Sister Days: Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics)

Kwanzaa day four: The day of Ujamaa, “cooperative economics.”  This is the day to “build and maintain our… businesses and to profit from them together.”  Sometimes the business of busi-ness is believing in each other, as the acts of three philanthropic elders demonstrate.  Their extraordinary choices and gifts have em-powered people other than themselves to profit for years to come.

With the death of Mary Johnston in 1982, the secret of her extreme frugality came to light.  So dearly had she valued education that she spent twenty-five years working odd jobs to complete her college degree―and share her wealth.  Ninety-one at the time of her death, subsisting on $4,500 per year for her last five years, the philanthro-pist donated $1,000 each year to the students of Oberlin College.

Oseola McCarty was in her mid-eighties when she made one amazing gift to the future: $150,000 from her savings to the Univer-sity of Southern Mississippi to endow a scholarship fund for African American students. McCarty had saved the money in her seventy-five years as a laundress, cook, and working other odd jobs.  Her hands gnarled from arthritis, Ms. McCarty said, “I wish I could do more.”

And in 1988, Dr. Ruth W. Hayre, a retired educator, announced to 116 Philadelphia elementary school graduates that their job was to graduate high school; hers would be to mentor and provide their full college tuition scholarships.  The legacies of two grandfathers powered her “Risers,” half of whom made it to the finish line―an ex-slave whose childhood zest for learning yielded the phrase “Tell them we are rising,” immortalized in a poem by Whittier; and an orphaned immigrant turned banker whose Latin inscription to her in a book of his speeches read “They live forever who live for others.”

-Dr. Janus Adams

In partnership with SwagHer Magazine, Dr. Janus Adams, Emmy award-winning journalist and historian presents SISTER DAYS Inspiring Moments in African American Women’s History.

During Kwanzaa Adams will share seven days of uplifting meditations on courage, daring, and resistance that bring us valuable reminders of how real women in real times– from the Daughters of Africa to Mary Johnston to the first African American  diva to perform at the Metropolitan Opera Marian Anderson – created a better way of life for themselves and a better world for others. In reading their stories, we ensure that these women live on–as shining beacons to light our own quests for happier, more fulfilled lives.