Collective Courage

Collective Courage: a history of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice  by Jessica, 311 pages.

Nembhard reviews Black economic cooperation in farming, land, housing, grocery stores and; these and burial societies. These shared labor and economies have been overlooked by historians but have been crucial in the traditions, stories and experience of many black communities. Collective economic organizing has contributed to the survival and prosperity of African Americans but have often been met with local resistance, even death threats and lynchings -- as in the case of the murdered owners of the Memphis grocery cooperative, and the accompanying death threat to Ida. B. Wells who reported on the lynchings, was threatened and then fled the city to save her life. Black collectivity has been a courageous threat to the U.S. capitalistic economy that has otherwise used black labor and servitude to bolster profits. African Americans have also significantly contributed to visioning, theorizing and thinking about cooperative economies. Collective Courage is an important book not only for history but also because these collective practices and contemporary adaptations may eventually help to replace, the present exploitative economic system.

-- CraigSL