In 1918, WEB Dubois began the Negro Cooperative Guild to educate and advance African-American cooperatives. He envisioned cooperatives as a strategy for meeting the essential needs such as food and ultimately economic power for African-Americans. Sociologist Monica White tell us that Dubois viewed cooperatives as a foundation for black economic development in self-sufficiency. He recognized the role of farmers as producers to communities and consumers in an interconnected black controlled food system. He also believed that in order for farming to be emancipatory one had farm within a cooperative system. Dubois insisted that African-American cooperatives use the Rochdale framework of collective decision-making because it included the disenfranchised and it complemented his socialist leanings and critique of US capitalism. He created a cooperative organization that encouraged African-American farmers to advance collectively toward self-sufficiency while meeting their food needs and surrounding communities. Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Dubois contributed to black farmers independence in different ways: Washington viewed farming as institution building; Carver the importance of regenerative farming strategies; Dubois supported cooperatives as an alternative strategy for achieving black self-sufficiency.
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