Throughout the 20th century, Black people across the country took on the experiment of pooling their resources together to provide for each other. These experiments were called cooperatives. They remain, often, understudied and discussed because they were not one, long, sustained movement. Yet, when you focus on how much each one was able to accomplish in its time, they are incredible. Discussing two of those cooperatives with me is Professor Irvin Hunt, author of Dreaming the Present: Time, Aesthetics, and the Black Cooperative Movement.

The first cooperative we discuss is Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farm and its pluripresence (it's a new word for me too, don't worry, Dr. Hunt defines it).

Then, we discuss Ella Baker, George Schulyer, the Young Negroes’ Cooperative League, and the idea of it being a planned failure rather than a failure to plan.

In a time where mutual aid is growing in popularity when the state cannot provide, 20th-century Black cooperatives have a lot to teach us.

Music Credit

PeaceLoveSoul by Jeris (c) copyright 2012 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/VJ_Memes/35859 Ft: KungFu (KungFuFrijters)