Ethical Lessons from Yesteryear: A History of Black Buffalo’s Struggle for Food and Equity

Abstract

Historically, Black Buffalonians have adopted formal and informal means of eliminating disparities in the food system. While some of these efforts concentrate solely on improving food access, or people’s ability to procure healthy and affordable food, there have also been efforts to use food as a means of transforming the economic reality of Black communities. This chapter builds on the existing body of black studies and food justice literature to examine the intersections between local food politics and ethics. Utilizing Buffalo, New York, as a case study, this chapter will explore the efforts and ethics of Black residents who envisioned food as a means to transform the sociopolitical landscape of the city. In doing so, we uncover how different groups were driven by the ethics of process and results, and embodied principles of ethical engagement outlined by Howe and Kaufman even before their time. The historical underpinnings of black food work in Buffalo, N.Y. offer valuable lessons about the accomplishments, challenges, and potential next steps toward creating community-oriented food systems.

1 Introduction

Across the United States today, there are a host of community gardens, urban farms, and cooperatives that arose from a larger movement of residents seeking more voice and control in the food system. As the domestic and international fight for food justice persists, communities across the U.S. are becoming increasingly more aware of the need to amplify the agency of residents in controlling the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of culturally appropriate, healthy, and affordable food (Heynen 2009). The nation’s slow but steady progress in heeding the voices of marginalized groups is tied to an extended struggle against the corporatization of food—a process that threatens to exploit the poor to the point of starvation for the sake of profit. As people of color gain positions of leadership within the food sector, gross disparities that permeate our food system persist, resulting in dire consequences for Black Americans, Latinx, immigrants, indigenous, and poor communities. In our quest to radically transform the food system and prioritize community needs, activists and scholars must work to thoroughly understand the causes of our current condition. This means not only understanding the structural forces that have undermined our progress, but the visionaries who pushed back against the system. Without these past strivings, the challenges we face today would likely be more compound.

To be clear, the commitment to food work is far more expansive than a desire to simply provide food. Instead, food activism is a vehicle by which people of color and people in poverty resist their current condition. A number of scholars have elevated the contributions of the Black freedom struggle in awakening the American conscious to the connections between socio-political power and food (Alkon and Norgaard 2009; Block et al. 2012; Potorti 2014). By recalling the work of Black freedom fighters such as the Black Panther Party (Heynen 2009) and Fannie Lou Hamer (Hamlet 1996) scholars demonstrate that food was a political tool used to help further radical visions. There was no explicit food agenda in the Black Panther Party’s original 10-point program. Yet, the work of the Black Panther Party is believed to have garnered national attention around issues of hunger that may have influenced the creation of federal anti-hunger programs, such as W.I.C. and free school breakfast.

Growing knowledge of the politics of food and food struggle can be a powerful tool in informing the kind of work that we do. Still, if we are not careful of the manner in which we dissect history, we will miss out on opportunities to endow our activism and scholarship with the ethical principles that guided social struggle, producing both individual and collective change. While we may understand the political philosophies that undergirded Black social movements, there seems to be far less inquiry into the ethical parameters that guided revolutionary work.

Historians, Black studies scholars, and cultural critics alike have interrogated the strategic inner workings of national political groups and activists (Carson 1995; Farmer 2017; Gore 2012). Some exposed the moral failings of movements and individuals whose life’s work was intended to center principles of justice and communal power. Yet, there is more to learn about the intricacies of how national struggles were transposed onto the local scene. Thus, this chapter builds on the existing body of Black studies and food justice literature to examine the intersections between local food politics and ethics. Utilizing Buffalo, New York, as a case study, this chapter will explore the efforts and ethics of Black residents who envisioned food as a means to transform the sociopolitical landscape of the city. In doing so, we uncover how different groups were driven by the ethics of process and results, and embodied principles of ethical engagement outlined by Howe and Kaufman even before their time.

2 Black Student Union: Using Food as a Lever for Equity in Buffalo

2.1 Feeding the Way to Freedom

At 8 o’clock in the morning, sleepy, school-aged children eagerly crowded into the dining hall of the Westminster Community House located at 421 Monroe Street. Orderly seated between three long tables, Black youngsters stuffed their bellies with eggs, beef, grits, and juice as the fiery eyes of Malcolm X peered down on them from an affixed poster (Lumer 1969). The free hot meals provided to the youth were compliments of The University at Buffalo’s Black Student Union (BSU).

