Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that people can do
Speaker 1: good things in the face of bad things. I guess
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be the middle name of the podcast.
Speaker 1: I guess it could just be the tagline. I'm willing
Speaker 1: to conceive that anyway. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and
Speaker 1: my guest today is Joel Monique.
Speaker 2: I hate not much.
Speaker 1: We had a we had a break between parts one
Speaker 1: and two, and I am covered in sawdust and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell you why. I told them why.
Speaker 2: I take a nap. For sure, I thought, okay, I
Speaker 2: thought to take a nap too, all night on the
Speaker 2: streets and then you're covered in sawdust, just redoing my kitchen,
Speaker 2: just casual like. I was like, wow, yeah, no.
Speaker 1: I I went out to my yard and which made
Speaker 1: my dog happy, and I started taking a nap in
Speaker 1: the hammock. And then I was like, what if I
Speaker 1: go inside and do things. I'm just fucked. It'll be fine.
Speaker 1: But our producer today is Sharen Hi, Seren.
Speaker 2: Hi guys, wow, grill to be here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And our audio engineers Daniel Hi, Danel Hey, Dana Sreen.
Speaker 1: We can't continue until you say Hi, Danel. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: so sorry, Daniel.
Speaker 2: Hi, we miss you so much, love you, thanks so
Speaker 2: much for all you.
Speaker 1: No, it's okay. See now, when I accidentally forget to
Speaker 1: have everyone say hi Danel, it becomes like a thing.
Speaker 1: My brain is totally wired normally. Anyway, our theme music
Speaker 1: was written for us by un Woman and today is
Speaker 1: part two in a two parter of I actually haven't
Speaker 1: come up with the final title of it yet because
Speaker 1: what this podcast was about changed at eleven pm last night.
Speaker 1: But it's about the development of mutual aid and cooperative
Speaker 1: economics within the black community in the United States, and
Speaker 1: that's where we're at.
Speaker 2: That's a solid title right there.
Speaker 1: I know it's not going to like really like catch
Speaker 1: people necessarily, but like it's descriptive and that is true
Speaker 1: to the style of the time in terms of naming,
Speaker 1: right well, except the crisis. The crisis is good name.
Speaker 1: So anyway, what we're talking about, and at first, can
Speaker 1: you I already told you that it was like kind
Speaker 1: of insurance companies based they're not companies, but insurance organizations
Speaker 1: were the first ones. Any any random guesses as to
Speaker 1: what the first style of insurance was first.
Speaker 2: Oh what was being ensured? Okay, so what I know
Speaker 2: is post slavery, a lot formerly enslaved people would like
Speaker 2: become essentially like a nitry servants work on farms and
Speaker 2: they had like but they had to pay for all
Speaker 2: their own farm equipment stuff. So maybe maybe like equipment
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that is a good guess because after emancipation,
Speaker 1: some of the first worker cooperatives that folks develop are
Speaker 1: to chip in together in order to buy equipment together.
Speaker 1: But the first insurance organizations were burial societies.
Speaker 2: Whoa also makes sense okay, Yeah, yeah, love and undertaker
Speaker 2: society coming together. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these existed all over the place for all kinds
Speaker 1: of different communities. It wasn't just black communities doing this.
Speaker 1: This was a way in which people during this era
Speaker 1: took care of each other, right, but when white people
Speaker 1: did it it was legal. Black people did it while
Speaker 1: literally enslaved. And that's something. These were all over the US.
Speaker 1: I sort of figured they'd be like, ah, and then
Speaker 1: there was like three of them. No, there was a
Speaker 1: lot more in that. Most of the black burial societies
Speaker 1: were in the North where it was legal. Although it
Speaker 1: was still highly content by the black codes and other
Speaker 1: racist stuff that we'll talk about. But there was fuck
Speaker 1: tons of people in the South self organizing illegally into
Speaker 1: mutual aid organizations. As an example, every major city in
Speaker 1: Virginia had one in the early eighteen hundreds. Basically, what
Speaker 1: would happen is you'd put in money every month and
Speaker 1: if you were sick, you would be taken care of.
Speaker 1: It was also health insurance. They are called burial societies,
Speaker 1: but they very very quickly expanded out beyond that. If
Speaker 1: you're sick, you'd be taken care of, and if you died,
Speaker 1: your burial expenses would be paid for and your family
Speaker 1: would be taken care of. And it will never stop
Speaker 1: blowing my mind that insurance companies start off as like
Speaker 1: a radical act.
Speaker 2: Right of just what a loving thing to do to
Speaker 2: be like, hey, we all just pull our money then
Speaker 2: and everyone of us gets sick, we could probably take
Speaker 2: care of it and it'll be fine. And then to
Speaker 2: just the taking care of because I mean, I never
Speaker 2: considered what burial right must be like for people under slavery, Like.
Speaker 1: I think it's different everywhere.
Speaker 2: I know it's a little bit so like my family
Speaker 2: is from Alabama, and we found my three or four
Speaker 2: times great. She still lived in the the sheck after
Speaker 2: emancipation that she lived in when she was in a slave.
Speaker 2: She's stayed there her whole life. She's buried on that land. Okay.
Speaker 2: And I know that there are a lot of like
Speaker 2: smaller plantations that have like you know, burials, grounds or
Speaker 2: whatever it needs buried there. It never occurred to me,
Speaker 2: like what if you'll have enough land for a burial
Speaker 2: or if the person who owns you quote unquote is
Speaker 2: like you can't bury your day. That's so insane. There's
Speaker 2: a lot to think.
Speaker 1: About, no, I know. And it's like I want to
Speaker 1: know more about burial customs because I feel like I
Speaker 1: had this like picture of how slavery worked from my education.
Speaker 1: And you know, the education I had was like not
Speaker 1: like I was saved, the nightmare of like education that
Speaker 1: was like and people were happier under slavery, Like I
Speaker 1: didn't get any of that right, But I had this
Speaker 1: kind of like one size fits all, like despotism, Like
Speaker 1: when I found out that a lot of enslaved people
Speaker 1: had money, it didn't it didn't work in my understanding.
Speaker 2: We only sort of I think see it as in
Speaker 2: the way the films depicted it, which is often like
Speaker 2: child slavery, so like large, large, large usually cotton plantations. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and there's the see I think it's kind about the
Speaker 2: last time I was here. But there's those slave tit narratives,
Speaker 2: which I think no longer the official titles. I apologize
Speaker 2: the Smithsonian owns them. And basically, in like nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: a bunch of folks went around and they just recorded
Speaker 2: the voices of the formerly enslaved, most of whom were
Speaker 2: at this point in time, like were children when emancipation happened,
Speaker 2: and so they were sharing their stories and it was
Speaker 2: very interesting to hear, like people, how familial some of
Speaker 2: these relationships were, Yeah, intertwined in every capacity that you
Speaker 2: could possibly think of. And yet still the amount of
Speaker 2: cruelty that can happen, especially if there's like two people
Speaker 2: live here who are not considered people there are five
Speaker 2: of us here, that's like insane dynamic to have to
Speaker 2: live through your whole life, and particularly you get into
Speaker 2: like the parent child relationships of it all. It's just ugh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's all very messy.
Speaker 1: No, it's so much messier than we I mean, the
Speaker 1: version that I grew up with wasn't a like rosy version, right,
Speaker 1: but it was not complicated by like the idea of
Speaker 1: like the first time I read about like how a
Speaker 1: guy who was owned had to go out and get
Speaker 1: a job and then give his wages to his to
Speaker 1: his owner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just.
Speaker 1: Like, man, it's so bad. I mean, it's like bad
Speaker 1: no matter what. But it's just like when they you're like, wow,
Speaker 1: we find like new ways to be fucked up whenever
Speaker 1: we look deeper into the past.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, it's it's much more like emotionally sinister,
Speaker 2: I think, where when it's depicted as a business and
Speaker 2: largely impersonal, then you can sort of or at least
Speaker 2: I felt oftentimes we were just writing it off as
Speaker 2: being like, oh, well that's how things were, and Lincoln
Speaker 2: became president and we got rid of that thing. Like
Speaker 2: that was like essentially my educational for four three years
Speaker 2: slaves here. It was terrible. Most people hated it, but
Speaker 2: what could we do? And then Lincoln like solve the problem.
Speaker 2: But it's like.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, single handedly because he was a person. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So they had these burial societies and they had to
Speaker 1: be organized in a criminal fashion because it was criminal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was illegal in a lot of places, uh, for
Speaker 1: folks to gather in large groups without a white man present.
