Black History Month Feature: Black Co-ops
Photo credit: The New York Public Library
February is Black History Month. All month long, we will be highlighting Black-owned businesses and sharing the amazing contributions that Black people have made to strengthen our society. Black History Month is a time to celebrate Black people and their accomplishments but also acknowledge the struggles they have faced and continue to face even today. We invite you to choose products from the Black-owned businesses that we have at the Co-op and learn more through our posts. Today, we’re talking about the history of Black Co-ops.
The origins of Black cooperatives trace back to the need for collective action in the face of racial oppression and violence. Black-owned businesses were frequently targeted by racist groups seeking to shut them down, and the discrimination people of color faced daily made it clear that pooling resources and coming together was crucial for survival. This strategy wasn’t new. Enslaved and free Black people had long worked together to meet their community’s needs, sharing small plots of land to grow fresh, nutritious food and combining their earnings to buy the freedom of others. Over time, Black Americans began forming mutual aid societies and, eventually, formal cooperatives to support their communities.
Civil rights leaders strategically used this cooperative model to promote Black prosperity and independence. Through articles and speeches, they educated Black Americans on how cooperative structures could be a path to economic empowerment. Cooperative wholesale and retail stores became the primary way for these communities to harness the power of collective action and create economic success.
Photo credit: Detroit Public Library
A notable example of this occurred in the summer of 1928 in Montgomery, Alabama, when A.C. Brown and 14 other local grocery store owners formed The Colored Merchants
Association (CMA). This was in response to the increasing dominance of large grocery chains, which were pushing out smaller, Black-owned stores. Facing refusal from white suppliers to sell to them at wholesale prices, the group created a cooperative to pool their resources and increase their collective buying power. The CMA allowed these grocery stores to collaborate on boosting profit margins, launching advertising campaigns, and negotiating better prices on meat, poultry, dairy, and produce from local producers.
The survival of neighborhood Black grocery stores relied heavily on effective organization, cooperation, high-quality products, and superior customer service. The CMA set out to accomplish three main goals: providing merchants with industry best practices, studying the needs of African American consumers, and collaborating with local Black farmers. To achieve these, the association improved accounting methods, modernized store operations, and emphasized the economic power of African American consumers. The CMA believed that these strategies would not only boost profits for store owners but also create jobs for nearby residents and offer better products and services to the Black community.
We hope you’ll join us in celebrating Black History Month and come back for our next article!
Everyone is welcome to shop at the Co-op; it is our mission and our pleasure to bring locally-sourced, reasonably priced, organic and natural products to all.
Owned by you. Food for all.