Between 1969 and 1972 students from the BSU secured funds to feed local school children in the Black community. Percy Lambert, then president of the BSU, provided the following explanation for why the free breakfast program was so crucial: “We found out that kids don’t do well in school because their mothers are unable to offer them a decent breakfast in the morning. So when these kids are in school, they are concentrating on the hunger pains in their stomachs instead of the school work on the board” (Lumer 1969). Beyond understanding the connection between cognitive performance and food intake, Lambert recognized that the issue of hunger plaguing school children was not merely an individual failing of the home. Instead, he acknowledged that child hunger is an indication of a structural failure. “The government has been insensitive to the needs of the people...the government has cut back on welfare and our people are just barely able to live off of it” (Lumer 1969). In an effort to address this structural failure, the BSU intended to expand their free breakfast program into a community-wide project that would require the collective effort of residents and local colleges, as well as establish an emergency fund to assist the community.

Providing free breakfast was a launching pad to providing a liberation school and free pediatric care (Black Student Union 1971a). According to an article published in the Black Student Union’s Unity: Phase One newspaper, local youth who would usually visit the Westminster House for food were able to receive pediatric and dental screenings such as “Sickle Cell Prep, Glucose-G-Phosphate dehydrogenase, hematocrit and hemoglobin on blood, Glucose, protein in the urine, visual acuity and audiometric tests on eyes and ears” (Black Student Union 1971a). Although the services provided by the BSU were free of charge to community members, the organization’s goal was to foster self-help within the Black community. The BSUs entrée into food work with the free breakfast program was the catalyst for them to ultimately become advocates for cooperative ownership within Black Buffalo. In the process of procuring food for their breakfast program, these college students became attuned to the impact of price gouging. At first, members tried to navigate their way around the problem by conducting business with ECCO mart—a black-owned cooperative. The students also published a consumer’s education column in their newspaper to raise awareness about unethical practices and provide tips on how to make the most of the shopping experience. Yet, these means were not enough. By February of 1971 members of the BSU were working to launch a meat co-op (Black Student Union 1971b).

Rather than merely distributing food, the BSU was advocating for community control and ownership over food. Highlighting the importance of communal ownership became a recurring theme throughout the student paper. The slogan, “Prosperity through co-operative life” was plastered in their student papers, along with plans for how to rally the community in making cooperative ownership a success:

How do you give time to help the group? We will use the meat co-op as an example:

• 1. Student/workers inform community of meat co-op. - going into homes telling people why they should buy as a group. If living at home, you can get your parents to join co-op. If living by yourself, you can join co-op.

• 2. Faculty and staff/workers - joining co-op and also informing others about co-op. Setting up the legal end of co-op, bookkeeping for co-op and projecting interests of group.

• 3. Community/worker joining and telling others about co-op butchering of meat, helping in wiring and plumbing, and anything else that might be necessary in setting up butchershop (Black Student Union 1971b).

While there is no archival evidence that suggests whether or not the students were successful in launching the co-op, their decision to pursue the establishment of a cooperative marked an important shift from food work to food equity. Meaning, rather than solely focusing on the provision of food, the group was committed to ensuring that the community was becoming more involved in the ownership and process needed for food to reach the plate of the consumer.

2.2 Ethics Derived from Praxis

Operation of the free breakfast program nestled the BSU in the intersections of anti-hunger work and liberatory praxis. This perpetual co-mingling of theory and action means that the BSU used theory to guide their practice, and in turn the observation of their practices informed the modification of their operating theory. Of their four guiding principles, their fourth principle provides a cogent summary of how the relationship between the students and the community should operate:

The last principle is twofold: we must adhere to the actual needs of the masses, rather than what we believe they are, that is, the wishes of the masses must be self-determined. And we must never allow ourselves to be divorced from the masses. We must teach every one of our members to love the people, to listen attentively to the voice of the masses, to identify with the masses on all occasions, instead of standing above them, to immerse ourselves among them, and according to their present level awaken them or raise their political consciousness and help them gradually to organize themselves voluntarily. The only way we can understand them is by going to the masses and learning from them, synthesizing their experiences into better, articulated principles and methods, and then by distributing propaganda within the community, calling upon them to put these principles and methods into use in order to solve their problems (Black Student Union 1971b).

Whether it be political figures, business elites, academics, or self-proclaimed activists, it is not uncommon for communities to bear the brunt of someone else’s great idea. Impoverished communities especially and communities of color in particular, are continually imposed upon by outsiders and insiders who proclaim that their ideas are what the residents need. For the BSU, that mode of engagement was intolerable. If the community did not want it, then it would not be done. However, this didn’t mean that the group sat by idly waiting until the residents approached them. Instead, students helped to raise awareness about the issues impacting community members so that the community could make a decision about whether they would mobilize to provoke change.