Speaker 1: So what they would do is amongst themselves, they'd pick
Speaker 1: one person who could read or write, so usually a
Speaker 1: house slave, and that person would set up with a
Speaker 1: ledger book and folks would come in and buy ones
Speaker 1: or twos and slip money to the secretary. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: would just like come into church and sit down next
Speaker 1: to the secretary at church and be like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: pass pass them a little money or whatever.
Speaker 2: We do our weed deals in the alley outside of church.
Speaker 1: Right, it's basically the weed dealing of Yeah, and each
Speaker 1: member who was written down in this ledger, which was
Speaker 1: like hidden you know, under the blanket at night of
Speaker 1: the you know, the secretary had to take this real seriously, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Each member of the society was known by a number
Speaker 1: instead of a name for secrecy. So you'd come that
Speaker 1: you sit down and be like, hello, I am number
Speaker 1: four or whatever.
Speaker 2: How this okay? So the other thing I'm learning about
Speaker 2: a lot lately, not a lot. Let me slow down.
Speaker 2: I've been getting interested in numbers running, which essentially like
Speaker 2: just the lottery that they used to run on the side.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: And like so like a lot of like entrepreneural black folks,
Speaker 2: and it sounds very similar ways would just be around
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood. They had a trusted system. You want
Speaker 2: to play it in the lottery, cool, slip us your money,
Speaker 2: totally fine, and then we just pay out winners and
Speaker 2: the rest goes into like funding the next one and
Speaker 2: like super community based and like fun. And it's technically
Speaker 2: illegal because it's the but you know, and that's exactly
Speaker 2: why all of a sudden, and this is like pre
Speaker 2: are official gaming code, but they got real intense about
Speaker 2: being like you may not run numbers in your neighborhood,
Speaker 2: creat but it sounds like a lot of the same
Speaker 2: systems that were implemented here maybe got used for numbers
Speaker 2: games later, which is really fascinating.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't surprise me. And so these these burial societies developed,
Speaker 1: a lot of them developed into mutual aid societies. A
Speaker 1: lot of these places were providing you with your clothes
Speaker 1: and your shelter and the necessities of life. So basically
Speaker 1: a system of like like people you know, later white
Speaker 1: socialists are cribbing the like, from each according to ability,
Speaker 1: to each according to need. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: there's a direct lineage. I'm not sure who was looking
Speaker 1: over whose shoulder, but certainly this came before that particular quote,
Speaker 1: which wasn't Marx, but I can't remember who it was
Speaker 1: off the top of my head. Whatever. I looked into
Speaker 1: it because for a while I was going to get
Speaker 1: giant block letter according to ability according to need tattooed
Speaker 1: on my arms because I'm a nerd.
Speaker 2: Listen, Okay, where does that mean things should be on
Speaker 2: your body? I know that's a good one, but also
Speaker 2: I understand or somebody'd be like, oh gosh, that was
Speaker 2: a lot yeah energy behind that one statement.
Speaker 1: For me, and I'm like, I'm not a Marxist and
Speaker 1: it's like mostly associated with him and they, you know,
Speaker 1: but I really care about that sentiment.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So mutual aid society started with how do we afford
Speaker 1: to get buried and end up building hospitals and shit.
Speaker 1: Secret societies started building or orphanages and other charitable organizations.
Speaker 1: I think more of this is happening in the North,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. I had a hard time parsing out exactly,
Speaker 1: and this is the soil that later cooperative businesses and
Speaker 1: banks grew out of. One study showed that out of
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty six of these societies, I think
Speaker 1: this is the South. I think this is Maryland, which
Speaker 1: was the South at the time of two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty six of these societies, seventy nine were operated out
Speaker 1: of churches, and ninety two were built out of secret societies. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so that leads to a lot of other ones
Speaker 1: that were entirely informal. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: some of this.
Speaker 2: Stuff is like, man, when you went in history, a
Speaker 2: lot of times, I just feel like you get struggled.
Speaker 2: That would be like, of course, obviously, like why did
Speaker 2: I not Why wasn't I consciously thinking about this before? Right,
Speaker 2: They wouldn't let black people participate in regular society, like
Speaker 2: of course they had to have like all these underground, yeah,
Speaker 2: organized systems in order to like how are we like
Speaker 2: banking with our money? How are we getting around? Like
Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's kind of fat. It also is giving
Speaker 2: me new insight into black people's obsession with secret societies. Yeah.
Speaker 2: About in a an analytical sense, someone was like, okay, Luminati,
Speaker 2: da da da da. But now, oh, we were everywhere
Speaker 2: constantly being secret of course, Okay, sure, and I get
Speaker 2: why we're currently to this day still obsessed with the
Speaker 2: idea of secret societies running things. That's really funny.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's like secret societies one of the things
Speaker 1: that I'm obsessed with how power forms and shapes. I
Speaker 1: grew up thinking like, oh, the state that is the
Speaker 1: source of all power, right, And then you're like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: wonder the state hates gangs, right, because gangs are, for
Speaker 1: better or worse, another way of organizing power within a community.
Speaker 1: One hundred right, And still were cops. Although they're associated
Speaker 1: with the state, they're often independent from the state in
Speaker 1: very terrifying ways. And then I realized that all I mean,
Speaker 1: the state is basically just the biggest gang is taken over, right,
Speaker 1: And so secret societ and all of these like decentralized
Speaker 1: attempts at centralizing power, you know, are really fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: And they were way way bigger of a deal back
Speaker 1: in the day. We no longer think about them in
Speaker 1: the same way. And I think, and I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit off my own total knowledge train here. I think
Speaker 1: that the rise of the nation state, which is a
Speaker 1: fairly modern concept just the past couple hundred years, I
Speaker 1: think that that's a big part of it. But to
Speaker 1: these mutual lated societies, there were not two hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty six of them total. These are the examples two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty six that were cataloged by I think
Speaker 1: to boys. Philly alone had one hundred of them in
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties. Baltimore had thirty at around the same time.
Speaker 1: The first ones, especially the secret societies, I think they
Speaker 1: started off for men. Only by the seventeen nineties women
Speaker 1: had their own, and soon they were essentially running all
Speaker 1: this shit. A lot of their ones started off like
Speaker 1: all women, right, and then slowly I think people were like,
Speaker 1: your's is better, Can I join yours?
Speaker 2: I'm sure. I think what often frequently happens too is
Speaker 2: women are left with young boys who are sort of
Speaker 2: in that middle age, not white men, not you know,
Speaker 2: young enough to just be with the children. And I
Speaker 2: think frequently, you know, we see that they're going to
Speaker 2: force so ino spaces to be like, I guess everyone
Speaker 2: get it. We're just taking care of everybody, Like just
Speaker 2: what else can we do?
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, and so we're to skip ahead
Speaker 1: just so I have just other numbers to play with.
Speaker 1: By eighteen ninety eight in New York City, fifty two
Speaker 1: percent of all Black women in New York City we're
Speaker 1: in organizers of these mutual aid like we're involved in
Speaker 1: organizing these Well, fifteen percent of black men were involved
Speaker 1: in mutual aid societies.
Speaker 2: Can come on, women, show them what's up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you've got the roots of cooperativism coming up
Speaker 1: through mutual aid societies. But importantly, du Bois and others
Speaker 1: track the origin of all this into the history of
Speaker 1: black insurrection and that these can't be separated so completely. Fundamentally,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't be enslaved anymore. Is an economic proposition, right,
Speaker 1: because you're attempting to change the economic relationship between you
Speaker 1: and the people who have real funny ideas about who's
Speaker 1: in charge one percent. So in this sociological study full
Speaker 1: of charts and graphs, du Bois spends an awful lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about the underground railroad and tying it
Speaker 1: into all of this cooperative economic stuff. The underground railroad,
Speaker 1: of course, is the thing that's famous for how white
Speaker 1: people use it to try and feel better about being white,
Speaker 1: because besides John Brown, it's like the only place that
Speaker 1: those those of us who are white can look for
Speaker 1: role models is like a couple Quakers, John Brown and
Speaker 1: the Underground Railroad, Right, they.
Speaker 2: Be clinging to them. They're like, no, the Quakers are
Speaker 2: really out here just constantly helping black people. You know,
Speaker 2: a handful of them.
Speaker 1: Some of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely do boys.
Speaker 1: Just a fucking wrecking ball through white myths. As always.
