Southern Consumer's Cooperative (Black Journal 4)

the thing that struck me when I first came to Louisiana and spent my first four years strictly in which we call church work Oh was how irrelevant are much of my preaching was when trying to preach to people who are hungry trying to teach Christian morality to a family of 12 living in a two-room house and I see that there's a close association between taking care of the needs of the body and ministering to the spiritual needs of people del come here is a fishing town that's where most of the people are in their livelihood and yet there's not one black person who owns a boat and are we discuss the possibility of getting loans from the Farmers Home administration for them to buy a boat they found the grandest are alone to a group of three and last year happened to be a bumper crop for shrimp and oysters and we were hoping to get the boat at the beginning of the season but with all the red tape Faden the loan didn't come to to actually at the end of the season and they finally got the vote week walking we have found that you have to start where the people are deal with the problems that they consider urgent and then that where you can get them involved and it was from that idea that that we started what today is called southern consumers cooperative whereby members people who wanted to become members would have to pay five dollars entrance fee then they would sign a subscription contract whereby they would invest a minimum of three hundred dollars we got the idea why not a statewide organization where people all over the state would be able to join and then from that money we could go into a variety of businesses last year we bought a priest piece of property a couple of blocks down in which we hope to build our own gasoline station and after reward sbisa property this station came available and we decided that it would be good for us to lease this station for a couple of years and see whether we could really draw the patronage that would make it worthwhile for us to build our own very few people realize the psychological damage that has been done the black man because of racism in this country and we find in black businesses it's very difficult to get black customers because of the psychological damage are too many black people think that the white man's gas is better than a black man gasps the white man's eyes is colder than the white black man's ice and it's an educational process that we have to go through trying to educate the people to patronize their own businesses the bakery idea was to produce a quality fruit cake and it was at that time we had several guidelines we knew that we had little business experience little management know-how we had then have too much of capital and we wanted a specialty item something that we could start small and had hopes of growing big well this year we've made the first breakthrough Cheney is a candy company out of New York and we've received an order from them for 10,000 to pound fruitcakes which actually is more than our total production last year of fruitcake when we're hoping to land two other large orders like that that will establish a sound foundation for us so that will be able really to produce fruit cake six months out of the year Louisiana we have the highest rate of interest forty-two percent or and it's the poor people who really have to pay that so we got people together talked about the problem and then they decided to start saving their money and from the money that they say or they would borrow at a cheap rate of interest people Enterprise loan company in corporate became a reality sometimes in 1964 it was decided by the members that poor people having a hard time getting ready cash from the local lending operations due to low income most of the loans are for low-income families and they haven't had any business experience before and most of them cake qualified get loans anywhere else so usually it's you there's a big sort of business training for them too so while they borrow they invest each month for every hundred dollars they borrow they invest a dollar in either people's enterprise all the courses well this is one of the largest errors in the country that grows sweet potatoes are they grow more in this era than they do any earlier in the country you the 1965 potato harvest was an extremely cool and many of the farmers have to sell their sweet potatoes for 50 50 50 and 75 cents for a crate of good potatoes and we would talk about shipping our own sweet potatoes and forming an organization for that purpose and out of that drew the grand marine co-op we got some technical assistance from father Mike night at southern consumers this is the beginning of the third season of the co-operative we had up to 500 people of patron and cooperative at least once during that period the first year they hide them a local bull foot this broke or he knew that they were green in the business and he talked to granny tell them when they contact me about the first of the year and I came here with him and while we flash here they were selling on consignment and one or two load that the VOC was sold at the other end get anything out of them we sell A&P one of the largest kroger safeway for my time well the thing that has really amazed me in this whole self-help activity is the hostility that is created and how people feel threatened when poor people start helping themselves we've been accused of being communists we have had a motion passed in the state legislature to investigate us we've been investigated by the State on American activity committee two day hearing in Lafayette or the DA has raided our office or seized our books we had to go into federal court or we applied for a temporary restraining order from the local federal judge but because of the local politics he didn't want to become involved we had to go to the court of appeals where we did get a temporary restraining order or forcing him to hold a hearing and since then are the local politicians have I think gotten respect for us now and the harassment is under cover and not as open as it has been in the past in this society we are in need of genuine social and economic changes of institutions the way people think and act have to be changed the way the black man thinks about himself has to be changed the way the white person think about black people have to be changed and this can change can only be brought about through small groups of people dealing with the problems changing their own mentality and then slowly working in the community and listing the assistance of other people I