The BSU is a compelling example of the importance of ethical practice that weds means and ends. Planners Elizabeth Howe and Jerome Kaufman conducted a survey of the planning profession in which they determined that planning ethics fall into two general categories: ends-oriented or means-oriented (Howe and Kaufman 1980). While ends-oriented ethical approaches center on the ultimate goal to be achieved, means-oriented approaches prioritize process or behaviors. Howe and Kaufman suggest that effective planners resist from siloing means and ends. To dedicate sole focus to the desired outcome puts us at risk of justifying tactics that are unethical. Just as obsessing over the process can lead to an outcome that is not fruitful for communities. Although the work of the BSU precedes Howe and Kaufman’s ethical framework, their guiding principles and operating strategy are a testament to the importance of considering process and results. The relationship between seemingly disconnected issues such as food systems and educational outcomes became clearer through continued interaction and learning from the community.

At times, those with the knowledge and resources to assist communities choose to disengage or wait to be approached for help before intervening for fear of being viewed as outsiders trying to impose. Yet, the work of the BSU suggests that the group understood the dangers of disengagement as well as imposition. Rather than solely waiting for community members to directly approach them, the BSU took it upon themselves to distribute information and make known their willingness to assist the community in their struggle, when the community was ready. When our goal in helping create change is to amplify the agency of communities, it is easy to allow our fear of encroachment to push us to the alternate unethical position: willful neglect. As Black people who understood some of the issues plaguing their community, and as students with access to resources that the average community member may not have had, the BSU explained that it was their duty to use what they had to fight alongside their community. For scholars particularly, it is critical to reevaluate what level of commitment there is to the people in the university’s backyards, and what responsibility there is to local communities—not to impose upon them, but to walk beside them exchanging information and resources for them to lead their own pathway to change.

3 The Spectrum of Black Ownership

Compared to past and present champions of cooperativism in the city, the BSU was a more informal group. Unlike anti-hunger organizations, grocery stores, or cooperatives, the BSU was not formally organized to provide food services in the community. While most student bodies use their platform to focus on student life, this group utilized their resources to move beyond the campus walls and partner with local residents. Members of the Black Student Union were not by any means the first or the last group to recognize the transformative power of community ownership and envision cooperativism as a means to elevate Black Buffalo. Nor are cooperative efforts the only ones that sought to prioritize the needs of the community. Yet, this is one of the few groups for which enough of the ideologies have been preserved in writing that we might be able to piece together the ethical compass that guided their practice. There may not be enough literature on Buffalo’s formally recognized Black businesses and co-ops to dissect their ethical framework; however, their challenges and accomplishments can be used to propel our thinking and organizing around food justice (Fig. 11.1).

Fig. 11.1

Image of Ruby Butts. (Printed in the New Perspectives Newsletter, Vol 1 Number 1, Nov 16, 1979)

Community-led efforts to promote access to food for the residents of Buffalo’s East Side manifested in a variety of forms. Black-owned businesses provided a pathway to economic growth in underserved communities who were confronted with limited food options and devastating poverty. In some neighborhoods, corner stores and family food markets were common sources of food for community members of all ages. The popularity of these smaller shops was largely due to their ease of accessibility and provision of low-price goods compared to that of full-scale groceries in predominantly white neighborhoods. Their proximity to the neighborhood allowed shop owners to develop strong relationships with the community, and at times nurture communities dealing with hunger and food access challenges. Ruby Butts and Eliza Hall (see story below) are two women entrepreneurs who used their business as a space to fulfill community needs.

Ruby Butts was a graduate of Spellman Seminary, the mother-in-law of civil rights activist Jessie Nash, and a nutritional powerhouse. Butts opened up the Healthful Food Shoppe at 15 East Utica Street in 1953—a feat that must have come with its fair share of obstacles considering the positionality of her gender and race during that time period (Cramer 1979). However, it was not just Butts’ accomplishment as an independent owner that captivated the community. Described as a “rambunctious community minded woman,” Butts was lauded for her breadth of knowledge on health and nutrition (Cramer 1979). When customers entered her establishment, they could count on receiving nutritional guidance as well as life giving food.

