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 Pe r s p e c t i v e s f r o m S o c i a l E c o n o m i c s

T H E B L AC K S O C I A L E C O N O M Y
IN THE AMERICAS

E X P L O R I N G D I V E R S E C O M M U N I T Y-
BASED MARKETS

EDITED BY
CAROLINE SHENAZ HOSSEIN
Perspectives from Social Economics

Series Editor
Mark D. White
City University of New York
College of Staten Island
Staten Island, New York, USA
The Perspectives from Social Economics series incorporates an explicit
ethical component into contemporary economic discussion of important
policy and social issues, drawing on the approaches used by social
economists around the world. It also allows social economists to develop
their own frameworks and paradigms by exploring the philosophy and
methodology of social economics in relation to orthodox and other
heterodox approaches to economics. By furthering these goals, this series
will expose a wider readership to the scholarship produced by social
economists, and thereby promote the more inclusive viewpoints, especially
as they concern ethical analyses of economic issues and methods.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14556
 Caroline Shenaz Hossein
Editor

The Black Social

Economy in the
Americas
Exploring Diverse Community-Based Markets
Editor
Caroline Shenaz Hossein
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Perspectives from Social Economics

ISBN 978-1-137-60278-7    ISBN 978-1-137-60047-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-60047-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952343

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © Katya Ulitina / Alamy Stock Vector

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America Inc.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
 This book is dedicated to Guyanese-American scholar Dr. Pariedeau “Perry”
Mars (1941–2016), who once told me to “  Never quit good work” and to
document the African diaspora’s cooperative economic contributions in society.
For Shayan and Amba
 Foreword

The Movement for Black Lives recently declared their Platform, which
includes a demand “for economic justice for all,” and support for coopera-
tive ownership and the development of cooperative and social economy
networks, in addition to an end to the criminalization and dehumanization
of Black youth, an end to the War against Black people, and a call for repa-
rations, and community control (https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/).
The Movement reflects a long history of Black resistance, protest, and
rebuilding that combines the pursuit of economic justice with the demand
for social justice.
Activism and protest are not new. In African communities in the
Americas, Blacks have exercised rights, protested, and rebelled, from the
beginning—during capture and detainment in Africa, on the ships during
the middle passage, and once landed and forced to be slaves, through
emancipation, continued oppression; and in some places like the US,
through Jim Crow segregation, apartheid conditions, and even once civil
rights were supposed to be achieved. Workers and women have similar
histories of activism and rebellion, as well as youth and immigrants.
African peoples fought back in Africa when being captured, committed
suicide rather than being enslaved, and resisted enslavement in myriad
ways. Africans in the Americas retained their name or aspects of their lan-
guage, religion, and culture when they could, even though European
enslavers separated them by language, ethnicity, village, and so on, so that
they could not talk to each other or plot escape; and so that they would
lose their sense of humanity and human dignity. Enslaved Africans, how-
ever, refused to be dehumanized in their hearts and minds. In the Americas,

ix
x FOREWORD

they resisted enslavement and dehumanization as individuals and in

groups. They slowed down work, they created a common language with
which to talk to each other—and a common coded language to share
information about how to escape. They created a hybrid religion that
masked ways that they retained elements of their original religion behind
the Christianity that was forced upon them. They took up arms and plot-
ted how to overcome their oppressor physically, as well as plotted how to
run away to places they could be more free. They set up an integrated
secret system of travel routes, safe houses, “conductors,” and allies to cre-
ate an Underground Railroad to aid fugitives from slavery. They set up
their own communities and maroon societies, for example in Jamaica,
Brazil, Canada, and the US. Haitians demanded and fought to control
their own country.
Africans in the Americas created organizations to support their needs
and to develop platforms to argue for their rights. Particularly once freed
and after emancipation, African organizations proliferated in the Americas,
from independent churches to Mutual Aid Societies, the Negro
Convention Movements to unions and political parties and civil rights
organizations. Civic organizations and political organizations fought for
social and political/civil rights. In addition, they established mutual aid
societies and esusus, and practiced solidarity economics because the main-
stream economy was exploitative, discriminatory, and exclusive.
People of African descent in the Americas pooled resources to pay for
goods and services they needed but could not get from their masters or
from racist economic systems. They organized and practiced alternative
collective economics from buying clubs to ROSCAs (like sols, kombits,
grwoupmans, and esusus) to social enterprises and cooperatives. They cre-
ated alternative businesses and economic activities, jointly owned and
democratically governed to provide for themselves and their families; to
alleviate hunger, homelessness, poor health and unemployment; and to
strengthen their own communities.1 This happened in every era, in every
country in the Americas. We see this spirit, for example, in the quilombolas
in Brazil and Banker ladies in the Caribbean.
Africans in the Americas practice (and practiced) all forms of alternative
economics both informally and formally. They engage (and engaged) in

1
See Jessica Gordon Nembhard. 2014. Collective Courage: A History of African American
Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University
Press.
 FOREWORD
   xi

not just social economy activities but in solidarity economics. Solidarity

economics is an alternative grassroots economic framework grounded in
solidarity and cooperation for the common good, first articulated in Brazil
and in the nonaligned world, but practiced for centuries. “…[S]olidarity
economics embraces a plural and cultural view of the economy as a com-
plex space of social relationship in which individuals, communities, and
organizations generate livelihoods through many different means and with
many different motivations and aspirations—not just the maximization of
individual gain.”2 Solidarity economies are “self-organized relationships of
care, cooperation, and community,” creating “democratic and liberatory
means of meeting their needs” in the face of market and state failures
(Ethan Miller). Solidarity economic enterprises practice social and eco-
nomic democracy, and equity in all dimensions (race, class, gender, sexual
orientation, etc.). Non-hierarchical, non-extractive, and sustainable in
both economic activity and organizational structure, they are community­
initiated and community-based, locally focused and globally conscious.
African American activism and rebellion often focused on and continue
to focus on economic justice, not just civil rights. Early on there was realiza-
tion that without economic democracy—economic equality, independence,
and stability (if not prosperity)—that without economic justice, social and
political rights were hollow, or actually not achievable. Why? Because:

1. White supremacists use violence and economic retaliation when

Blacks protest and/or exercise their civil rights.
2. Even if one gains rights like voting rights, if there is still economic
inequality you cannot feed your family, have no place to live, and so
on, so voting has not changed economic relationships.
3. Enforcing civil or legal rights can expand opportunities for a few
people which may facilitate their joining the middle and upper classes,
but then they leave the community, and their success does not help
anyone else—the whole community does not benefit or prosper.
4. We spend most of our waking hours at work in exploitative oppres-
sive hierarchical relationships—if we do not practice democracy
daily, in our daily lives, in our economic activities, how can we learn
and practice political democracy and social justice? We do not have
any opportunity or practice with real participatory democracy.

2
Ethan Miller. 2009. “Other Economies are Possible: Building a Solidarity Economy,”
Grassroots Economic Organizing Newsletter http://geo.coop/node/35.
xii FOREWORD

5. If economics rules politics in terms of who can afford to run for

office, and public officials beholden to the people who put in the
money to elect them, then we will never really have political democ-
racy either.
6. Poverty and economic injustice divert our energy and activity—we
spend all our time trying to feed ourselves and find decent lodging
and do not have time or energy to do much else let alone fight for
anything else.

