Labor Unions in the African American Credit Union Experience: Oral History Tour Take-away #1

After a month on the road interviewing African American credit union elders (and doing some archival research on the side), I finally returned home to Vermont last Friday with my head full of ideas, observations and insights gleaned from the journey. While I have a feeling I'll be continuing to process the full implications of what I've just experienced for some time to come, I figured I'd write a few posts in the coming days on some of my take-aways. First up: Labor Unions in the credit union movement.

When thinking about credit unions for which the place of employment is the common bond, prior to the trip I'd mostly bought into the assumption that they essentially fulfilled a human resources function for employers. While the credit union I wrote my Masters thesis about was founded by a labor union, I'd assumed it was an anomaly, and that most employer common-bond CUs were rooted in a certain level of employer paternalism.

However, as my trip progressed, it became increasingly clear that the significance of the role played by labor unions in at least African American credit union history, and possibly the history of credit unions more generally, has been distinctly under-recognized. Upon reflection, I believe that this is partly the fault of the fact that the most easily accessible documentary sources from the early movement, such as many of Roy Bergengren's books, were often promotional materials aimed at convincing employers to offer credit unions free space in their facilities, and thus played up the human resources angle.

However, a theme that emerged in many of the interviews I conducted over the course of my trip was the important role played by labor unions in both the establishment and governance of many of the credit unions I encountered. To start with, my very first interviewee, Milton Carr, was not only the former president of the Arabi Sugar Workers FCU, but had also been a union officer prior to his retirement. One has to be a member of the union at the plant to join the credit union, and he was quite explicit about the ways in which the credit union benefits the bargaining position of the union by contributing to the financial stability of the members, as he lays out in the following clip concerning his credit union's "strike fund" savings program:

CU Oral History: Milton J. Carr, Jr. of the Arabi Sugar Workers FCU

Yesterday marked the start of my African American credit union oral history tour, and I was fortunate to kick off the project by meeting with Milton J. Carr, Jr., the former president of the Arabi Sugar Workers Federal Credit Union. In addition to being a retired sugar refinery worker, union officer, and credit union volunteer, Mr. Carr is quite the history buff who has been building a second career over the last decade as an historical tour guide. As a result, over the course of our discussion at his dining room table, he provided a fascinating historical sketch of the African American experience in the city and his native Lower Ninth Ward which offered invaluable context for better understanding the dynamics and story of his credit union. We covered a lot of ground in our conversation; check it out!

Roy Cropp and the Lawrence Educators Credit Union

Though my professional interest in the history and organizational dynamics of credit unions developed later in my life, my first awareness of the existence of the cooperative institutions was the result of my paternal grandfather, Roy Cropp. A high school guidance counselor by profession, Roy spent several decades as the part-time manager of the Lawrence Educators Credit Union of Lawrence, Kansas, and his going out to work in the office several nights a week was a consistent element of my father's childhood. Since becoming interested in credit union history, I've been meaning to sit down with my grandfather and discuss his experience as a credit unionist, and my recent trip to Kansas presented just that opportunity.

Roy and Matt at the entrance of the original LECU

As with many credit union people of his generation, Roy Cropp became involved in the movement through his work. Having grown up on a Kansas farm during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, he began his career at Lawrence High School in 1954 teaching vocational agricultural technology while simultaneously working on his masters degree in guidance and counselling. He was offered a job as a guidance counselor at LHS when he finished his degree in 1957, and he continued in that post until his retirement in 1990.

The office was on the second floor

A few years later, the Lawrence Educators Credit Union was founded to promote thrift and make credit available to the teachers of Lawrence's school system. The district provided the credit union with some office space on the second floor of the administrative building adjacent to LHS, and members would stop by to conduct their business from 4-6pm on Mondays and Wednesdays.

After five years of service to the credit union, its first manager retired, and the board approached Roy to ask if he'd take over. He agreed, but later recalled to me that he often regretted the decision during the first two years of his tenure. The previous manager had left the organization mired in debt, and Roy's first major challenge was getting the LECU back in the black. With some careful financial management, he was able to retire the debts within a few years, and he pledged to never again have the credit union borrow money. That conservative position sometimes put him at odds with the central credit union, which encouraged institutions with more loan demand than deposits to borrow to make up the difference, but Roy held firm and the LECU only lent from deposits for the whole of Roy's time as manager.