Speaker 1: I've decided he's the kool aid Man of sociology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, someone make a gift, someone animated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He comes in pointing out that the Underground Railroad
Speaker 1: was the result of black organization. By eighteen fifty, a
Speaker 1: fucking hundred thousand people had made their way to freedom
Speaker 1: by way of this organization over the course of about
Speaker 1: twenty years. Yes, and that's, by my really rough and
Speaker 1: improper math, that's about one in every forty slaves, because
Speaker 1: there were about four million people enslaved in this country
Speaker 1: at emancipation fifteen years later.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: I always figure I'll do a whole series about it
Speaker 1: one of these days, because it's one of the only
Speaker 1: genuinely cool things that I learned about in school, you know,
Speaker 1: and it as far as I can tell. I know,
Speaker 1: I keep using these like superlative statements in this particular series,
Speaker 1: but I'm holding to all of them. I think that
Speaker 1: the Underground Railroad is one of the greatest achievements of
Speaker 1: human liberty and history.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is it absolutely Okay, Okay, two books don't
Speaker 2: to recommend again. I maybe recommended them last time, so
Speaker 2: I apologize it said, well, definitely one maybe not. The
Speaker 2: other Wake The Hidden History of Women Led Slave Revolts.
Speaker 1: Oh, I have that one because you recommended it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So it's a graphic novel. It's beautifully illustrated.
Speaker 2: This woman is a historian. She's got her doctor in history,
Speaker 2: and her specialty is going in and trying to read
Speaker 2: between the lines to find missing history because oftentimes, you know,
Speaker 2: in sleave, people's names were written down ages. There's so
Speaker 2: much missing from historical documents. She's really good at uncovering
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. The other one is called Brooding
Speaker 2: Over Bloody Revenge, which chronicles the enslaved people who killed
Speaker 2: their masters. And what I found really interesting in the
Speaker 2: book is the historian who worked on this she only
Speaker 2: focused on stories where people confess and where she was
Speaker 2: reasonably sure that they had actually committed the murders as
Speaker 2: opposed to just being accused. And I say all this
Speaker 2: to say it was really interesting in reading these books
Speaker 2: and getting deep into slaver You know, I grew up
Speaker 2: in and it says that was like slaves tried to
Speaker 2: run away, period, But the idea of fighting back and
Speaker 2: organizing was not introduced in my education at all. Right,
Speaker 2: And I think what makes the Underground a side room
Speaker 2: its obvious success in freeing people, which is brilliant and
Speaker 2: amazing and such an intensely coordinated organization that's really beautiful
Speaker 2: is it's one of the few bold pieces of history
Speaker 2: that everyone can look at and see and be like, No,
Speaker 2: like enslaved people were not only brilliant, but like capable,
Speaker 2: Like it brings a level I think of humanity that's
Speaker 2: often missing, Like so many people I think are a
Speaker 2: shame to come from, like enslaved people, Like there's a
Speaker 2: really deep shame or human or there's a lot of
Speaker 2: frustration with the way those stories have been told for
Speaker 2: a myriad of reasons, and I think many are valid,
Speaker 2: but my gosh, I mean, I just don't think how
Speaker 2: you can look at something like the underground railroad, knowing
Speaker 2: the amount of oppression people were under, and not be like, Wow,
Speaker 2: it's really fucking cool I descended from folks were able
Speaker 2: to accomplish this, Like it's really amazing.
Speaker 1: I'd be so fucking proud, because like, yeah, because like
Speaker 1: we always get shown enslaved people as either acquiescing to
Speaker 1: suffering or like sometimes nobly which is the worst of all,
Speaker 1: or when they try to rebel or run away, it's
Speaker 1: like impotently, right, there's always the scene of and I
Speaker 1: it's like worth pointing out that slave Catcher was a
Speaker 1: police comes from and a lot of people got it
Speaker 1: real bad because they tried to get the fuck out,
Speaker 1: you know, but like a lot of people fucking succeeded.
Speaker 1: It's not like these like oh, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean that one guy, like oh yeah, that those one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand yeah one people, cities.
Speaker 2: And communities and legacies of families. Yeah. Have you seen
Speaker 2: Barry Jenkins underground yet?
Speaker 1: I don't think so?
Speaker 2: It is? Okay, So it's a fictionalized story that actually
Speaker 2: sort of envisions the underground real world as like a
Speaker 2: train that ran underground. Oh yeah, yeah, uh huh, The
Speaker 2: cinematography is gorgeous, but it's one of for me, for
Speaker 2: my money anyway, the best humanizing of the enslaved experience. Right, Like,
Speaker 2: So you have a girl who's she's she's fucking pissed,
Speaker 2: so angry at everybody she can't till down. And she
Speaker 2: also the racist ideals have been so ingrained within her
Speaker 2: that the underground rower journey for her is like unlearning
Speaker 2: all of this hate that's been taught to her, learning
Speaker 2: what does safety in America actually look like? She lands
Speaker 2: in towns that are like small spoiler, but the first
Speaker 2: time she lands in, when she gets out, they're secretly
Speaker 2: sterilizing everybody. So yeah, free, but all of you are
Speaker 2: getting sterilized. Yeah, what can we do? And so she's
Speaker 2: going to these retalispy and it's so man, it's a
Speaker 2: really beautiful story. I I it's hard watched, extremely hard watched,
Speaker 2: but I'm so well told.
Speaker 1: So this whole thing is built from black work with solidarity,
Speaker 1: real solidarity, the kind of solidarity that involves risk from
Speaker 1: white abolitionists, but even more risk from black people. More
Speaker 1: than five hundred people a year who'd already escaped North
Speaker 1: went back to the fucking South to spread the word
Speaker 1: and rescue more people the balls, Like I know that's
Speaker 1: I know. I'd like to imagine that that would be me.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I.
Speaker 2: Feel fairy confident it wouldn't I would love to imagine,
Speaker 2: Like yes, And then I went back my life's bread
Speaker 2: were but like man getting to a space that actually
Speaker 2: just feels safe, or you have to like stress for
Speaker 2: once in your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But if you don't want to
Speaker 1: stress in your life, you can come with us to
Speaker 1: the magical land of advertising. Here we go and we're back.
Speaker 1: What I keep reading about over and over in this
Speaker 1: particular research is that the overall vibe of free black
Speaker 1: people in both the North and the South wasn't I've
Speaker 1: got mind fuck you, but a real intense involvement in
Speaker 1: the betterment of lives of other black people. Free black
Speaker 1: people were often the central organizers of mutual aid societies
Speaker 1: or would contribute disproportionately to them, including like in the South. Right,
Speaker 1: they would also risk their lives and I believe the
Speaker 1: freedom working on the underground railroad, one black man in
Speaker 1: Ohio would lead people in a closed carriage through racist neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: A one porter turned the metaphorical railroad into a literal one.
Speaker 1: He was a porter of a sleeping car that ran
Speaker 1: through Illinois, WI people in the sleeping car. Du Bois
Speaker 1: tells the story about a black man in Ohio who
Speaker 1: would go to the Virginia border, pretending to be a
Speaker 1: drunk so that white people would ignore him, and then
Speaker 1: tell enslaved folks exactly how to run away in great
Speaker 1: detail with all the information they needed.
Speaker 2: People are so awesome. Oh my god, I know, so
Speaker 2: fucking cool.
Speaker 1: This guy's name isn't even in this book that I read, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did more for the world than almost anyone alive today. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not many people measuring up to this. Dude's like,
Speaker 2: what a brave act, what a brilliant way of like
Speaker 2: escaping detection and also spreading the word like ingenious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking to yourself, waite, Ohio doesn't touch Virginia.
Speaker 1: This is before West Virginia seceeded from Virginia over its
Speaker 1: lack of interest in dying for slavery. I always have
Speaker 1: to shout out. I feel like once an episode I
Speaker 1: have to point out that West Virginia seceded from Virginia
Speaker 1: to anyway whatever. I live in the Greater Virginia. The
Speaker 1: one Another Conductor was a prominent black business owner in Detroit.
Speaker 1: His name was William Lambert. He operated his businesses as
Speaker 1: safe houses and apparently helped thirty thousand people escape to
Speaker 1: Canada over the course of thirty two years. That is
Speaker 1: three people a day. That shit adds up. Wow, I'm
Speaker 1: once again I do very rough math on this show.
Speaker 1: At one point, this fucking scumbag slaver showed up chasing
Speaker 1: a guy. So William Lambert, he's like a kind of
Speaker 1: important person economically into so he puts pressure on the
Speaker 1: city into arresting the slaver on completely bullshit charges that
Speaker 1: he knows won't stick, just to get the guy in
Speaker 1: jail long enough for the runaway to get the fuck
Speaker 1: away to Canada use the.
Speaker 2: System against them. That's so cool. Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 2: love that.
Speaker 1: And the response to this was pretty wild. It is
Speaker 1: almost certainly what helped lead to the Fugitive Slave Act
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty, which helped protect the rights of slavers
Speaker 1: in the North while they were like off chasing their property.
Speaker 1: But whether you can control the backlash.
Speaker 2: You know, I know they were gagged. They that said
Speaker 2: systems coming for me. No, I am a white man.
Speaker 1: What the hell they get confused fast? I am my
Speaker 1: property escaped. It's even though it's capable of docking and whatever.
Speaker 1: And this underground railroad there was no central leadership, there
Speaker 1: was no central committee. It was organized, but what you
Speaker 1: buy what you might call affinity groups and even just
Speaker 1: own individuals. So the railroad is an international horizontal criminal
Speaker 1: association built out of mutual aid, free association, cross race solidarity.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like all the things I like, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's also where John Brown looked to find the people
Speaker 1: with which with whom to conspire, and then you know,
Speaker 1: sparked the war that ended slavery, which he fucking did.
Speaker 1: And I am still mad at people trying to pretend
Speaker 1: like John Brown fucking failed. He fucking won. He just
Speaker 1: died in the process. Imagine for a moment, believing in
Speaker 1: Christianity and thinking I have to survive is a prerequisite
Speaker 1: to winning, like right is sacrificing yourself to get killed
Speaker 1: by the state is the entire focal point of this religion.
Speaker 2: Right right? Yeah, that a real one. Uh An absolute
Speaker 2: fee on the ground I will stand in my truth
Speaker 2: kind of fella. Yeah, I'm an impressive dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like, as always, it's a little bit an
Speaker 1: issue that we pay a lot more attention to him
Speaker 1: than we pay two black people who did the overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of the work. But like it's still cool, Like
Speaker 1: that's not his fault, you know.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely not his fault. And in fact, without him
Speaker 2: does the war, you know what I mean. Like otherwise
Speaker 2: it's just oh, black people, who I forget, what's the
Speaker 2: fake disease they made up for why slaves run away?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I forgot this. I don't remember the name.
Speaker 2: I can't recall it. Either it's very dumb, or they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're running away because they have this disease that needs
Speaker 2: to be cured, and so with that you can easily
Speaker 2: explain away anything they're doing. And it takes a dude
Speaker 2: who looks like the guy's in power to be like, actually,
Speaker 2: this is effing bullshit and I'm not gonna stand for
Speaker 2: it sometimes for them to pay attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of the railroad ran through Appalachia because
Speaker 1: Appalachi is really culturally distinct from the rest of the South,
Speaker 1: and because it's remote and rugged, people would hide in
Speaker 1: the limestone caves and stuff. And it is not a
Speaker 1: coincidence that John Brown did his thing here. People talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the conductors of the railroad, and I
Speaker 1: like them. It's good and worthwhile to talk about them.
Speaker 1: But there were also, and I'm making this term up,
Speaker 1: there were enforcers for the underground Railroad after the Fugitive
Speaker 1: Slave Act, which made it easier for set you know,
Speaker 1: Southern assholes to go and try and catch people. Right,
Speaker 1: John Brown and others who don't get named, Even though
Speaker 1: everyone else involved in this is black, their names are
Speaker 1: not recorded to the same prominence, or at least I
Speaker 1: didn't run across them started.
Speaker 2: It happens.
Speaker 1: The League of Gileadites Gileadites, which is a good name,
Speaker 1: even if I don't know how to pronounce it, because
Speaker 1: I am a lapsed Catholic and not a anyway, And
Speaker 1: this existed. This league existed to protect the people escaping
Speaker 1: from slavery, like with guns and bombs and s hell yeah,
Speaker 1: they went fucking hard. Anyone who snitched in their ranks
Speaker 1: was killed death.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Their rules included should one of your number be arrested.
Speaker 1: You must collect together as quickly as possible so as
Speaker 1: to outnumber your adversaries Mario. And another rule was let
Speaker 1: no able bodied man appear on the ground unequipped or
Speaker 1: with his weapons exposed to view. So like, be smart,
Speaker 1: you got carrier gun fucking everywhere. Another one was make
Speaker 1: clean work with your enemies, and be sure you meddle,
Speaker 1: not with others. Okay, so like vengeance for the people
Speaker 1: who need vengeance, but don't don't fuck with anyone.
Speaker 2: Else, right, don't don't bring trouble to our door. That's unnecessary. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh oh no, they're they're about trouble to doors. I'll
Speaker 1: talk about in a seconds, okay. Another one of their
Speaker 1: rules was stand by one another and your friends while
Speaker 1: a drop of blood remains, and be hanged if you must,
Speaker 1: But tell no tales out of school, make no confessions.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, I love.
Speaker 1: Pirate rules, I know, right. This is my favorite of
Speaker 1: their rules. After affecting a rescue, if you are assailed,
Speaker 1: go into the houses of your most prominent and influential
Speaker 1: white friends with your wives, and that will effectually fasten
Speaker 1: upon them the suspicion of being connected with you, and
Speaker 1: will compel them to make a common cause with you.
Speaker 2: Bring your friends kicking and screaming, We do not care.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: If you're fucked with, go to a white friend, not
Speaker 1: because the white friend will save you, but because this
Speaker 1: will force the white friend to get off the fucking fence.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I we have to put in a position where
Speaker 2: they have to say something.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow. I love these systems of organization, especially as I
Speaker 2: look more into violent resistance. You know, these are actions
Speaker 2: that move needles. As unfortunate as it is that these
Speaker 2: things inevitably happen. Yeah, people don't listen.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just self defense and community defense.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: They also distributed instructions about how to disrupt courtrooms with
Speaker 1: quote freely burning gunpowder. I think this isn't like bombs.
Speaker 1: I think this is like a flash, you know, right
Speaker 1: to help prisoners escape. If anyone knows about a book
Speaker 1: about these people, let me know. This is like a
Speaker 1: side quest in my research. But I like, they're fucking
Speaker 1: They're cool. And what did the folks do when they
Speaker 1: successfully made it to safety. Well a lot of them
Speaker 1: entered into cooperative societies like not like Beyond even like
Speaker 1: mutual aid stuff, like stuff that just straight up is
Speaker 1: like communes and you know what later would get called
Speaker 1: socialism and communism but usually democratic instead, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it. In the South, you had these maroon communities
Speaker 1: like we were talking about, and they're sort of informally
Speaker 1: and you know, set up, and they're often communal and cooperative.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're universally. So in the North you
Speaker 1: had black intentional communities, and a lot of these were
Speaker 1: like not as cool as they could be. A lot
Speaker 1: of them were set up by white abolitionists in these
Speaker 1: like very paternalistic, annoying ways. The white abolitionists were like
Speaker 1: real spotty, you know, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, yeah, they're they're middle of the laying people
Speaker 2: would work within the system to defeat the system.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know. And then a lot of the ones
Speaker 1: who said they were doing that were also like providing
Speaker 1: firearms to John Brown, right, but like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: So some of these societies that were set up were
Speaker 1: for profit farmers working collectively owned fields. So it was
Speaker 1: like not for profit for a boss, it was like
Speaker 1: for profit for all of the workers collectively, and which
Speaker 1: is what worker cooperativism is. Just before anyone was calling
Speaker 1: things that the most successful these and I think the
Speaker 1: most numerous were in Canada. A lot of people were like, look,
Speaker 1: the North isn't far enough going out, Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: were some in the US. Two. The Wilberforce Colony in
Speaker 1: Canada built its own schools that were so good that
Speaker 1: the neighboring white folks sent their kids to it too.
Speaker 2: Mother of god. Yeah, can you imagine how what was
Speaker 2: the education life? Yeah? Must have been in sensational Wow.
Speaker 1: Well we talk about that. We did this episode about
Speaker 1: the black origin of EMTs and ambulance service in Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: and like, way more recently than you'd think. I think
Speaker 1: it's the seventies.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: And it served the black community and came out of
Speaker 1: the black community. And then all these white neighborhoods were like, wait,
Speaker 1: we want the empts to come here. We don't care
Speaker 1: that they're black. Could we just not die that neighborhood?