Throughout our history, Black leaders as well as grassroots members

understood that political rights are not meaningful or sustainable without
economic democracy and economic justice. African American Congressman
and former Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
President John Lewis notes that “people could vote, but did not have
enough to eat.”3 SNCC leader and voting rights activist Fannie Lou
Hamer found that when she registered to vote and conducted voter regis-
tration workshops, not only was she beaten almost to death by police, but
she was evicted from the farm she and her husband share cropped. She
later argued that African Americans need to own our own land, grow our
own food, provide for our own affordable housing and jobs, so that we
could not be retaliated against when we fight for our political rights. In a
speech in 1971 she declared:

Cooperative ownership of land opens the door to many opportunities for

group development of economic enterprises which develop the total com-
munity rather than create monopolies that monopolize the resources of a
community.4

US President Carter’s Secretary of Labor, Ray Marshall echoed that

“The whole reason for forming cooperatives is to give people economic
independence so that they could have independence in political and other
matters.”5 W.E.B. Du Bois proclaimed in 1933: “We can by consumers
3
Lewis, John (with Michael D’Orso). 1998. Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the
Movement. San Diego, CA: A Harvest Book (Harcourt Brace & Company).
4
Fannie Lou Hamer. 1971. “If the Name of the Game Is Survive, Survive.” Speech given
in Ruleville, Mississippi, September 27, 1971. Fannie Lou Hamer Collection, box 1, folder 1,
Tougaloo College Civil Rights Collection T/012, Mississippi Department of Archives and
History, Jackson.
5
Ray Marshall in an interview for the Federation of Southern Cooperative’s 25th
Anniversary Annual Report: Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance
Fund. 1992. Twenty-five years of Service; Twenty-five years of cooperative development.
 FOREWORD
   xiii

and producers’ co-operation, … establish a progressively self-supporting

economy that will weld the majority of our people into an impregnable,
economic phalanx.” 6
African Americans, as others in the Americas, used cooperatives in par-
ticular as a strategy to support the larger movement for liberation.
Moreover, Black cooperatives proliferated most in the US when there
were Black organizations promoting and educating people about coopera-
tives (in the 1880s, 1930s–40s, and 1960s–70s). Organizations such as
the Colored Farmers National Alliance and Cooperative Union in the
1880s, The Young Negroes’ Co-operative League in the 1930s, the
Ladies’ Auxiliary to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the late
1930s and 1940s, the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, the Federation of
Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund from the 1960s to the
present promoted cooperative ownership, provided cooperative business
education, raised funds for cooperative business development, and prac-
ticed economic democracy (Gordon Nembhard 2014). The Black Panther
Party, an “inter-communalist” organization started in 1966, established
cooperative and/or collective “survival programs pending political revolu-
tion” and operated communal and cooperative housing, bakeries, shoe
factories, and a newspaper, as well as free health clinics, and free breakfast
programs for children.7 Even better known for their stance against police
brutality and their support for armed self-defense, the Panthers combined
activism with community organizing and solidarity economics, similar to
many other Black organizations.
In 1942, Halena Wilson, President of the Ladies Auxiliary to the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, argued:

No race can be said to be another’s equal that can not or will not protect its
own interest. This new order can be brought about once the Negro
acknowledges the wisdom in uniting his forces and pooling his funds for the
common good of all. Other races have gained great wealth and great power
by following this simple rule. ...8

25th Anniversary Annual Report 1967–1992. East Point, GA: Federation of Southern
Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund.
6
W.E.B. Du Bois. 1933. “The Right to Work.” Crisis, 40 (April): 93–94. Reprinted in
W.E.B. Du Bois: Writings, ed. Nathan Huggins. New York: Library of America, 1986, 1237.
7
Curl, John. 1980. “History of Worker Cooperation in America.” Homeward Press. Also
www.red-coral.net/WorkCoops.html.
8
Halena Wilson. 1942. “Letter to Lucille Jones,” January 26, 1942, 1–2. BSCP Collection,
box 27, folder 3, Chicago History Museum, Chicago.
xiv Foreword

For centuries, Black people have been pooling resources and creating
alternative solidarity economies that they control, however these activities
have often been invisible and not well publicized. Black Social Economy in
the Americas makes visible these quiet efforts at economic democracy and
defiance against economic exploitation and marginalization. The efforts
described in this book help us to understand the elements and contours of
Black self-supporting economies all over the Americas. We see and under-
stand the ways throughout the Americas that Black people have found to
do more than just survive—to prevail.

Jessica Gordon Nembhard

 Preface

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a social movement that originated in the US

then spread to other countries with large African diasporas, such as Canada
and the UK. It has emerged as a coalition of concerned people, mainly
Black women, who organize to speak out against the exclusion and ill-
treatment of Black people by the state, business, and mainstream society.
In August 2017, the White supremacy violence in Charlottesville, Virginia
and the refusal of US President Donald Trump to denouce racism, bigotry
and hate is the social, economic and political environment in which Black
and racialized citizens must live in. To make sense of BLM, we need to
rethink how not only about the political life but also how commercial
business is conducted in society so that people of color are not excluded.
BLM itself has not paid enough attention to the business exclusion that
limits people’s engagement in meaningful participation. This work hopes
to fill the gap in showing the myriad of ways Black people have been
engaging in diverse community-based markets.
Canada has a history of people protesting against extreme market fun-
damentalism. In the early 1900s, Alphonse Desjardins and his wife set up
the caisses populaires (credit unions) as a way to ensure inclusive banking
opportunities for excluded French speaking Catholics in Quebec. In the
1920s, two Catholic priests from Nova Scotia—Moses Coady and Tommy
Tompkins—ignited the Antigonish movement which involved mobilizing
around “kitchen meetings.” They understood that the only way to upset
the status quo and improve the standard of living of the fisher folk was to
increase people’s incomes. In a similar way, African peoples in the Americas,
as documented by African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois (1907), need

