Collective Courage by Jessica Gordon Nembhard In Collective Courage, Jessica Gordon Nembhard chronicles African American cooperative business ownership and its place in the movements for Black civil rights and economic equality. Not since W. E. B. Du Bois's 1907 Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans has there been a full-length, nationwide study of African American cooperatives. Collective Courage extends that story into the twenty-first century. Many of the players are well known in the history of the African American experience: Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph and the Ladies' Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Jo Baker, George Schuyler and the Young Negroes' Co-operative League, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party. Adding the cooperative movement to Black history results in a retelling of the African American experience, with an increased understanding of African American collective economic agency and grassroots economic organizing. To tell the story, Gordon Nembhard uses a variety of newspapers, period magazines, and journals; co-ops' articles of incorporation, minutes from annual meetings, newsletters, budgets, and income statements; and scholarly books, memoirs, and biographies. These sources reveal the achievements and challenges of Black co-ops, collective economic action, and social entrepreneurship. Gordon Nembhard finds that African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefitted greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation's history.

The Color of Food by Natasha Bowens "Anyone who eats should read this book: You will come to the table with new appreciation for the intersections between race and food . . . powerful."--Anna Lappé, author of Diet for a Hot Planet    The growing trend of organic farming and homesteading is changing the way the farmer is portrayed in mainstream media, and yet, farmers of color are still largely left out of the picture. The Color of Food seeks to rectify this.    By recognizing the critical issues that lie at the intersection of race and food, this stunning collection of portraits and stories challenges the status quo of agrarian identity. Author, photographer, and biracial farmer Natasha Bowens' quest to explore her own roots in the soil leads her to unearth a larger story, weaving together the seemingly forgotten history of agriculture for people of color, the issues they face today, and the culture and resilience they bring to food and farming.    The Color of Food teaches us that the food and farm movement is about more than buying local and protecting our soil. It is about preserving culture and community, digging deeply into the places we've overlooked, and honoring those who have come before us. Blending storytelling, photography, oral history, and unique insight, these pages remind us that true food sovereignty means a place at the table for everyone.  "Natasha Bowens, through her compelling stories and powerful images of a rainbow of farmers, reminds us that the industrialization of our food system and the oppression of our people--two sides of the same coin--will, if not confronted, sow the seeds of our own destruction."--Mark Winne, author of Food Town, USA

Freedom Farmers by Monica M. White; LaDonna Redmond (Foreword by) In May 1967, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased forty acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural and economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, and political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans--an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, and create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative and collective effort. Freedom Farmers expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, and contributions of southern Black farmers and the organizations they formed. Whereas existing scholarship generally views agriculture as a site of oppression and exploitation of black people, this book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.

Homecoming by Charlene Gilbert; Quinn Eli "With journalist Quinn Eli, filmmaker Charlene Gilbert embarks on a search for her own family's story and uncovers the larger, untold history of African-American farmers. A companion book to the PBS documentary, Homecoming traces black ownership of land from the time of Reconstruction, when the failed promise of "forty acres and a mule" inspired so many black farmers to seek land of their own, to the recent Supreme Court decision to grant them restitution from the federal government for racist banking practices. As black farmers struggle to survive today, Homecoming pays tribute not only to the devastating losses they have suffered throughout the century but also to their enduring legacy of hope. A combination of personal memory and historical storytelling, Homecoming "celebrates the heroism and nobility of black farmers and provides clear evidence of the need for land reform in the United States" (Barbara Neely, author of Blanche Passes Go)."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved