands today: that land is the foundation of everything. Without land, communities cannot grow their own food, build their own homes, or create their own economic institutions. With land — collectively owned, cooperatively managed, and passed down through generations — communities can build something that outlasts any individual and serves generations yet unborn.
These are some of the people whose work, sacrifice, and vision created the framework we continue today.
1868–1963
Scholar, Organizer, Cooperative Economist
Devoted decades to documenting and promoting Black cooperative economics. His 1907 report catalogued hundreds of Black mutual aid societies and cooperative enterprises. He organized the Negro Cooperative Guild with a vision of a self-sustaining cooperative economic base for Black America.
1915–2005
Horticulturist, Agricultural Professor, CSA Pioneer
A professor at Tuskegee University who invented the Clientele Membership Club in the 1960s — the original model for Community Supported Agriculture. He designed it specifically to protect Black farmers from USDA discrimination by building direct community support networks.
1917–1977
Civil Rights Leader, Cooperative Founder
Founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in 1969 with $10,000 and a vision. At its peak, Freedom Farm encompassed 680 acres, a pig bank, community gardens, a garment factory, and a Head Start program — a complete cooperative ecosystem governed by the community it served.
Contemporary
Political Economist, Historian
Author of Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice — the definitive scholarly account of Black cooperative history. Her research recovered centuries of cooperative organizing that had been systematically erased from mainstream narratives.
From mutual aid under slavery to the cooperative we are building today — a continuous thread of community power.
Mutual aid societies and pooled earnings for freedom purchases among enslaved and free Black communities
Colored Farmers' Alliance and Knights of Labor establish cooperative stores, warehouses, and collective lending across the South
North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance founded — becomes one of the largest Black-owned businesses in American history
First Rochdale-type Black cooperative opens in Ruthville, Virginia — the Mercantile Cooperative Company
W.E.B. Du Bois publishes Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans, documenting hundreds of Black cooperative enterprises
Pioneer Cooperative Society forms in Harlem, opening a community grocery store in 1919
Colored Merchants Association founded by the National Negro Business League in Montgomery, Alabama
Bricks Rural Life School launches a full cooperative ecosystem: credit union, shared tractor, cooperative store, and health program
Booker T. Whatley develops the Clientele Membership Club at Tuskegee University — the original model for Community Supported Agriculture
Freedom Quilting Bee founded in Alabama — women in sharecropping families collectively purchase 23 acres and build their own factory
Fannie Lou Hamer founds Freedom Farm Cooperative — 680 acres, a pig bank, community gardens, and a Head Start program
Black Panther Party establishes cooperative housing, food programs, free breakfast for children, and community health clinics
Food from the 'Hood student cooperative launches at Crenshaw High School, South Central LA — a school garden that becomes a business
Pigford v. Glickman — $1 billion settlement for decades of USDA discrimination against Black farmers
CE Coop continues this tradition — building the framework the next generation will inherit and build upon
The cooperative movement has never been a single, unified thing. It has been a living, adaptive response to economic exclusion, environmental destruction, and the failure of both government and private markets to serve the needs of ordinary people. Black Americans did not wait for permission to build cooperative institutions. They built them under slavery, under Jim Crow, under redlining, under USDA discrimination, and under the constant threat of violence.
They built them because they understood what every generation of cooperative builders has understood: that when people come together, share resources, and govern themselves democratically, they can create something more durable and more just than anything the market or the state will build for them.
The Circular Economy Cooperative stands in this tradition. We are not inventing a new concept. We are continuing a conversation that has been going on for centuries. The frameworks we are building today — our land bank, our CSA partnerships, our renewable energy cooperatives, our membership governance structure — are the same frameworks that Fannie Lou Hamer built in Mississippi, that Booker T. Whatley designed at Tuskegee, that W.E.B. Du Bois advocated for across a lifetime of scholarship and organizing.
"We build on their work. We honor their sacrifice. And we build with the same intention they had: not just for ourselves, but for the generations that will come after us."
So that they, too, will have a framework to build upon.