Mutual aid has always emerged most visibly where systems fail.
For Black people, exclusion from formal institutions was not an occasional disruption but a defining feature of life in the United States. Throughout slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the twentieth century, Black communities routinely faced exclusion from healthcare, housing, education, insurance systems, banking networks, and public welfare programs.
In response, they built parallel systems.
During the nineteenth century, free Black communities built mutual aid societies across cities such as Philadelphia, New Orleans, Charleston, and Baltimore. Organizations like the Free African Society, founded in 1787 by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, collected dues from members and redistributed resources to widows, sick residents, unemployed workers, and formerly enslaved people trying to build stable lives. Burial societies ensured Black families could mourn their dead with dignity at a time when segregation shaped even funeral practices. Other associations funded schools, supported apprenticeships, and provided emergency loans in communities largely excluded from White banks and public institutions.
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