xv
xvi PREFACE

to turn their rich tradition of collective organizing into viable businesses

to give an oppressed group more clout to advocate for their causes.
The Black Social Economy in the Americas: Exploring Diverse Community-
Based Markets documents the resilience of Black communities: those
people reacting against structural violence by rethinking the commu-
nities in which they organize and live. US President Donald J. Trump
(2017–present) has appealed to bigotry and racialized politics to create
divisions and to shore up his political support from White (racist) con-
stituencies. Black people, including women and other racialized people,
are vulnerable to this new kind of politics (see www.theroot.com, a blog
that analyzes politics from a Black point of view). Cooperation and collec-
tive organizing among racialized people is more important—today under
the new world order that is fixated on restoring White supremacy.
This book reminds readers that the social economy of the African dias-
pora is ancient and deeply embedded in African traditions that help
oppressed people cope with harsh political and economic environments.
The collectives in which Black people engage are very much rooted in
indigenous systems that unite this group of people stolen from their ances-
tral homelands. Conscientious and collective organizing is thus a means of
creating meaningful livelihoods. The “Black social economy” is about
mutual aid and self-help that remains autonomous from the state and
business sectors because in most cases it is fighting against these two sec-
tors. In this economy, racialized people who encounter social and business
exclusion can carve out institutions that prioritize their best interests. The
Black social economy is therefore focused on social and economic institu-
tions that lift up the historically oppressed and their communities.
This book examines the social, economic, and cultural lives of the
African diaspora in North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
The West’s fixation on market fundamentalism has undercut the notion
that group economics and collective business can help people who are left
out of the system. But African people have held onto these ancient African
systems of collectivity as a means to survive in the Western world. By and
large Black people are excluded from capitalist markets and have had to
co-opt business and create their own community economies. Theorists
who have studied Black economics—such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus
Garvey, Booker T. Washington, and Jessica Gordon Nembhard—have
looked closely at how business is organized in society. Each of these
scholars has espoused cooperative business as a way for Blacks to shelter
themselves from systemic oppression. This work builds on the powerful
 PREFACE
   xvii

storytelling and revisionist account of cooperative economic history by

African American Jessica Gordon Nembhard (2014), who wrote about
the social economies of Black people in the Americas experiencing diffi-
cult social and political environments.
The current literature on the social economy does not analyze race,
class, or gender. This book aims to do exactly that. The goal is to make
cultural identities an essential part of the social economy discussion. The
Black Social Economy in the Americas is written by a group of academics
and activists who, through their own lived experience or intensive time in
the field, feel a sense of duty to show the varied ways in which Black people
across the Americas engage with the social economy—through both infor-
mal and formal channels. Some of the academics contributing to this book
are themselves vulnerable. They are emerging scholars and persons of
color who are trying to find a place in academe. In a recent submission to
a peer-reviewed “progressive” journal, one reviewer advised the authors to
not examine Black experiences in social economics if they are unable to
draw on well-known thinkers in the field. This book deliberately avoids
drawing on “mainstream” ideas. We draw on theories that are rooted in
the communities where we work and are reflective of the experiences of
Black people living outside of Africa.
As a Black scholar writing on the social economy, I wanted to edit a
book with like-minded academics and activists who work with and research
community-based economies. Conferences on alternative economics are
often exclusionary spaces. Many of the speakers come from an Anglo-
American experience and do not draw on the theories and experiences of
racialized people. These participants often take up a lot of the conference
agenda and use complicated jargon that is difficult for ordinary people to
unpack. In this volume, by contrast, we are speaking to the very people we
write about and doing away with complicated jargon that detracts from
the stories of cooperative economics of Black people. The chapters are
written in an accessible manner and in a way that encourages the reader to
rethink social economics from a racialized person’s perspective through a
variety of multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to economics.
The contributors to this book are connected to the people they write
about. Each author unpacks what the idea of economies means to them,
and the context they come from and write about. Undertaking this proj-
ect took courage for those in the academic profession—as well as for
activists who seek funding. Activists and practitioners usually do not con-
trol the fund for social economy projects. They must walk carefully when
xviii PREFACE

critiquing (White elites) donors who are sensitive to having the d

­ ownsides
of the social economy scrutinized from within. There is a degree of risk
for scholars, especially junior scholars, doing work that pushes against
mainstream canons in social economics and who draw on literature which
even the most liberal scholars in the field ignore or view as “marginal.” In
fact, some left-leaning scholars feel uneasy reading works that are not
culturally familiar to them and focus on the race question.
Social economy literature that is supposed to confront mainstream
economics is not doing its own homework in terms of outing identity bias
within social economy. This book pushes forward Black cooperative eco-
nomics, and it is sure to leave many liberal scholars (read White progres-
sives) feeling unsettled. While they may be sympathetic to the plight of
“Others” in the economy, their own work does not engage in the business
ideas of the racialized and the Black diaspora. This volume of work shows
the deeply embedded racial and gendered bias in business and society, and
how racialized people carve out their own version of a humane economy.
No matter how leftist the social economy field may appear in its orien-
tation, it has not moved beyond analyzing the sector from a White per-
spective. It is not enough to write about the ways in which racialized and
Black people are on the receiving end of the social economy. Black folk are
doing much in terms of innovating within the marketplace and the social
economy; yet those stories are ignored or missing from the discussion. It
is time to “flip the script” and acknowledge the activism of Black people in
the economy.
The Black Social Economy in the Americas describes the deliberate ways
Black people explore alternative community-based economies, specifically
when there is so much anger and violence directed against them. The
authors use theories that are known to the community in order to under-
stand people’s lived experience. Each chapter explores issues of social,
political, and economic exclusion among the African diaspora in a specific
cultural context. Each chapter also demonstrates how oppressed people
are able to counter systemic exclusion by engaging in diverse community-
based economies.
The social and economic experiences vary in this book, as the Black
experience is examined across different cultural contexts. This reveals not
only the great diversity of Black people in the diaspora, but also the fact
that there is no uniform approach to markets and business. Depending on
where they are situated, people will use localized solutions to meet their
livelihood needs and build their communities. The Black experience in the
 PREFACE
   xix

social economy broadens the learning site of what it means to contribute

to markets and social life. The framing of the social economy is usually
undertaken with an Anglo-American point of reference. Those of us who
studied and learned about the social economy in Canada, the US, and the
West learned the European version—that the social economy originated in
the mid-1800s Europe during protests of the industrial revolution. But as
impressive as the counter-movements of the English Rochdale weavers or
Germany’s Raiffeisen banks, or the rise of the petit blancs in France were,
African people, both those in the continent and those in bondage, had
rich social economies that predated them. In Africa and in places where
slaves were sent, African people held onto rotating saving and credit asso-
ciations (ROSCAs) also know as susus to meet their financial needs. For
slaves it was a way of preserving culture and one day buying their freedom.
In the Americas, the Underground Railroad and the leadership of women
like Harriet Tubman who worked with others to create informal coopera-
tive networks stretching from the US into Canada is an important story of
solidarity economics. This is a prize example of the social economy and
how socially conscious people took on personal risks to free Black slaves
and to contribute to a better humanity.
Remembering the history of capital and market development, and the
counter movements make a difference in ensuring that marginalized
groups are represented in how we talk about social economics. Some may
argue that the timeline is not important. The timeline matters because it
shows that early on racialized people had a deep sense of humanity. Their
ancestors refused to accept an industrialization that earned its start-up
capital on the backs of Black slaves. Yet these stories of how the Black
diaspora rallied to create new economies are absent from the literature. In
truth, we can find the roots of the social economy in indigenous cultures
in Africa and elsewhere.
The United Nations’ Decade of Persons of African Descent (2014–2024)
is a starting point for recognizing the profound ways in which Black folk
organize business and society. It is time to re-examine the social economy
and recognize the forms of self-help of the Black diaspora. In 2013,
I coined the term “the Black social economy” to represent the social and
economic lives of Black and other racialized people, and to recognize that
their community-based economies are born out of their exclusion from
society. This exclusion—both social and business—of Black people occurs
not only throughout the Americas in large countries such as Brazil and
wealthy countries like Canada and the US, but also in small countries like
xx PREFACE