There are multiple sources that credit Mrs. Butts for being Black Buffalo’s pioneer for a healthy shop operated by and for the community. Although Black owned food stores had opened in the city before, it is possible that Butts’ knowledge of health and nutrition positioned her to operate a store that was more health conscious than businesses that had arisen in the past. What is most compelling about Mrs. Butts’ legacy is that she did not necessarily intend on pioneering a change for food in the city. Butts owned a hairdressing business that she operated in the city for over 30 years. Eventually her concern for the state of Black health moved her to shift her business focus to one that was potentially less lucrative, but more socially transformative (Uncrowned Community Builders n.d.).

Spotlighting Female Entrepreneurship

Eliza Hall’s family migrated to Buffalo from Mississippi when she was a young girl. It was in Buffalo where Eliza would meet her husband, Oscar, and later raise their 10 children. Oscar worked as a Security Guard for the Buffalo Public School System and Eliza was a dedicated stay-at-home mother. As time went on, the weight of trying to support a 12-person household on one income left the Hall family in disheartening cycles of poverty, hunger and debt. Fortunately, food stamps were able to help alleviate some of the strain on the family. The Food Stamp Act of 1964 assisted low-income households with food purchases by providing stamps to be used as currency in grocery stores for purchasing food.

The challenges Eliza and her children were preparing to face were far greater than Food Stamps could resolve. Deep tragedy ripped through the fabric of their home that changed their lives forever. At 47 years old, Oscar passed away from a grueling battle with cancer that left his young children fatherless and Eliza widowed. Within a few days, Eliza’s brother and father passed away.

Eliza was forced to rejoin the labor force to support her children and with the loss of her father and brother, she identified the need for a manager of her family’s convenience store, “Adam’s Food Market”. Located in the heart of Buffalo’s East Side on the corner of Fillmore Avenue intersecting Park Avenue, Eliza employed her eldest children to help her run the register, stock the shelves, and spread the word about her store. Her store served a variety of food items that nourished the neighborhood and utilized food as a way to build community with one another and combat community-wide hunger. Her family market became a beacon of light for community members and a safe haven for youth in an area that was increasingly characterized as violent. Eliza and her children to this day recount the brutal murder-robbery of a competing convenience store’s owner across the street from her. Fortunately, Eliza was never a victim of robbery, but economic devastation contributed to a surge in theft. Adam’s Food Market was beloved, and was operated for and by members of Eliza’s community.

As a Black, female business owner, Eliza worked directly in opposition of the projected role of women as homemakers for the family. She abandoned that role to establish an anchor of hope for those around her in the form of a food market. And as a widowed single mother, she was able to bring food to the mouths of not just her 10 dependents, but to other children dealing with their own set of challenges. Eliza’s story is a triumphant one, and illustrates the extraordinary efforts of everyday residents of Black Buffalo to effect change in the community.

Devotion to people over profits is much more difficult to achieve in private businesses compared to cooperatives. Yet cooperatives that center social justice and the public good can become victims of the negative balance sheet.

Citizens Cooperative Grocery Market is one of the earliest known Black food cooperatives in Buffalo. The cooperative market opened in the fall of 1931 under the leadership of the Citizens Cooperative Society of Buffalo. The society’s first attempt at running a cooperative grocery proved unsuccessful. After fighting against the wave of economic depression that swept across the United States, the co-op was defunct by the year 1933 (Fordham n.d.). After reorganizing under a new name and giving thought to what was needed for a successful operation, the society regrouped to initiate a new cooperative that would learn from the mistakes of the past. Under this new cooperative, Buffalo Consumer’s Economic Society (later called The Buffalo Cooperative Economic Society), launched another cooperative grocery store (Fordham). Just five years after the store’s launch in 1939, the business managed to make close to $120,000 in sales and was able to hire residents (Fordham n.d.) (Fig. 11.2).

Fig. 11.2

Citizens Cooperative Grocery Market

In August of 1971, The East Side Community Cooperative (ECCO) opened its food service center on 300 William Street as reported by The Buffalo Challenger in 1971. Before opening up the brick and mortar facility, the co-op started in 1968 as a buying club. The buying club served as a source of affordable fresh food for the black community. The weekly distribution of food bags enabled cost savings for residents who were previously paying inflated prices for fresh goods (The Buffalo Challenger 1971).

