Looking for examples of anti-banking system, anti-respectability, pro-cooperative Black planning &community building? Try 19th Century Texas History.

I recently published an article on race gender, planning, and mutual aid called “The Farmers’ Improvement Society and the Women’s Barnyard Auxiliary of Texas: African American Community Building in the Progressive Era,” in the Journal of Planning History. The article’s discussion of these groups holds some insights relevant to current discussions on Black community building, placemaking, and resistance. Notably, it contends that African American planning (via mutual aid societies) predates much of what we call “official” planning practice. Though founded during the late nineteenth century, much can be said for mutual aid societies’ ability to accumulate, share, and redistribute Black wealth. Notably, the groups discussed in the article conducted their work in a way that centered women’s contributions, subordinated “respectability” politics, and thrived in the midst of a backlash against gains African Americans had made during the Reconstruction era. In the midst of calls for investments in Black banks, a backlash against Obama, and, Black Lives Matter, remember that African Americans successfully navigate these waters in the past. An expert from the article follows:

From the article:

The Role of the WBA in Resisting the Credit System WBA members exerted influence on the local, national, and household levels. They subordinated respectability politics and social control and exercised the type of power and agency that were essential to advancing subversive aims such as independence from the credit system.70 As was customary in a time with no governmental provision for social services, women led benevolent organizations. Grounded in collective action, the social networks in African American communities and organizations such as mutual aid societies, churches, lodges, schools, and agrarian cooperative movements all had female counterparts.⁷¹

In 1899, Smith described the WBA members as being “all country folks—ex-slaves and the children of ex-slaves. All of them can read but the two oldest members.” These early chapters, initially twelve in six Texas counties, were the beginning of an intergenerational movement in which ‘‘the old slave mother, illiterate but full of hope, and the cultured daughter, organized together for practical purposes.”⁷² Smith’s second wife, Ruby Cobb Smith (pictured), maintained all of the FIS and WBA finances.⁷³ Although called an auxiliary, the WBA played a central role in the FIS. Women in the FIS and WBA exerted agency and power unrestrained by period-specific constructions of gender roles. Specifically, WBA members promoted land ownership and financial literacy, two authentic expressions of power for African Americans in the early 1900s, especially for women. The women’s contribution was to develop household-level implementation strategies for FIS’s organizational goals. Smith continually referred to women in traditional Christian terms—that is, as “helpers”.

However, journalistic accounts of the group’s work indicated that the women’s role was considerably more than that of a helpmate.⁷⁴ Smith relied on women to keep the organization fiscally sound and manage youth chapters. He also placed women in leadership positions, cited them as proof of the organization’s progress, and saw them as integral to building communities through financial literacy.

The FIS and WBA’s successes attracted considerable national press. On March 19, 1901, at a Tuskegee Institute fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden (Hall), national black leaders offered best practices for making the South’s 10,000,000 African Americans “fit for the duties of citizenship.” During his speech, Smith explicitly mentioned the WBA as a component of his recipe for black success.⁷⁵ Less than a week later, the New York Daily Tribune reported that “No other women’s organization in this country, it is probable, has a constitution as unique as the Woman’s Barnyard Auxiliary of the Farmers’ Improvement Society of Texas.” The reporter noted that the organization’s purpose was “a business one, founded not for religious, social, or literary purposes” and had 2,500 members. Grace Johnson of Oakland, Texas, president of the auxiliary, more succinctly stated the group’s goal: “We are after property, new methods, and bank accounts.”

Reportedly, members collectively purchased 50,000 acres of land and had a combined wealth of US$700,000.⁷⁶ Notably, during the interview, Johnson represented both the WBA and the FIS, promoted the anticredit system platform, and described an evidence-based approach to improvement. “The Barnyard Auxiliary,” she explained to the reporter, “aims to study the nature, habits, needs, and wants of poultry, hogs, cows, and all domestic animals, with a view to improving the stock and putting it with the products of the land on the market in such condition that it shall command a remunerative price.” Women played the role of the organization’s research and development department. Female leadership emphasized financial literacy and profit maximization, not respectability or appropriate behavior.”