Jamaica. This alienation from business is well-documented (Hossein 2016a;

Gordon Nembhard 2014; Galabuzi 2006; Mensah 2010; James et al. 2010).
In coping with exclusion, Black citizens in the Americas have always turned
to alternative market economies to meet their livelihood needs.
The Black Social Economy in the Americas analyzes the social and eco-
nomic experience of Black folk in countries where there are large Black
communities—Canada, the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The
goal is to advance the concept of the Black social economy and what it
means to be a Black person in it. Case studies often depict Black people
on the receiving end of aid and assistance. Rarely does the literature
mention the rich African heritage of creating and producing vibrant
social economies. This book does not romanticize the reasons why
Black people are forced to create their own alternative systems. But it is
important to recognize that they are not sitting on the sidelines waiting
for handouts from well-intentioned liberals. Persons of African descent
have contributed to the uplifting of their own communities through
pragmatic forms of cooperation, and this work needs to be documented
in the literature. Black people’s take on group economics is lateral, dem-
ocratic, cooperative, caring, and collective, and runs contrary to com-
mercial business models. The authors document cases which show that
Black people have been conscientious in their cooperation. Building
community-based economies has always been very much a part of the
lives of the African diaspora, and this building continues to be an inte-
gral part of living in the Americas.
 Acknowledgments

Writing about the Black social economy was a daunting project on many
levels. I worried whether I could do it in such a way as to reflect the pro-
found ways in which the people of the African diaspora organize their
social and economic lives. I also worried about how far I could push the
field of social economics toward acknowledging that they have ignored
the Black experience. The May 2016 murder of scholar Dr. Perry Mars
saddened me, but his death increased my determination to get this project
done because it was Perry who had urged me to write this book on coop-
erative enterprises among the Black diaspora. He wanted me to write a
story of the diverse economies of Black people in the Americas. This book
is dedicated to Perry.
Writing about the social economy from the perspective of marginalized
groups is not always easy; it means going against the mainstream. My stu-
dents in the Business & Society programme at York University were won-
derful and they are the ones that urged me to write a book they could read
to learn about the social economy in a different frame, one that is consid-
erate of racially marginalized people. I have been inspired by my York
University colleagues, who have given me good advice and the encourage-
ment I needed to stay on track: Miriam Smith, Joseph Mensah, Kamala
Kempadoo, Amanda Glasbeek, Tokunbo Ojo, Mark Peacock, Andrea
Davis, Richard Wellen, Sheila Embleton and Don Dippo. At the Harriet
Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and Its Diasporas, Michele
Johnson, Annie Bunting, and José Curto provided me with a space in
which I truly felt at home in the academe. At the Centre of Feminist
Research, Alison Crosby was an excellent mentor and gave me a ­wonderful

xxi
xxii Acknowledgments

place to present my work. Simone Bohn, a York University colleague and

contributing author in this book, gave me sound advice every step of the
way. Carl E. James, another colleague and contributing author, gave me
strength with his steadfast support and encouragement to carry on in
spite of naysayers within the academe who continued to dismiss this area
of work as worthy of study.
Great social economy researchers like Jack Quarter and Jessica Gordon
Nembhard welcomed me into the community, boosted my confidence,
and gave me a place to share my work. While I was a visiting professor at
the Polanyi Institute for Political Economy in Montreal in the summer of
2016, I had time to rethink the main arguments for this book and refine
the book’s purpose. I thank Kari Polanyi-Levitt for first inviting me to the
Institute and our many discussions on the Banker ladies, and to Margie
Mendell and Ana Gomez for welcoming me so graciously. York University’s
Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies contributed to the finan-
cial support of this work through a minor research grant and the book
award for indexing. The 2015 Association for Social Economics (ASE)
summer school was the catalyst for moving this project forward. Through
it, I met a network of scholars from whom I could seek advice: Sanjukta
Chaudhuri (University of Wisconsin at Eau-Claire), Ngina Chiteji (New
York University), Ellen Mutari and Deb Figart (Stockton College), John
Davis (Marquette), Irene Van Satveren (Erasmus University, Rotterdam),
and Ilene Grabel and George Dimartino (University of Denver). My aca-
demic editor Mark D. White (College of Staten Island, CUNY) and friend
from ASE told me that this project was an imperative and he mentored me
from the very beginning. Palgrave’s editors Allison Neuburger and Sarah
Lawrence facilitated a fair process. My trusted copy editor Colette Stoeber
made my words flow brilliantly and Nancy Wills’s attention to detail in the
index is next to none.
I am most fortunate to have amazing people in my life. Shayan Sen
grounds me and loves me even when I can be trying at times. My daughter
Amba interrupts my writing so I can just love her up. Jolanta and my dad
Isaac Hossein provided many homemade meals so I could concentrate on
my writing and reading. Thakuma, Dadu, Roshin, and Samik in Dublin,
Ireland, provided fun getaways for my family as I stayed in my cocoon.
Though we do not meet often, I thank you Chris, Rasheeda, and Bibi for
caring and checking in from time to time. Long-time forever friends like
Nancy Nazer and Tony Baglione (the godparents) and their children
Julian and Sophia always liven up our lives with fun times. Alison Duke,
 Acknowledgments 
   xxiii

Notisha Massaquoi, and their daughter Miata bring joy to our lives. Auntie
Jeannette and Uncle Darryl Egan-Wyer have been loving souls. The every-
day help of family and friends enabled me to have the purpose of mind and
courage to get a book like this written. My deepest admiration goes to two
women in my life—my mum Jackie Pearline (Gittens) Hossein and sister
Laurie-Ann “Annie” Hossein—who give me the support I need to carve
out personal time and to write.
 Contents

1 Daring to Conceptualize the Black Social Economy1

Caroline Shenaz Hossein

2 Revisiting Ideas and Ideologies in African-American

Social Economy: From the Past Forward15
Sanjukta Banerji Bhattacharya

3 Drawing on the Lived Experience of African Canadians:

Using Money Pools to Combat Social
and Business Exclusion41
Caroline Shenaz Hossein and Ginelle Skerritt