These cooperatives provided a beacon of hope for how business could be conducted in a manner that protects and profits the community. If a food venture proved to be sustainable, then the success of these co-ops could have led to greater mobilization around cooperative ownership for other aspects of life. From stores, to banks, and beyond. Through cooperativism, the community would be able to thrive or at least meet the needs of basic survival that were denied to them as a consequence of living in a free market system. Inability to remain in the black was the obvious cause of liquidation, but records suggest that financial struggles were symptomatic of other structural challenges—namely lack of support: “According to Mrs. Nelson, black businesses (restaurants, etc.) did not patronize the BCES market nor offer any kind of encouragement or support for the cooperative movement in Buffalo. She felt that the unsympathetic and often “unfriendly” attitude exhibited by established black businessmen toward BCES damaged the credibility of the society…” (Buffalo Cooperative Economic Society Records n.d.).

For all of the hope that these cooperatives provided, neither the ECCO co-op nor the BCES grocery store are still standing today. The intricate balancing act between generating profits and maintaining affordability ultimately fell into a state of disequilibrium. Despite their inability to remain financially viable, these efforts sowed a seed of hope for what could be attained when the community is willing to pull together its resources. This vision of shared struggle and shared destiny lived on in the spirits of BSU members, and continues to inspire modern day black food work in Buffalo.

4 Learning from the Past and Hopes for the Future: The Story of the African Heritage Food Cooperative

The African Heritage Food Cooperative (AHFC), co-founded by Alexander J. Wright, is a relatively new initiative carrying out the legacy of cooperative ownership in Buffalo, NY. Wright is a Buffalo native who was deeply inspired by the work of Dr. Ezekiel Nelson—co-founder of the Buffalo Cooperative Economic Society—along with prominent civil rights leaders who stressed the importance of cooperative economic life for black survival. Similar to BCES, ECCO, the BSU, and black cooperative efforts throughout history, the AHFC was birthed in response to racialized economic disparity crushing East Buffalo.

Frustrated with the conditions impacting his community, Wright turned to the work of Black leaders: “I began to delve in to Black American history, I focused on Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Black Panther party.” Wright dissected the varied ideologies he encountered to determine what strategies he could employ to help his own community. Some of the philosophies espoused by Washington and Du Bois were rather off putting. When explaining some of the limitations he found in their work, Wright states,

For the sake of brevity I will surmise. Washington and Dubois had an elitist approach. You had to have a certain skill or education to have worth. That divides people and evokes hubris. You cannot have efficient and prolonged progress with plebes and lords without violence and degradation. And that is something we need to avoid.

In addition to elitism, Wright recognized another fatal weakness that contributed to the demise of civil rights leaders and black revolutionaries.

Within all of the movements there was a leader. When that individual was assassinated, literally or in character, the movement died or was stalled. Therefore we needed something that was not based on one gregarious personality but the community. They cannot assassinate us all. Therefore I knew we had to have something self-sustaining and based in not one leader, but a cooperative approach. The ‘what’ was still unclear.

Food became ‘the what’ that Wright could use to help organize the community around black ownership. The overall mission of the AHFC is to “create a just and livable world wherein inner city communities can eat, better employ themselves, and prevent predatory pricing” (African Heritage Food Co-op 2019).

Cognizant of the mistakes of the past, Wright helped found a cooperative that is accountable to the community and functions through collective effort. Although Wright does not attribute the influence of his work to Howe or Kaufman, the co-ops mission and collaborative nature embody the ethical framework of Howe and Kaufman. Rather than making the sole mission of the co-op to provide food to the community, the business stresses the need for community control and involvement in the process to achieving the goal of greater healthy food access. Individuals who join the co-op are encouraged to take the lead on any improvements they believe need to be made to the co-op. If a member feels that there are inadequacies in the membership recruitment process for example, that member is supported in outlining a new strategy to make the co-op more effective. Through this operating strategy, members are more involved in the operation of the co-op and can feel more vested in its success or failure. Everyone is responsible for ensuring the success of the co-op and because there is room for members to be involved with the tasks that interest them the most, the co-op is less likely to default if one individual member is no longer able to serve.

Along with making sure that The African Heritage Food Co-op is not a one man show, the cooperative builds on the lessons learned from the failures of the BCES cooperative grocery to craft a more inclusive membership base. What started out as a small buying club on Buffalo’s East Side has evolved into a growing community of people from different racial, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds. By building partnerships with local businesses and organizations like the Greater Buffalo United Healthcare Network, the AHFC has been able to expand people’s awareness of their brand. It is this growing awareness of their brand that helped the AHFC grow their membership. Within three-years, the AHFC opened a brick and mortar site in North Niagara Falls and a temporary location in Buffalo.

The Inspiration Behind the Movement

While recovering from a spinal surgery, I began to think of the legacy I was leaving behind. As a father of three, I was concerned about what I was leaving my children, the example I was setting and opportunities they may or may not have to see the success of people who looked like them. As an East Buffalo resident I remembered going to the corner stores and not seeing anyone who looked like me behind the counter.