Speaker 1: People don't die when they get sick or od or whatever?
Speaker 1: You know. Wow, Although then other people were like, no,
Speaker 1: I would rather die than let this black paramedic touch
Speaker 1: me or whatever, which I'm like, good, then die, I mean,
Speaker 1: and take care of people. It's not like your terms
Speaker 1: are acceptable.
Speaker 2: They cannot waste their time, and you can die. It'll
Speaker 2: be great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some of these communes, not the EMTs, it's one hundred
Speaker 1: years later. Some of these communes were set up by
Speaker 1: white people in weird and condescending ways. In Tennessee, there's
Speaker 1: this white lady. She's an early suffragist, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I've got a plan. All right, let's hear her plan.
Speaker 1: She's going to buy hundreds of acres in Tennessee and
Speaker 1: then buy like a hundred enslave people and don't set
Speaker 1: them free right away, but but build a commune where
Speaker 1: they collectively labor and profit and then buy their freedom,
Speaker 1: whereupon they can go and colonize Africa.
Speaker 2: And did you just double slavery?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 2: She said, I bought you. It's not much better. H
Speaker 2: you can maybe buy your freedom based off prices that
Speaker 2: I decide.
Speaker 1: I think it's the Yeah, I think it's what she
Speaker 1: paid for them, and she's not profiting off of them.
Speaker 1: They are like she's wildly misguided, but she's like she's
Speaker 1: not trying to Oh, I'm going to make a buck
Speaker 1: here too, Okay. But she's like she's like, oh, you
Speaker 1: will collectively work on this land that I'm going to
Speaker 1: set up for you all. But it's super fucking patronizing
Speaker 1: and it didn't work out. Instead, it became this like
Speaker 1: weird integrated community that was harassed by local racists, but
Speaker 1: itself was too racist because black people weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: hold positions of authority because they hadn't been like properly
Speaker 1: educated enough to learn how to let people tell people
Speaker 1: what to do or whatever. So exhausting, I know, in
Speaker 1: the end it fell apart, and so she sent all
Speaker 1: the people that she owned a Haiti to be free.
Speaker 2: You know what, girl, at the end there you pulled
Speaker 2: it out. You did it? She said, where were they
Speaker 2: able to get themselves free? Haiti? Do y'all want to
Speaker 2: go there?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: She genuinely was trying to do right, and in the
Speaker 1: end died right and along the way had some fucking
Speaker 1: wacky ideas and you know what.
Speaker 2: Bless a wealthy white woman doing her psyche. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was trying. Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Then there was the Northampton Association of Education and Industry.
Speaker 1: And this is actually way cooler, and that you just
Speaker 1: sort of it sounds pretty forgettable, right, This is a
Speaker 1: whole different kind of cooperative, utopian commune. It is racially
Speaker 1: integrated from the start and intentionally, and white black people
Speaker 1: were as much leaders of the community as white people.
Speaker 1: So journal Truth, one of the most famous abolitionists, and
Speaker 1: David Ruggles, one of the lead organizers of the railroad,
Speaker 1: both lived there for a while. And this is actually
Speaker 1: where sojournal Truth got radicalized. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, and the whole thing sounds like a weird
Speaker 1: sci fi novel cult because hear me out, but not
Speaker 1: a bad way. It's no weird way. They are radically egalitarian.
Speaker 1: That's like their whole thing. And they their profit thing
Speaker 1: that they try to do is that they operate a
Speaker 1: silk mill because they have decided and I do not
Speaker 1: know why the silkworm is a symbol of democracy. It
Speaker 1: must have been the style at the time.
Speaker 2: They don't work together though, it's just one Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 2: It worked for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so they have this like silkworm commune where
Speaker 1: they're like, the silkworm is the best. And then while
Speaker 1: they lived there, they were secretly part of a secret
Speaker 1: militant society that liberated enslave people. I would read a
Speaker 1: Ya novel set in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, You.
Speaker 2: Can Eat Beautiful Silks and also radical revolution, Let's go already.
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas visited all the time and he wrote about it, quote,
Speaker 1: the place and the people struck me as the most
Speaker 1: democratic I have ever met. It was a place to
Speaker 1: extinguish aristocratic pretensions. There was no high, no low, no masters,
Speaker 1: no servants, no white, and no black. And he referred
Speaker 1: to it as the only place he'd ever been in
Speaker 1: the US where his skin color wasn't used against him. Wow.
Speaker 1: Sojourner Truth was elected the head of the communities like
Speaker 1: laundry and oversaw the white coworkers who had elected her
Speaker 1: into this position. And this was fucking mind blowing to
Speaker 1: the people who've learned about it.
Speaker 2: I can only imagine it like you'll have a black lady.
Speaker 1: Boss like yeah, and they're like, oh, we picked her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh that bar too her two. Yeah, we like her.
Speaker 1: She's a great leader, and I think she gets paid
Speaker 1: the same.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: The place only lasted a few years, I want to say,
Speaker 1: four four and a half years or something like that.
Speaker 1: Most of the storians say it fell apart because the
Speaker 1: silk mill couldn't turn a profit, Sojourner Truth said that
Speaker 1: individualism got in the way and that people like were
Speaker 1: I suspect it's both. You know, probably most of the
Speaker 1: US communes were the paternalistic things set up by white people.
Speaker 1: But there is a standout exception. One of the coolest
Speaker 1: things I've ever heard heard about there is. And I
Speaker 1: read about cool things for a living, and a lot
Speaker 1: of the coolest things I find are like footnotes or
Speaker 1: I get a paragraph about it where I'm like I
Speaker 1: would read a boring PhD dissertation on this. The Combahi
Speaker 1: River colony on the South Carolina and Georgia coast Basically,
Speaker 1: when a bunch of black men from the South went
Speaker 1: to go join the Union army, hundreds of black women,
Speaker 1: mostly the wives of those Union soldiers, went over and
Speaker 1: squatted unused farmland and grew food and took care of
Speaker 1: each other and had a all women like workers cooperative
Speaker 1: mutual aid society in the middle of a war.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: To quote author Jessica Gordon Nemhart, they refused to work
Speaker 1: for whites and were proud of their handicrafts and cotton
Speaker 1: crop as well as their independence. And that's like all
Speaker 1: I know about them. I've now told you everything I
Speaker 1: know about them.
Speaker 2: I'm thirsty for more. I know, were you Because here's
Speaker 2: the thing. If they're in the field, like if they're
Speaker 2: not working for white folks, there's a war going on,
Speaker 2: they're doing more than like sewing uniforms, Like who are
Speaker 2: they are they fixing like guns and stuff? Are they
Speaker 2: helping with like military operations like planning and stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that they're pretty separatist. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: get the impression that they are like specifically like there
Speaker 1: to contribute to the war effort. Okay, although I mean
Speaker 1: they're certainly each one of them doing that is one
Speaker 1: less worker in the Confederate economics, right right, you know.
Speaker 1: But no, I think that they were like because the South,
Speaker 1: for some strange reason, black people on the South had
Speaker 1: really mixed feelings about the Union Army, right like, And
Speaker 1: I only I know a bit about this. I did
Speaker 1: an episode right at the beginning of the show called
Speaker 1: the Civil War within the Civil War, and it was
Speaker 1: about the South's Civil War, in which both white and
Speaker 1: black people fought tooth and nail against the Confederacy and
Speaker 1: set up like seceded several different places, and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of people who worked for the Union Army
Speaker 1: as like basically guerrilla soldiers and like irregulars. But like
Speaker 1: the North formed a beachhead on this one coastal town
Speaker 1: in the South that I totally forget the name of
Speaker 1: because this is two years ago that I did this research,
Speaker 1: and they like went around and were trying to recruit
Speaker 1: black people to join the Union Army, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them were like, you gotta pay us, You're going
Speaker 1: to give us the same uniforms, and they're all like, oh, maybe,
Speaker 1: and they're like no, we're good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think there's like some leftover resentment from the
Speaker 2: Revolutionary because there was like a lot of thoughts in
Speaker 2: the Revolutionary War, if you fight, was it the French
Speaker 2: who were offering freedom the British is a British, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And they did it, Yeah, they did it. And then there
Speaker 2: were people who fought on the American side expecting to
Speaker 2: get the same situation and they did not. And I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of like yeah, full Grandpappy ones,
Speaker 2: not gonna.