4 The Social Economy in a Jamaican Perspective59

K’adamawe K’nife, Edward Dixon, and Michael Marshall

5 Building Economic Solidarity: Caribbean ROSCAs

in Jamaica, Guyana, and Haiti79
Caroline Shenaz Hossein

6 The Everyday Social Economy of Afro-Descendants

in the Chocó, Colombia97
Daniel G.L. Tubb

xxv
xxvi Contents

7 The Social Economy of Afro-Argentines and African

Immigrants in Buenos Aires 119
Prisca Gayles and Diane Ghogomu

8 Commerce, Culture, and Community: African Brazilian

Women Negotiating Their Social Economies143
Tiffany Y. Boyd-Adams

9 The Quilombolas’ Refuge in Brazil: Social Economy,

Communal Space, and Shared Identity161
Simone Bohn and Patricia Krieger Grossi

10 Black Life in the Americas: Economic Resources,

Cultural Endowment, and Communal Solidarity187
Carl E. James

Works Cited203

Index223
 Biographies of Authors

Editor and Author

Caroline Shenaz Hossein is Associate Professor of Business & Society in the

Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is
the author of Politicized Microfinance: Money, Power and Violence in the Black
Americas (University of Toronto Press, 2016) and co-editor of Business &
Society: A Critical Introduction (Zed, 2017). She is an executive board mem-
ber at the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diaspora
at York University. She holds a PhD in Political Science (University of
Toronto), an MPA (Cornell University), an LL.B (University of Kent at
Canterbury), and BA (Saint Mary’s University, Halifax). She currently holds
a Social Science and Humanities Research Council-Insight Development
Grant where she examines the African origins in the social economy. For a
decade, Hossein worked in global non-profits, including managing a com-
munity bank in Niger, West Africa. Her Grenadian-born Trinidadian-based
great-grandmother ran a susu with hundreds of members, a long-lasting
African tradition. More can be found at www.Caroline-Shenaz-Hossein.com.

Contributing Authors

Sanjukta Banerji Bhattacharya has been Professor Emeritus of International

Relations at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, for over 25 years. Prior to
that, she taught at Gargi College, Delhi University, and in Delhi University
(American History) for ten years. She has a Master’s Degree in History from

xxvii
xxviii BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS

Delhi University and a PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University in International

Relations, New Delhi (specialization in American Studies). She has received
the prestigious Fulbright Award twice (1987–88 and 2004), the first time to
do post-doctoral work on a comparison between affirmative action programs
in the US and the reservation system in India, and the second as a visiting
scholar, based in Texas College, Tyler, a historically Black college. She has four
books to her credit (Deferred Hopes: Blacks in Contemporary America;
Perspectives on India’s Northeast, editor; India at the Turn of the Century,
editor; The Asian Problematique in the Twenty-first Century, editor), as well as
over 60 articles, book chapters, and chapters in international and national jour-
nals and edited volumes. She has also presented over a hundred papers at
national and international conferences.
Simone Bohn is Associate Professor of Political Science at York University,
where she specializes in Comparative Politics with a focus on Latin America.
Her studies have focused on party politics, gender and politics, and more
recently the heterogeneity of poverty in Brazil. She coordinates the Brazil
Chair and the Brazilian Studies. Originally from Brazil, Bohn’s research
focuses on political parties in South America, gender and politics in Brazil,
and the study of political tolerance and attitudes toward corruption in Latin
America. She is currently working on an SSHRC-funded research project
entitled “Evaluating Strategic Political Partnerships: The Case of the Women’s
Movement and the State in Contemporary Brazil.” Her articles have been
published in scholarly journals such as Politics and Government, Latin
American Research Review, International Political Science Review, Journal of
Latin American Politics, and Comparative Governance and Politics.
Tiffany Boyd-Adams is an independent scholar from Charlotte,
NC. Boyd-Adams holds a BA in English from the University of South
Carolina, Columbia, and went on to do an MA and study twentieth-century
African American and Caribbean Literature at Morgan State University,
where her graduate research project was Maryse Condé, Gloria Naylor, and
W.E.B. Du Bois’s Talented Tenth. She holds a PhD from the University of
Georgia and attended the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine,
Trinidad, to complete research for her dissertation, Caribbean Women
Novelists: Courting Feminism, Constructing Nation. Boyd-Adams’ research
focuses on Black women in the Americas and includes Afro-Brazilians. She is
a member of the Caribbean Studies Association (CSA) and the Association
for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). She was awarded
the UNCF/Mellon Faculty International Fellowship and traveled to Salvador
 BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS
   xxix

da Bahia, Brazil, to conduct research on her project “Constructing Women

in the African Diaspora: Identities, Culture, and Power.” Her most recent
publication is “Janie in the Sun: Invoking Hurston’s Caribbean Travels in
Tell My Horse,” published in Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Insight. Boyd-
Adams is a native of South Carolina and her research is inspired by the dia-
sporic narratives of her relatives, past and present.
Edward Dixon is an MPhil/PhD student at Goldsmiths in London, with a
keen interest in the field of Social Economy as well as, more broadly,
International Development. His academic background is in International
Relations and Social Policy. His work background spans a variety of areas
inclusive of youth and community development broadly, with specific empha-
sis on violence prevention, juvenile justice and penal reform, alternate liveli-
hood, remedial education, and creative arts as a tool for at-risk population.
He has also worked closely with various grassroots community organizations,
NGOs, and community leaders, as well as organizations, private and public
sectors, and International Development Partners who work with these popu-
lations in Jamaica. He is a researcher with the Office of Social Entrepreneurship
(now the Centre for Social and Cultural Entrepreneurship), UWI, Mona.
His work with the Centre focuses on developing and implementing sustain-
able community development programs by collaborating with various state
and non-state actors. To this end he aids in strengthening these organizations
by developing strategic management frameworks and governance structures
that will assist in transforming them into sustainable entities.
Prisca Gayles is a doctoral student and US Fulbright recipient at the
Lozano-Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of
Texas, Austin. She has a BA in Hispanic Languages and Literature from
the University of Pittsburgh (2010) and an MA in Latin American
Studies from the University of South Florida (2013). During the sum-
mer she works as a Study Abroad coordinator and teaches Human Rights
at the Asociacion Internacional de Estudios, the registered center of the
University of London in Buenos Aires, while continuing her research on
Afro-Argentine activism and the Black experience in Argentina. Her
research focuses on the racial discourse in Buenos Aires and activist
methods of combatting racism in educational curricula, the media, and
vernacular language.
Diane Ghogomu is a North American artist and educator who currently
lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She received her degree in African
American studies at Harvard University (2009), where she wrote her
xxx BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS

senior thesis on Afro-Argentine sociocultural movements. With grants

from Fulbright and The Harvard Hip-Hop Archive, she co-directed,
filmed, and produced the documentary Buenos Aires Rap (2014). It has
been part of the official selection for film festivals all over Argentina,
Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and the US. She has led bilingual workshops
on photography, yoga, African, and African American history in the US,
Argentina, and Venezuela. She is currently working on her second docu-
mentary about the experience of Afro-descendants in Buenos Aires while
singing with an Afro-fusion band.
Jessica Gordon Nembhard is Professor of Community Justice and Social
Economic Development in the Department of Africana Studies at John
Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York
City, and she has been inducted into the US Cooperative Hall of Fame.
She holds a PhD and an MA in economics from the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst (1992 and 1989, respectively), and a BA, magna
cum laude, in Literature and African American Studies from Yale
University (1978). Author of Collective Courage: A History of African
American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice and 2016 inductee
into the US Cooperative Hall of Fame. Gordon Nembhard has numerous
publications on cooperative economics, community economic develop-
ment, credit unions, wealth inequality, community wealth, and Black
political economy. In addition, she is the 2014 recipient of the “ONI
Award” from the International Black Women’s Congress, and the 2011
recipient of the “Cooperative Advocacy and Research” Award from the
Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy.
Carl E. James FRSC, is the Jean Augustine Chair in Education,
Community, and Diaspora at York University, Toronto, where he also
teaches in the Faculty of Education and in the Graduate Programs in
Sociology, Social and Political Thought, and Social Work. Formerly found-
ing Director of the York Centre for Education & Community (YCEC),
James works at fostering partnerships and collaborations among educa-
tors, researchers, and learners as well as community agencies, universities,
and government. In his research, teaching, and community work, he takes
up questions of accessibility and equity in schooling and education that
address the needs, interests, and aspirations of students. In this regard, he
pays attention to issues, programs, and structures that enable, support,
and encourage the academic performance, participation, and attainment
of students. Caribbean born, James has researched and written of the
 BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS
   xxxi

experiences of Black and Caribbean people in Canada; and in his work on

the Caribbean, he has studied the models and performance of manhood
and masculinity among young Jamaican men, and the settlement experi-
ences among inter-island migrants in the Eastern Caribbean. His publica-
tions include Jamaica in the Canadian Experience: A Multiculturalizing
Presence, co-edited with Andrea Davis.
K’adamawe K’nife is an economist at the University of the West Indies,
Mona, Jamaica, with a focus on Social Entrepreneurship, the Social
Economy and Community Safety and Security. He is the Director of the
Centre for Social and Cultural Entrepreneurship at University of West
Indies (UWI). He collaborates with organizations in low-income com-
munities to develop self-sustaining intervention strategies for sustainable
development. He has produced numerous technical reports, strategic
plans, as well as academic publications that inform policies in national,
regional, and international spheres. Additionally, he has conducted numer-
ous workshops and capacity-building training for non-state actors, as well
as private and public-sector organizations across the Caribbean.
Patricia Krieger Grossi is Associate Professor of Social Work at
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She holds a
BA in Social Work from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande
do Sul (1987), an MA in Social Work from Pontifícia Universidade
Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (1994), and a PhD in Social Work from
the University of Toronto (1999). She carried out post-doctoral studies
at the University of Toronto (2010) with a grant from the Canadian
Consulate. As a Brazilian scholar, Grossi’s work is focused on social work
and health, and her themes of study include gender violence and public
policies; intersectionalities between gender, race/ethnicity; social class
and generation; violence against the elderly and at schools; restorative
practices; and the culture of peace in her homeland. In addition, her
work focuses on gender and public policies, violence against women,
and, more recently, on the quilombolas communities in the south of
Brazil. She coordinates the Research Group of Violence—NEPEVI—and
Peace Research Group (GEPAZ). She is a member of the editorial board
of the magazine Textos & Contextos. In 2013, she received the Most
Outstanding Researcher Award in the Area of Human and Social Sciences
by the Foundation of Support of Research of the State of Rio Grande do
Sul (FAPERGS). She is also the founding member of Red de Trabajo
Social/Servicio Social Ibero Americana (RTSSSI), an Ibero-American
Social Work Network in Brazil.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Small voice, big
man
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Small voice, big man

Author: Stewart Pierce Brown

Illustrator: George Schelling

Release date: December 6, 2023 [eBook #72347]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company,

1962

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SMALL

VOICE, BIG MAN ***
 small voice, BIG MAN

By STEWART PIERCE BROWN

Illustrated by SCHELLING

No one had heard of Van Richie for years.

Now his songs whispered ghostly through the
air, and did their work of love and hate.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Amazing Stories December 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Car 43 cruised slowly up Eighth Avenue. At the wheel, Patrolman
Vince Ferraro thought mixed thoughts about Patricia Ann Burke.
Beside him, Sergeant Gus Kleiber watched the city in a bored and
automatic way, his mind on Augustus Junior, about to take his bar
exams. The radio crackled in a low key. The evening traffic was light,
few people were on the streets.
The Sergeant turned heavily in his seat. "You hear that?"
"What?"
"A guy singing. Over the radio."

Ferraro shook his head. He pulled over and they listened. Routine
police calls squawked from the speaker. Kleiber frowned. "No, this
was singing. It—there!" Faintly behind the official monotone they
heard a man's voice singing. "You know who that sounds like? Van
Richie."
"Van Richie? Come on. He's dead."
"Could be a record. Anyway, he ain't dead. He made a movie here a
while back."
"Ten years ago."
"Yeah, but he ain't dead."
"He isn't singing on the radio, either."
Kleiber stared at the radio. The singing had faded out. Ferraro eased
the car back into the stream of traffic and his thoughts back to
Patricia Ann. They were interrupted again as he drove past the
Garden. "I tell you," Kleiber said, "that was Van Richie."
Oh, great, Ferraro thought. Now he won't be able to let up on that for
a week.

"It's cold in here," the girl said. The man at the easel didn't answer.
She hugged herself and tucked her feet under her, frowning
petulantly. "Alex?"
"Put a sweater on," the man said without looking away from his
painting. His voice echoed in the huge loft.
"I've got one on."
"There's a blanket there."
With a sigh, the girl lay back on the bed, pulling the blanket around
her. She draped one arm over her eyes, shielding them from the
banks of fluorescent lights. Under her ear, on the not-very-clean
pillow, she tucked a tiny pocket radio.
In the corner, water dripped from a tap into the chipped basin. Dimly
the sounds of the traffic on Tenth Avenue floated up to them. Almost
an hour passed. When she looked up, the man was standing back,
frowning at the canvas.
"That's enough for now," she said gently.
He dropped the brushes on the taboret and wiped his hands
absently, his eyes on the half-finished painting.
"Alex?"
"Hmm?"
"Keep me warm."
Only then did he look at her. He came and stood over the bed, faintly
smiling. She lifted a corner of the blanket like a tent flap.
They lay watching the lopsided moon inching over the edge of the
streaked and gritty skylight. In the dark, she giggled.
"What's so funny?"
"I just heard Van Richie. Right in the middle of the news."
"Get that thing out of here."
"He just came right in while the man was talking."
"Give it to—"
"Listen." She held the radio to his ear. He listened briefly, then turned
the radio off and put it on the table.
Later, when he got up for a cigarette, he saw it in the light of the
match. "How did you know that was him? You weren't even born
then."
But she was asleep.
Harry Freed locked up on the dot of nine. He left a night light over
the rear counter, connected the alarm, and walked wearily to the car.
The traffic was lighter tonight. Thank God. He was exhausted.
Waiting for the light at Seventh Avenue, he leaned his head back
against the seat and closed his eyes. It would be nice if Edith had a
cup of hot cocoa ready for him. But tonight was Perry Como. She'd
be glued to the set.
A horn honked behind him. He started, jerked forward and stalled the
car. The light changed back to red before he could get it started
again. People at the crosswalk stared at him. He felt himself
blushing. Edith was right. They should have bought her brother's car
last spring and got rid of this one.
The pavements were still wet, repeating the lights of Times Square in
blurred patches of color. The rain had killed the day's receipts. He
dreaded telling Edith. They said tomorrow would be better. He
switched on the radio to get the news and weather.
The traffic moved slower now. He looked nervously at his watch.
Even with Perry Como, she didn't like it when he was late.
Why hadn't Saul made both deliveries today? Why only one?
Reminder: see Hodges at the bank tomorrow. And write Ruth; ask
about his nephew's broken arm.
Horns again. A cop waving him on. God, he was tired. His eyes.
Edith wanted him to get glasses.
"... clearing, with some cloudiness. Wind from the north ..." Van
Richie singing.
Why are they always digging up Ninth Avenue? Maybe Eleventh
would be better. Crazy taxis. Look at that nut, cutting in and out.
Van Richie?
He twisted the dial. "Wheat was off but cotton was higher...." "Our
love came much too soo-oo-oon!" "Next news at 10:30...." "Real,
unfiltered tobacco flavor...."
He had heard him, though. He was sure of it. He told Edith about it
when he got home. She said he was crazy. Van Richie had retired
long ago.

