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Notes
1. See Hogan for a pioneering political economy of this black population that advances Du Bois’s theorization. See also Haynes and Gordon Nembhard for an extended contemporary perspective of this internal group as a sub-altern population.
2. Many of Du Bois's contemporaries developed theories to prove the biological inferiority of the African American; see Aptheker 29, 35.
3. In 1897, Atlanta University became the academic home for Du Bois with his participation with the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory. Here he formulated an ambitious 100-year research agenda designed in 10-year increments. According to Aldon Morris, the data and analysis that came out under Du Bois’s leadership systematically challenged the prevailing views of the biological inferiority of black people and provided practical policy. Racism and white supremacy marginalized this research. An example of which according to Earl Wright was the lack of mainstream recognition of the Atlanta Laboratory as a predecessor of the Chicago School and therefore the first school of collective sociological research based on scientific inquiry.
4. In 1910, Du Bois resigned from the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory and then founded and became editor and a major writer for The Crisis, a monthly magazine of the NAACP.
5. Mullen alludes to this change in his W.E.B. Du Bois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line (2016) and Un-American: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Century of World Revolution (2015).
6. Throughout his lifetime Du Bois advocated economic cooperation, revival of art and literature, political action, education, and organization. (Demarco pp. 145)
7. Du Bois often interpreted those with more and better education as more cultured and of a better class. This thinking added to an inconsistency in his class analysis.
8. In one of his early Atlanta University studies, Economic Co-operation among Negro Americans, (1907) Du Bois posited that even though much of it was not democratic, there was extensive economic cooperation in Africa. This communal root was eventually minimized as Africans went through an extensive re-enculturation first in the West Indies then in the Americas.
9. In the early years of his work with the NAACP and The Crisis magazine, Du Bois found the notion of the talented tenth and political agitation appealing. With a growing recognition of labor exploitation and the need for an economic agenda, he developed a new take on Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey. Regarding Washington, he came to see their differences as insignificant “compared to what they did not comprehend and that neither understood the nature of capitalistic exploitation of labor … ” and observing Washington’s donor support, Du Bois recognized the issue as power more than ideology (Robinson 193). Further, though critical of Garvey the man, he was sensitive to the UNIA agenda without its bombastic wrappings. Du Bois regarded the notion of a separate black economy as “not so easily dismissed.” In 1934 these ideas came to a head with his dispute with Walter White the executive secretary of the NAACP. This was personal but also included Du Bois’s “advocacy of a Black co-operative commonwealth that the leadership of the NAACP opposed.” Du Bois was being accused of back sliding into a black nationalism. Robinson says this was “clearly not the case in that Du Bois was consciously basing his plan on the presumption of the “collapse of capitalism.” Du Bois resigned from The Crisis and the NAACP Board (Robinson 381 n63).
10. Du Bois popularized the term talented tenth in a 1903 essay. The concept was considered to be a response to Booker T. Washington and the Atlanta Compromise emphasizing industrial and vocational education over college. Du Bois claimed the need for an intellectual leadership class from among the most able 10% of black Americans that would, because of race pride help uplift the masses.
11. Du Bois felt that blacks should vote as a block for Woodrow Wilson. He resigned from the Socialist Party because he did not want to be hampered by organizational loyalty, among other things. (Aptheker 69)
12. According to Gordon Nembhard however, “In some ways, the history of African American cooperative development is more about the African American promotion of cooperatives and efforts toward cooperative economic education than about the creation and success of cooperative businesses” (111).
13. Warbasse founded the Cooperative League either in 1916 (Sekerak and Danforth) or 1919 (Knapp). The League became the standard bearer of "true Rochdale cooperation."
14. Consumer Cooperative theory was built on the actions, in 1844, of 24 jobless weavers in Rochdale, England, who formed the Society of Equitable Pioneers, later known as the Rochdale pioneers. According to Adams and Hansen, this group set the guidelines embodied in eight key principles to be used by future cooperatives:
There would be democratic control, every member would have one vote.
A person could join or quit or rejoin the cooperative without prejudice.
The Society would pay limited interest on capital.
Any profits, or surplus, would be distributed among members according to the value of their purchases over a year.
All sales would be for cash.
The products sold were to be pure and measured in full.
Funds would be set aside from any surplus for membership education.
Any person, regardless of religious faith or political belief could belong, but the cooperative would remain politically neutral (13-14).
15. In Co-operative Democracy, first edition, 1923, Warbasse discusses expansion from consumption into wholesaling.
16. Gordon Nembhard (2014) acknowledges the role of study groups in many cooperative formations. She recognized these groups were not able to generate the economies of scale as for example the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation in the Basque lands of Spain, with 80,000 worker owners in 2018. The Basque who founded and perpetuated the growth of the Mondragon cooperatives used representative democracy, research and development, investment banking and systematic formal education in the Mondragon brand of cooperativism to build their successful business model. (Haynes and Gordon Nembhard)
17. Marable stated that at the time of the formation of the Negro Cooperative Guild DuBois was at the height of his own career. With significant national and international influence through the growth of the NAACP, and his editorship of The Crisis, Du Bois “of his own admission” did not put enough effort into it.
18. Du Bois’s last public call for consumer cooperation came in The Crisis in July, 1946.
19. Speaking on the Negro problem in a 1954 lecture, Du Bois alluded to the fundamental changes spreading across the whole world. These included calls for popular education and universal suffrage. But more important than these was the economic organization of the world and the way human labor was organized to satisfy human needs. For Du Bois, this second concern was so fundamental that all other questions of power and human happiness depended upon it. Regarding philanthropy, socialism, and the attempt to realize socialism through communism, his position was “It is immaterial whether or not you like or accept socialism or communism … you may not like these but facing the problem that they try to solve is inescapable.”
20. Du Bois isolated in his later years, earned the criticism of orthodox communists for his insistence on employing Marxist theory in a highly race-conscious way. The NAACP did not defend him from McCarthyism and the reactionary side of the US government charged him with subversion. A victim of anticommunism, Du Bois stood against the tide. In understanding the war machine of capitalism, its impact on the colored people of the world, and the reactionary response to the New Deal, he appeared to overlook the "the brutality and failures and tyranny central to Stalinism and Maoism” (Porter).
21. In a 1960 speech to the Wisconsin Socialist Club, “Socialism and the American Negro,” Du Bois recognized that the American Negro was not socialist. What was wanted was education, opportunity, decent wages and a decent standard of life. But racism created a handicap and segregation a divide, that American capitalism did not respond to. Instead he suggested socialism, not a compulsory socialism, but rather a socialism that maintained culture and got rid of poverty. I suspect he envisioned an FDR style of government intervention that included sponsorship of consumer cooperation with direct support in urban and rural black communities.
22. As early as 1950, Du Bois voice was coming to be ignored. The alienation started in 1950 with his electoral loss on the American Labor Party ticket. It worsened in 1951 with a highly public trial in which he was accused of being a "foreign agent". In 1959 he visited the Soviet Union and China and was impressed with the communist attempt to deal with race. As he leaned left, the nation in which he resided shifted sharply to the right. Du Bois found himself increasingly isolated. The Communists and Kwame Nkrumah the Pan Africanist stood by his side. In 1960, as President Nkrumah’s guest, W.E.B. Du Bois and his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, found their eventual home in Accra, Ghana. In 1961 while in Ghana, and as a final act of defiance, Du Bois joined the Communist Party (Horne Citation1986, 2010).