Speaker 1: Get me sort of no totally and like they're not
Speaker 1: totally wrong. I mean a fuck ton of people did
Speaker 1: come from the South and then fight for the North
Speaker 1: and including at that beachhead. They eventually worked it out
Speaker 1: and there was like they're like yah whatever anyway, So
Speaker 1: eventually the Civil War ended, the good guys win. Well,
Speaker 1: the the better than whatever we talk, you know, And
Speaker 1: the history of Black America in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: is the history of literally four million people winning their
Speaker 1: freedom and then being dropped into capitalist society, which famously
Speaker 1: doesn't really offer a lot to people who have nothing.
Speaker 1: But folks didn't have nothing. They had each other, they
Speaker 1: had two centuries of resistance culture, and they had these ads.
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's the worst one I've ever done. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry.
Speaker 2: I really they got me, Margaret. I liked it.
Speaker 1: Okay, thanks, thanks, because there's ads now speaking of capitalism.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 1: After black people won their freedom by throwing the biggest
Speaker 1: general strike the US has ever seen and the largest
Speaker 1: transfer of labor power from one army to another. And
Speaker 1: when I say this, I don't mean to discount the
Speaker 1: bravery and sacrifice of union soldiers white and black like,
Speaker 1: but you know, there are usually talked about. So I
Speaker 1: talk about the workers a lot to folks set about
Speaker 1: in earnest building economic power. They did it overall by
Speaker 1: working together, all while fighting really really active resistance from
Speaker 1: white supremacy on both systemic and individual levels. And this
Speaker 1: is not to discount the work of the reconstruction. I
Speaker 1: actually think that the attempts at reconstruction were one of
Speaker 1: the more interesting like social programs the United States is
Speaker 1: ever trying to run. And it just it was being
Speaker 1: run by an occupying army, and that had anyway whatever,
Speaker 1: I'm not that's not enough of my script for me
Speaker 1: to feel certain about. But what I do know is
Speaker 1: that in an eighteen sixty nine report from the Freedman's Bureau,
Speaker 1: this one kind of shocked me, honestly. This eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine reported that out of the four million people freed
Speaker 1: from slavery, about one and two hundred of these people
Speaker 1: became quote an object of public charity. So only one
Speaker 1: in two hundred people.
Speaker 2: Oh needed charity.
Speaker 1: It became relying on charity after being dropped into a
Speaker 1: capitalist healthscape from a much worse healthscape.
Speaker 2: That is inspiring.
Speaker 1: And the report is basically saying, like, holy shit, how
Speaker 1: did this happen? You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I think that there's some like I read that
Speaker 1: chunk like several highs because I'm it's still whatever. I
Speaker 1: think that there's like maybe ways that people are defining
Speaker 1: certain things. But overall, the people writing this report from
Speaker 1: the Freedman's Bureau are shocked by how little support people
Speaker 1: are reliant on from the federal government. It wasn't that
Speaker 1: people didn't need or get help, It's that they figured
Speaker 1: out how to help one another, as they've been doing forever.
Speaker 1: Is the conjecture that I am working with this part
Speaker 1: blows my brain enough that I'm a little bit like
Speaker 1: really really du boys, am I reading you wrong? Like
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know whatever? It's fucking great and
Speaker 1: like land reform was promised at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, which land reform did not happen. This is
Speaker 1: where you break up the big parcels of owned by
Speaker 1: old plantation owners and distribute it to the small farmers.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff that has led to leftist revolutions
Speaker 1: all around the world for hundreds of years. Basically the
Speaker 1: breaking up of these like land monopolies. So instead of
Speaker 1: making farmers, the government made laborers. So an awful lot
Speaker 1: of these laborers worked together to become cooperative owners instead.
Speaker 1: And they did this in a lot of ways. One
Speaker 1: of the simplest was they pulled their money and they
Speaker 1: bought land together. One merchant described ten black men who
Speaker 1: came in and collectively bought seven hundred acres in cash.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know that felt good.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, like my family's been here for
Speaker 1: two hundred years. I'm fucking getting this.
Speaker 2: You know this is my piece? Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Another time, one hundred and sixty folks elected themselves
Speaker 1: their own superintendent and then worked about one thousand acres
Speaker 1: together and formed a joint stock company.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And joint stock companies were a big part of this
Speaker 1: black economic boom. The modern model of cooperative businesses were
Speaker 1: developed in Europe years later, and then these were these
Speaker 1: European practices were adopted by the black cooperative movement as
Speaker 1: best as I can tell in the US. But they
Speaker 1: started doing it anyway way before that, by using the
Speaker 1: tools that were legally available to them, like the joint
Speaker 1: stock company. And I wasn't able to figure out what
Speaker 1: percentage of this was collectively managed. But I want to
Speaker 1: talk about black landownership, Okay. By eighteen seventy five, three
Speaker 1: million acres were owned by black farmers by nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: this was twelve million acres. Wow, the total. And this
Speaker 1: is you're still only talking about like less than one
Speaker 1: percent or something like that, maybe up to three percent.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I didn't write the percent numbers in
Speaker 1: my script because I'm a fool. The landownership by black
Speaker 1: people in the United States probably peaked in nineteen ten
Speaker 1: at sixteen million acres across the US. These days, and
Speaker 1: at least farmland, it is down to two point nine
Speaker 1: million acres.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: There are groups like this is what I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to be focusing on, because this is what
Speaker 1: I knew about through some of my other work. There's
Speaker 1: a group that was formed in the sixties, the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties that's called the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and it
Speaker 1: exists to fight to keep farmland and black cooperatively owned hands,
Speaker 1: because that is an institution that people were fighting for
Speaker 1: and defending because it had been around and then had
Speaker 1: a spike in the sixties in the black cooperative movement,
Speaker 1: which I know way less about, because again, that's what
Speaker 1: I thought i'd be talking about today, but instead I'm
Speaker 1: talking about one hundred years earlier.
Speaker 2: Man, that's again, I just had no clue that any
Speaker 2: of this was taking place. And it's also got to
Speaker 2: be thinking like, man, I wish we could, I wish
Speaker 2: documentation was better, but the organizing on plantations must have
Speaker 2: just been like at the next level. Right to be
Speaker 2: able to come out of slavery and immediately enact this
Speaker 2: so that only a couple hundred people are affected, and
Speaker 2: then on top of that, to find all of this
Speaker 2: space or growth in land ownership and then continuing to
Speaker 2: work to partnerships like that are not easy, you know,
Speaker 2: like only land together and farming or do this equipment
Speaker 2: we're sell it, And it's just like that's just so
Speaker 2: much effort and work together. And the fact that they
Speaker 2: were able to build the stuff up is blowing my
Speaker 2: mind a little bit.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean they're all lazy and good
Speaker 1: for nothing.
Speaker 2: They didn't educate them, so they can't possibly know anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, like instead of like absolutely white socialists
Speaker 1: should have been looking over their shoulders earlier. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: black farmers also banded together to coordinate how to resist
Speaker 1: being forced to sell everything cheap, and they coordinated their
Speaker 1: market power between small farmers and they did this coordination
Speaker 1: through Black churches, and this pissed off the racists, who
Speaker 1: then you know, would attack churches and whatever. And I've
Speaker 1: covered a lot about the did a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: episodes about KKK. The newly free black people in America
Speaker 1: were really poised to take America in a radically new direction,
Speaker 1: the direction of cooperation, because among them there was, to
Speaker 1: quote du Bois again, quote little of that great inequality
Speaker 1: of wealth distribution which marks modern life, and that quote
Speaker 1: nearly all of their economic effort tends towards true economic cooperation.
Speaker 1: And just as folks are starting to try and sort
Speaker 1: this out, as black people are getting their fucking shit
Speaker 1: together during reconstruction, du Bois puts it out that black
Speaker 1: people quote emerged to a semblance of economic freedom, only
Speaker 1: to be met by the Black Codes and political revolution.
Speaker 1: The Black Codes are various laws that going back to
Speaker 1: colonial America, restrict the rights of even free black people,
Speaker 1: laws preventing owning property, or gathering for warship, or owning guns.
Speaker 1: People love to forget about that part. All the first
Speaker 1: fucking gun laws in the US step prevent black people
Speaker 1: from voting or even reading and writing. Even frapp free
Speaker 1: Black people were often prevented from legally being allowed to
Speaker 1: be literate, all different in different places at different times.