The book had pictures of things he knew, with the English names
beneath them. Each word was spelled the way it was pronounced.
With the rug wrapped around him and the book spread on top of the
radiator, Gabriel Sangre said the word aloud, slowly, trying to
remember what Miss Alvirez had said: where the mark was, was
louder.
He was hungry. But he did not eat. What was left in the window-sill
box had to last until Friday.
"Chay-r." "Tay-bel." "Kow-ch." He shivered, forcing his knees
between the uprights of the radiator. In bed, he knew, he would be
warmer. But also he would fall asleep. He wanted to finish the
lesson. He did not want to disappoint Miss Alvirez.
Tomorrow would be hard again. A long day, with the stacks of trays
and the heavy dishes and the miles of running around the big
kitchen, with the old Italian barking at him and the waiters pushing
him and cursing him. But he could not go to bed.
He rested his forehead on the book. The heat bathed his face. It felt
good. It made him forget the cold wind outside and the grey and
gritty buildings. It felt like the sun. The island sun that warmed him as
he worked with his father in the fields. Down the long rows side by
side, with the sound of the sea far away and the shrill voices of his
sisters coming faintly across the valley.
The tears came again. He could not stop them. But this time as they
came, he heard music. Singing. A man singing. Faintly, like the
sound of his sisters far away. It was in English. It was not a song he
had ever heard on the Sebastiano's radio. It was not one from the
juke box at El Puerto, uptown. It was a small voice, a gentle voice,
and he liked it. Once or twice he caught a word he knew.
He sat there with his head bowed forward, the rug wrapped around
him, crying for the sun and listening to the singing in his head.

The secretary was nice to him. He could tell she had heard of him.
Not heard him. She was too young. But heard of him. Well, small
favors. She called him Mr. Richie, which nobody in Hollywood would
have done.
Feldt was nice, too. Up from his chair, hand out. Some of them just
sat there and let you come to them. But he had that same quick,
searching look as they shook hands.
"Sixty-three," Van Richie said.
Feldt smiled but did not quite blush. "I figured it had to be around
that. For what it's worth, you don't look it."
"Thanks." Richie sat down. Feldt returned to his chair behind the
desk.
"I talked to Marvin on the coast last night. You're it for us, he says."
"Good. I hope so."
"Yeah, we do, too. It's been a while." Feldt looked at the paper in
front of him. "1941."
"I did some stock out there after the war."
"Yeah. But the last feature was '41. And you were still a, you
know...."
"A crooner." Richie smiled with one corner of his mouth.
Feldt smiled, too. "Yeah, a crooner. This one's only got two songs,
y'know."
"I know."
"It's mostly light comedy."
"Marv explained all that."
"Yeah, well...." Feldt carefully squared the paper with the corner of
his blotter. "1941, y'know that's sort of a while ago."
"Yes, it is," Richie said evenly. "Look, Mr. Feldt, if you're trying to tell
me I'll have to read for it, just say so."
"Okay, I just said so."
Richie fitted a cigarette into his holder. His lighter failed and Feldt
held a match for him. "Thanks." He exhaled a cloud of smoke. "Who
for?"
"Oh, Abe. Me. Probably the producing team."
"It's always a team today, they just don't have a producer any more,
do they?"
"Just a few of us. Six people, maybe. Seven."
"Just lines?"
"Well, mostly, yeah. We may have a piano there."
The corner of Richie's mouth turned up again. "I can carry a tune,
you know."
Feldt laughed. "Sure, sure. But just to see how it sounds and all."
Richie stared at him, not smiling. Feldt turned off his own laughter.
He shrugged. "What the hell, Van, 1941. We got a bundle in this one.
We're taking no chances. None."
Outside, the secretary's typewriter chattered unevenly. Richie blew a
smoke ring. "Okay," he said, feeling suddenly tired, "Any time you
say."
Feldt walked to the elevators with him. "Incidentally, Van, I hate to
ask, but what's with the sauce problem these days?"
Richie shook his head. "Seven years. Eight now, in fact."
"Oh, great. That's great."
"And for your information, it never was what you'd call a problem."
"Well, the papers and all, y'know. We couldn't tell." The elevator
doors hissed open. "Thanks for coming up, fella. See you tomorrow."
Halfway down, the only other man in the car looked up, startled.
"Pardon?"
"I said 'son of a bitch'," Van Richie said. "With feeling."

"Good God, you can't even hear him!" one of the men whispered.
Someone else in the darkened theatre called, "Hold it! Can you give
it a little more, Van? We can't hear it out here."
Van Richie squinted toward the seats. "Are the mikes up?"
"All the way. You're going to have to push it."
The piano resumed. Richie's voice was true but small. The whisperer
groaned. "He could use that old megaphone right about now."
When the number was over, Richie came down from the stage and
joined them. "You need help, Van," Feldt said bluntly.
"What about it, Ben?" They all turned to a man sitting alone, several
rows back.
"You don't want a lapel mike?" Ben asked, coming slowly down the
aisle.
"Too much cable trailing around. There'll be dancers all over that
stage."
"Lavalier the same thing?"
"The same thing."
"Look, why hide it?" asked the man who'd mentioned the
megaphone. "Just fly a pencil mike. When he's ready, drop it down."
"It breaks the mood," one of the writers said.
"Nuts, the mood. You can't hear him."
"There's one thing we can do...."
"A microphone out of the sky?" the writer groaned.
"Awright, a floor mike, then."
"There is one thing," the electrician began again.
"What's that, Ben?"
"Well, it isn't cheap."
"Of course not," the senior member of the producing team said.
"You mind if you look a little fat, Mr. Richie?"
"Not if they can hear me, Ben. What's the gimmick?"
They listened grimly to the electrician's plan. Feldt glanced at Richie.
He looked old and tired and small. God, Feldt thought, I hope we
haven't pulled a rock.