I also thought about my time as an executive director for a not for profit. I walked into our food pantry and saw a grandmother, mother, and adult granddaughter all being served by the pantry. I walked into the next board meeting and told the board I considered us a failure. As an organization I felt that we were supposed to empower our community so the Grandmother receives food and wrap around services that will allow the daughter to excel so she and her daughter could donate and volunteer and not necessarily have to be recipients. Not for profits are to be a “stop gap” or band aid but not the solution. The solution has to be something self-sustaining. Organizations who depend on grant funding are subject to the will of the funders and that is often subject to will of whatever issue is popular in a given year. Also, with the creation of various not for profits, the pool of resources gets smaller while the competition increases. This idea of self-sustainability started in church for me.

I grew up in a small church about a half mile down from True Bethel Baptist Church called Holy Ghost Temple. Every Sunday I would watch the deacons struggle asking for offerings. I watched the pastor not be able to take salary and have to work full time and then try to pastor a church. It all seemed wrong to me. The Pastor was struggling, the people were struggling and the church was struggling. About this time I saw True Bethel open up a Subway in the church. I thought to myself, this is the solution. If we can open a business, it’ll give people jobs, which will increase tithes or eliminate the need for them because the business can benefit the church. I was 15 or 16 then. I knew that self-sustainability meant less struggle, but how to implement that was foggy. As I lay there recovering, I thought “I’m not the first person to think like this.” I began wonder why, with all of the progress black people have made, the inner city still looks and feels like a third world country.

I began to look at the needs of the Black community in Buffalo NY. I saw poverty, crime (which stemmed from poverty), and health issues; health issues particularly stemming from diet choices. There’s a quote in the television series Luke Cage “The fork will kill you faster than a bullet.” Diabetes, Stroke, High Blood Pressure and Hypertension are taking black folks off of this planet. The main reasons are lack of food access and education.

Food! It was brilliant in its simplicity. However, access was not enough. We need OWNERSHIP of our food systems. When you own it, it does not depend on the whims of those outside of the community. Also, ownership by those who use the store and live in the community, ensures the consistent evolution of products, services and income. Therefore, we needed to create a food store that we could support and use to employ individuals from our community. Thus the African Heritage Food Co-Op was born.

We started with 30 families in a community share, branched out to mobile markets, and now will be opening two brick and mortar stores in both Niagara Falls and Buffalo. Employing 10 individuals immediately and 65 in the next two years.

5 Conclusion

As a small, legacy city, Buffalo’s story is often missing from national discussions of local struggle and food work. Unbeknownst to some, Buffalo has a rich history of local food organizing. The few stories shared in this chapter are not new knowledge. Like Buffalo, every city has stories that are fragmented and buried in archives. As we retrace and connect these histories, we can illustrate a clearer picture for the public to digest as a whole and for us to understand more fully the pioneers that have paved the way. This research demonstrates ethical practice in that it describes the historical research begun by those engaged in contemporary food system work and shows how others may consider engaging in the history of their place before engaging in food system work. It is this knowledge that will help us to clarify how we can walk on the foundations they have laid, but also carve out our own path.

There are various lessons to be learned from informal groups, such as the Black Student Union, to formalized businesses, such as cooperatives and grocery stores. At least three of those lessons in particular can be utilized as ethical guidelines to steer activists, practitioners, and researchers in their current and future work.

First, any work that is completed should be in service with and to the community. In doing so, part of the responsibility in organizing work is to help make surrounding communities aware of the resources available to them and the potential responses to the structural barriers that they face. In this proactive approach, it is the responsibility of the activist, practitioner, researcher and other community members to address the differences that may make them “outsiders.” Then, if and when the community is ready to engage in a partnership, some level of trust has been established.

Second, businesses have a responsibility to the people and the communities that they serve. Which means that owners should be careful not to provide “goods” that are harmful to the people. Beyond the physical product that is available to the consumer, businesses also harbor the potential to be a space that educates and empowers the customers that are served. Regardless of what a particular owner sells, we should consider how communities could be impacted by businesses providing a transfer of information.

Lastly, there is a need for interregional information exchange between black owned cooperatives and black businesses alike. While black entrepreneurs are able to study the pitfalls of the past, challenges evolve over time. Information exchange with successful or struggling businesses will allow groups to better understand the current nature of the market, and hopefully draft strategies for how black businesses and cooperatives can succeed.