Celebrating Collective Courage
In 2014, the seminal book, Collective Courage: A History of African-American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice debuted, and with it a flame sparked in the cooperative movement. Slowly and then exponentially the book went viral by word of mouth throughout black and brown communities across the U.S. and beyond. It was a “how-to” for self-determination and making an impact in the world that was tangible. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard’s book gave us both the answer to a viable alternative outside of petitions and protests and provided a blueprint for how our ancestors, names both widely known and unknown, paved a path toward cooperative economics.