Speaker 1: Even the Northern States had the Black Codes, sometimes specifically
Speaker 1: to try and convince black people to go live elsewhere,
Speaker 1: because like a lot of like like New York had
Speaker 1: this had a bunch of black code laws, and it
Speaker 1: was like specifically being lang, well, we don't want you here,
Speaker 1: and we're not going to like enslave you, but we
Speaker 1: don't want you around the police.
Speaker 2: Don't come here. Yeah, maybe free, but somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Most Northern states seem to have abolish the Black
Speaker 1: codes after the Civil War, obviously all kinds of new
Speaker 1: shit like redlining and stuff kicking right away. Don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. Of course, after the Civil War, though, these
Speaker 1: codes exploded across the South, specifically so that Democrats could
Speaker 1: hold on to power now that a huge chunk of
Speaker 1: their population could suddenly vote. That was a huge part
Speaker 1: of why the South was like, fuck, if we free,
Speaker 1: they're going to vote us out. You know. Meanwhile, as
Speaker 1: black people emigrated away from the South to get away
Speaker 1: from you know, their former owners and Black codes and
Speaker 1: the KKK and really any reason they wanted, they could
Speaker 1: leave for because they're bored. I'll away from Yeah. Relief
Speaker 1: societies were set up to help people move into new cities,
Speaker 1: including just as the examples that I ran across Indianapolis
Speaker 1: and Saint Louis. Also in Kansas, sixty thousand black refugees
Speaker 1: from the South were helped by these societies. The financial
Speaker 1: help wasn't a lot. That society raised sixty eight thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's almost it's a dollar a person roughly,
Speaker 1: but that ain't nothing, especially when you spend it cooperatively, right,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the stuff that they're doing is
Speaker 1: like pulling their money to buy food in bulk and
Speaker 1: like finding ways to live cheaper. You know. Anyway, in
Speaker 1: Tennessee you have the ex Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and
Speaker 1: Pension Association, And this one was around for a long
Speaker 1: ass time, well into the twentieth century. OHO it existed
Speaker 1: to lobby to get formally enslaved people pensions for the
Speaker 1: work that they'd already done, which famously was unpaid. And
Speaker 1: there's a million reasons to be mad about slavery, but
Speaker 1: one of them is just like whenever you read the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of abolitionist movements, and shit, so many
Speaker 1: of the Protestant fucking slave owners and some of the
Speaker 1: white abolitionists are like, well, we need to teach people
Speaker 1: the importance of hard work and of paying off their debts.
Speaker 1: So once we buy them their freedom, their former owners
Speaker 1: can be properly compensated, and then that person owes us
Speaker 1: the cost of freeing them, like.
Speaker 2: Woo the mental gymnastics. I know. Like it's multiple things.
Speaker 2: One is, yes, we freed you, but we were right
Speaker 2: to enslave you in the first place. Yeah, we're right
Speaker 2: to do it. And now that you're free, you owe
Speaker 2: us money. That's a crazy fucking thing to say to
Speaker 2: a person. I hope people got slap silly, I know.
Speaker 2: And the other idea of like, I don't know, just
Speaker 2: this this feeling of you must punish yourself into success. Right,
Speaker 2: if you're not born wealthy, then you owe this society
Speaker 2: or this culture something, and we need to know that
Speaker 2: it hurt you and that it was very difficult for
Speaker 2: you or were unhappy if you obtain any kind of
Speaker 2: level of comfort or happiness, like our society is weird.
Speaker 1: No, no, that that's a really good point. And I
Speaker 1: just I think about to say that the person who
Speaker 1: is property owes money to the person that they did
Speaker 1: unpaid labor for to compensate for the property that was lost.
Speaker 1: And what it says, it says an awful lot about
Speaker 1: capitalism because people talk about capitalism like it's and I
Speaker 1: think this is because capitalism has presented itself this way,
Speaker 1: where it's the economy where people work for money and
Speaker 1: then spend that money. That is not capitalism. That's just
Speaker 1: market economies, which is a much broader category. Capitalism is
Speaker 1: when capital the stuff and people that you own, is
Speaker 1: the primary thing that is utilized to generate wealth. Capitalism
Speaker 1: is literally other people working so that you can make
Speaker 1: a living off of them. And this was true most
Speaker 1: explicitly under slavery, but it's also true under what folks
Speaker 1: at the time. I'm not saying we should bring back
Speaker 1: the phrase wage slavery, but it is how socialist at
Speaker 1: the time, and a lot of free black people, at
Speaker 1: least several that I read, I don't know. I cannot
Speaker 1: tell you how the average newly freed person felt about
Speaker 1: the phrase wage slavery, but a lot of them used
Speaker 1: it to say, like, you're still working for someone else's
Speaker 1: you're making money for someone else. That is your new job.
Speaker 1: Way better than chattel slavery. And I'm not advocating we
Speaker 1: bring back wage slavery as a way of describing capitalism.
Speaker 2: But your point is heard and well taken. And i mean,
Speaker 2: look at the hoops they went through to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: service jobs, you don't have to pay those people. I
Speaker 2: don't even worry about that. Yeah, yeah, they play games.
Speaker 2: I think it's it's just very exhausting when you look
Speaker 2: back at fights for freedom and typically what you see
Speaker 2: are like these swift gains and then an immediate hammer
Speaker 2: of like, no, this progress terrifying to us, slow it down.
Speaker 2: It's like we should be fighting forever. It's so exhausting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the forces of reaction are a fuck like. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting too, is like this is a little bit
Speaker 1: my conjecture, But everything I've read about all this stuff,
Speaker 1: it's like the abolitionists. Part of the reason that they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, well, buy everyone's freedom, will gradually get
Speaker 1: rid of slavery. They thought it was the only way
Speaker 1: that they could get Some of them were like just
Speaker 1: weird Protestant work ethic motherfuckers, but a lot of them
Speaker 1: were like, well, this is the only way we can
Speaker 1: come up with to free the slaves. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of people were like, well, I can come up with
Speaker 1: another way. And they look over at Haiti and they're like,
Speaker 1: what if we get a bunch of guns and we
Speaker 1: shoot all the slave owners so we don't have any
Speaker 1: slave owners anymore. And what's funny is the South, they
Speaker 1: could have taken the like the plantation owners and shit,
Speaker 1: could have stayed rich as fuck and been paid for
Speaker 1: to free all the people. That was an offer that
Speaker 1: was on the table repeatedly, you know, and they were like, no, fuck,
Speaker 1: you were holding onto slavery. And so finally eventually people
Speaker 1: were like, all right, what if we shoot you all?
Speaker 2: We have to get pilot again. You're not listening. And
Speaker 2: it's interesting as we talk about capitalism and backlash now,
Speaker 2: like I been thinking a lot. I was a film
Speaker 2: and television critic before I started producing, and there was
Speaker 2: this surge like like Trump comes to office, right, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, people are like, well, we need women,
Speaker 2: and we need people of color, and we need them
Speaker 2: visit put them in front. And then I think behind
Speaker 2: that in a smaller but but vocal move, it was
Speaker 2: like okay, well, also like center trans people like let's
Speaker 2: every like do everybody get out there and like be
Speaker 2: in front. And it's been interesting in the past two
Speaker 2: years post pandemic, we're seeing all of these offers being
Speaker 2: taken off the table, Like I think if you're looking
Speaker 2: at your queer, trans, black, Indigenous, uh Latine Asian folks
Speaker 2: who were influencers specifically, like that's just an area I
Speaker 2: know well who were getting brand deals and writing opportunities
Speaker 2: and performance opportunities left right and center, especially as whatever
Speaker 2: months you fall under was coming up all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: it's like, wow, my inbox is school and at least
Speaker 2: I'll get paid really well in this month to talk
Speaker 2: about how this country is okay, cool, whatever. They're disappearing
Speaker 2: and then we're seeing it too and the number of
Speaker 2: queer shows that were canceled in the past year and
Speaker 2: a half, and then they're like a crazy lack of
Speaker 2: diversity just across the board the way these things come
Speaker 2: in ways, and you have to so brace yourself, particularly
Speaker 2: if you want to be a creative living in these spaces,
Speaker 2: to just be like, well, I guess these next ten years,
Speaker 2: the years just don't matter, and we'll go around to
Speaker 2: make indie art. Yeah, totally, totally, like a Harry Belafonte
Speaker 2: in his career super high up during World War two era,
Speaker 2: like he flying high, make a lot of deals. Uh,
Speaker 2: we're getting close into like wartime. He's anti war. No
Speaker 2: one touches you, we don't want to talk to you,
Speaker 2: don't look at us, get out of here, da da da.
Speaker 2: And it's usually not until much later when these people
Speaker 2: are legends that were like, oh wow, they stood in
Speaker 2: their truth. How cool was that? And just like I
Speaker 2: don't know the way Cable's just destroys in so many ways,
Speaker 2: but particularly creatively. It's a man would love to not
Speaker 2: live in this system.
Speaker 1: I know. And the one thing that kind of gives
Speaker 1: me hope is that like twenty years ago, like I
Speaker 1: when I was talking about being anti capitalist, people did
Speaker 1: not know what to make of that, you know, And
Speaker 1: I feel like enough time has passed that like the
Speaker 1: shadow of like Cold War propaganda has like receded where
Speaker 1: people can be like, oh, you mean there's other forms
Speaker 1: of socialism and communism and like ways of being other
Speaker 1: than become the USSR. And you're like, yes, that's what
Speaker 1: we've been trying to tell you all along and like
Speaker 1: it's cool, it's it's but yeah, no, it's this. But
Speaker 1: we're currently seeing the backlash, we're currently seeing a rise
Speaker 1: in fascism, and anyway, it's not a current events show.
Speaker 1: But to finish out that organization, the one fighting for
Speaker 1: pensions in Tennessee, Yes, they did that fight for decades.
Speaker 1: They fought for twenty years for pensions. They finally gave
Speaker 1: up in nineteen sixteen, I think probably because d well
Speaker 1: most of the formerly enslaved people were dying by that point.
Speaker 1: You know. They did, however, keep going for another fifteen
Speaker 1: years as one of these mutual aid societies, and until
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty one, I think black unionism picked up. It
Speaker 1: was built less out of the white labor movement and
Speaker 1: more out of these white mutual aid societies. Is the
Speaker 1: best that I can tell until you start getting industrial
Speaker 1: unionism and the early aughts where you start having these
Speaker 1: like consciously multi racial union I'm just talking about the
Speaker 1: industrial Workers of the World again, my favorite union from
Speaker 1: back then consciously organizing black doc workers in Philly, Mexican
Speaker 1: miners in the Southwest, Japanese immigrants in the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 1: European immigrants all together in one union. And because it
Speaker 1: was a horizontal union, it wasn't like white people at
Speaker 1: the top telling everyone what to do. You know, so
Speaker 1: until that point, until you start getting like the multiracial
Speaker 1: union organizing, and there were other multiracial union organized I
Speaker 1: am now completely out of my wheelhouse of stuff I know, well,
Speaker 1: only stuff I know the cliffs notes of. And that's
Speaker 1: not what this show is that Margaret knows the cliff notes.
Speaker 1: It's Margaret takes some things she knows the cliff notes
Speaker 1: about and then reads like eight books I'm exaggerating, reads
Speaker 1: two books about them and twelve articles or whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: one of these days we'll talk about cooperative workplaces themselves
Speaker 1: that grew the ones that grew out of these efforts,
Speaker 1: and how they tied into and informed broader cooperative movements worldwide.
Speaker 1: But that's a story for another day, because it turns
Speaker 1: out the roots go really, really deep, and I like
Speaker 1: the roots of stories. I like root vegetables, like potatoes.
Speaker 2: They're delicious. That's and oh man, that was great. I
Speaker 2: can't wait to learn more about like what progresses out
Speaker 2: of these movements, and again, like bless you for the
Speaker 2: work you do like all this, Like you know, some
Speaker 2: of this history is hidden, some of it it just
Speaker 2: hasn't been covered as well as others. But it's it's
Speaker 2: refreshing to come here and learn so much about my history.
Speaker 2: I really like it.
Speaker 1: Thanks. I feel very self conscious that I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: let me tell you about some black history. But I
Speaker 1: like would feel a lot worse not I talk about
Speaker 1: radical history. If you're talking about radical history in the
Speaker 1: United States.
Speaker 2: You gotta talk about black history in the United States.
Speaker 2: They go hand in hand. It's totally fine. I love it.
Speaker 1: Cool. Well you had anything you want to plug here?
Speaker 2: Uh no, not really? Come come see me on the
Speaker 2: instagrams if that's a thing that you do. I like.
Speaker 2: I like the stories feature. I don't know how much
Speaker 2: longer I'll be there is just Joelle Underscore Monique over
Speaker 2: on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I was recently, I was I was talking to someone
Speaker 1: and I was like, I used to define success as
Speaker 1: the ability to eat food based on my creative work,
Speaker 1: and by that I am successful. Actually have been for
Speaker 1: a while because I used to live off of like nothing,
Speaker 1: so it was easier for me to do so. I
Speaker 1: lived in the cabin in the woods. But I've decided
Speaker 1: recently my new standard of success. The next level I
Speaker 1: want to reach is where I can just delete my
Speaker 1: social media and not think that it's going to impact
Speaker 1: my ability to eat food.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, what a joy it would be not
Speaker 2: to be chained to these things. I'm almost have Twitter
Speaker 2: out of my systems. I had a good Girls swoop
Speaker 2: chat on there that was dragging me back a lot.
Speaker 2: I have time limits set up on my social so
Speaker 2: I am not too I never hit a time limit
Speaker 2: on Twitter anymore. So I was like, Okay, that's a
Speaker 2: really weird nice We're steps away from being able to
Speaker 2: leat and move on. But now, of course. And I
Speaker 2: never signed on for TikTok, so I didn't get caught
Speaker 2: into the algorithm chap, thank god. But man, Instagram, all
Speaker 2: my friends are there? What are we doing? What's happening
Speaker 2: to go for lunch? Is it tasty?
Speaker 1: Well? See what I think I might do eventually. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess a lot of people do this where they
Speaker 1: have like a personal Instagram, and I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know any slang.
Speaker 2: The Instagram is the fake one, and then you have.
Speaker 1: The okay and so thank you. I like think about
Speaker 1: having one that's just like, actually, I can use it
Speaker 1: like a normal person instead of like everything I do
Speaker 1: has to be thought about as realise of these things.
Speaker 1: And I think about how I'm like, I would like
Speaker 1: to keep Instagram, and I would like to delete Twitter
Speaker 1: because Twitter is just a nightmare discourse machine that makes
Speaker 1: everyone hate each other. But I'm about to release a novel.
Speaker 1: This is my segue into my plug. I'm very good
Speaker 1: at MYLF, but I'm about to release a novel. And
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, like, I can't delete my largest
Speaker 1: platform before I released this book. But what book, you
Speaker 1: might ask. No one's asking me that I've been talking
Speaker 1: about at the end of every episode, but I'm still
Speaker 1: going to read another blurb for it. The Sapling Cage
Speaker 1: is kickstarting now and it Wow, it's doing great or
Speaker 1: I don't know how it's doing. I'm recording this before
Speaker 1: the kids the kid starter goes life, but I hope
Speaker 1: it's doing great or I'd probably say that no matter
Speaker 1: what it looks like, honestly, because oh god, fuck my life.
Speaker 2: Any manifesting greatness, Margaret, It's amazing, it's doing well, gangbusters.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, So what the author Nino sepri
Speaker 1: Offer of Finna had to say is The Sapling Cage
Speaker 1: is a compelling coming of age fantasy with impeccable vibes. Witches, knights,
Speaker 1: errant and monsters populate a rich story about a trans
Speaker 1: girl finding power and community. It's also a reminder that
Speaker 1: fantasy can be a vehicle for so much interrogations of power, knowledge, ethics,
Speaker 1: and an exploration of how to live in the world.
Speaker 2: Hey, that's a good one too. I like that one.
Speaker 2: The first one was all like, oh, I should pagin
Speaker 2: it's big emotion. This one's like so compelling. Girls, you
Speaker 2: can be sitting and thinking about this one for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 1: I hope so. And I'm really excited that people seem
Speaker 1: to be enjoying it, the people who have gone to
Speaker 1: read it so far. And you, dear listener, can enjoy
Speaker 1: it by going to Kickstarter and backing it, or waiting
Speaker 1: until it comes to a library and getting it from
Speaker 1: the library. But you can put in library request forms,
Speaker 1: or you can go to a chain bookstore and never mind,
Speaker 1: you can imagine what steal it. It's a joke about
Speaker 1: stealing it. I don't care if you steal my book
Speaker 1: from a chain bookstore. That's what I'm flirting around. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I will see all of you next week. Cool People
Speaker 1: Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.