"For your information," Sergeant Kleiber said, "Van Richie hasn't

made a record in 26 years. 1936."
"Fine. Great," Ferraro answered. Inwardly, he groaned. It was weeks
now.
"And he sure ain't dead."
"Okay, you looked it up and he's alive." Ferraro moved the car
skillfully through the traffic. "Fine. I'm glad to hear it."
"Looked it up nothing. He just opened in a show right here on 46th!
That's him in person we been hearing. I told you. I know that voice."
"Yeah, you told me."
"Look, why don't you admit you were wrong for once?"
"The hell do you mean? I heard the singing. I said that."
"All you said was he was dead or it was a record or something."
"All I said was I never heard him sing those songs. Where'd you get
all this about he's in a show?"
"Drive by! Turn in 46th! It's right on the sign! Turn in!"
Oh, nuts, thought Ferraro, what do I care if the guy is in a show?
"There. See? Slow down."
"I can see it."
They moved on down the block, past the other theatres. Ferraro
shrugged. "Okay, he's still around."
"Sure is. And that's him we hear singing."
"But at night. How can he be on the radio if he's in a show? They
wouldn't be doing a broadcast from the stage every night."
Typical, thought Kleiber. In the wrong, so now he attacks. He couldn't
say I was wrong or you were right or sorry or anything. "Okay, he's
still around." Big deal. And now boring in about the broadcasting.
Well, the hell with him. They were getting too many of his kind from
the Academy nowadays. The know-it-all, you-heard-it-here-first type.
He was coming up for an advance in pay-grade on the first of the
month. He had big plans to get married. Well, let him stay in the
barrel a while longer. It wouldn't hurt him. Pat or Peg or whatever her
name was could wait. He made a mental note to get Ferraro's fitness
report form from the clerk when they got back to the precinct house.

"Can you turn that down a little?"

The girl shrugged and turned the volume control on the tiny radio. A
sudden blare of sound crashed and echoed in the quiet studio.
"Sorry," she called, hastily twisting the knob the other way.
"Damn it, Nell, you do that every time. You've had that thing a year
now."
"Every time! You always exaggerate when you're mad. The other
one was just the opposite, is all."
He didn't answer. He turned back to the canvas and worked silently
for several minutes. It was not going well but he kept at it doggedly,
frowning in concentration, his lower lip trapped between his teeth.
Suddenly he whirled. "Nell, turn that thing down or get it out of here!"
"It is down! I can't get it any softer."
"Then shut it off."
"Why should I? I want to—"
"I said shut it off!"
"I want to hear if Van Richie comes on with the news again."
"What kind of foolishness—?"
"Ye Gods, can't a person even breathe around here any more?
You're so mad about that lousy painting—"
"Nell." His voice was taut but he didn't shout.
"It is. It's lousy and you know it. That's what makes you so—"
"Nell." He started across the room toward her.
"You're not going to take it out on me. It's not my fault if you can't
paint. I don't think—Alex!"
She only partially blocked the blow. Holding his wrist, she tried to bite
his arm. He flung her off, sending her reeling against the bed. "Lousy
painting!" she screamed. She threw the radio at the canvas. "It
stinks! It's so bad it makes me sick! It's awful!" Her face was twisted
and flushed and her body jerked with the violence of her shouting.
She tried to run then but he caught her and spun her around. He hit
her with his fist and knocked her down. He stood above her,
breathing in great gulps, his eyes blazing.
She didn't cry. She got to her feet slowly, stumbling once when she
was erect. She walked behind him and he heard the water running in
the basin. He didn't turn around. Her footsteps crossed the room.
"That's the last time, Alex," she said in a small, lifeless voice. He
heard the door close.
It was a miracle, Gabriel decided. The singing was a miracle. It was
to tell him to go on, to keep studying, to stay in New York and make
Miss Alvirez proud of him. And when he could speak and read
English well, then he would get a better job. A job in an office,
maybe, where it was quiet and people were kind and he could go
home at five o'clock. He would have enough money to go to the
movies every night.
And so he worked hard at the words and the sentences, while the
radiator and the singing in his head kept him warm. Every night at
the same time he heard the singing. He understood more and more
of the words.
But it was not the words that helped him through the cold and
loneliness. It was the voice. It seemed to be singing just for him. It
was inside his head. Nobody else heard it. It was like a friend, a
friend he didn't have to share with anyone.
When the tests came, he got the second highest mark in the class.
Only one girl scored better. Miss Alvirez shook his hand and was
glad for him.
Later, he told her about the singing. She looked at him curiously but
she didn't laugh. He even sang the parts he could remember. She
did not know the songs.
It wasn't until he'd been working in the travel office almost six months
that she came by and told him they were from one of the big plays
downtown. She had seen it and had come all the way to his office to
tell him. That made him feel very good.

"Listen, if you don't get a clerk in there. You're all jumpy. That's why
you keep hearing that singing."
"Edie, I told you—that's got nothing to do with it," Harry Freed said.
"The man said there was absolutely nothing wrong with the radio.
Nobody else hears any singing. I never get it on the set upstairs."
"I know what I heard, that's all. Four times now."
"You're just getting sicker, that's all that proves."
"Honey, I don't think you should say things like that."
"Yeah? Well, I don't think you should hear voices either. Why don't
you see a doctor? My God, consider somebody else's feelings for a
change. How do you think it would make me feel, having a husband
everybody knew was mentally ill? Around this town? That never
occurred to you, did it? You're too busy thinking of yourself. I try to
get you to go to a doctor. I worry about it until I'm practically sick
myself. But, oh no, you're all right. You just hear voices, that's all. So
you don't care what anybody else is going through. Not you."
Harry sat very still. Then slowly he stood up. "Put your coat on," he
said.
"What do you mean, put—?"
"Just what I said. Put your coat on."
"Oh, Harry, stop. I don't like to be talked to like that and you know it."
"Edith." He walked across the room until he was standing very close
to her. "Edith, put your coat on and get in the car. We're going into
New York and you're going to hear Van Richie on that radio if I have
to tie you to the seat."
"You're out of your mind. You must be out of your mind! Have you
been drinking or something?"
He stepped closer. Instinctively she stepped back. They stared at
each other. After a moment, she went over to the closet. "Well, if
that's the way you're going to be," she said, taking down her hat and
coat. "I still say it's the silliest thing...."
He found the corners of his mouth were dry. His knees felt watery.
But he drove steadily and surely through the heavy traffic. She kept
repeating how silly it was.
He showed her the theatre with Van Richie's name out front. They
drove back and forth along his homeward route. Three times they
heard Van Richie sing.
On the way back, she began talking again. "Shut up," he said,
without raising his voice, without looking at her. She gasped. But she
knew enough to remain silent.
The critics called it the best musical since My Fair Lady. They had
special praise for Van Richie: "He has made the transition from
crooner to comedian with grace and style ... the years have left the
familiar voice intact."
"Bless our boy Ben," Feldt said. He sat on the bed, the newspapers
strewn on the floor at his feet. The cast party crashed and roared in
the next room.
"Van Richie and His Electric Voice," Richie said, dropping the phone
back in the cradle. He'd been trying to call California since midnight.
"Now, listen," Feldt said.
"I know, I know. It's a hit. Sure." Richie was looking out the window.
The senior producer's apartment commanded a view of two-thirds of
Manhattan. The blinking signals of a plane headed for Idlewild. A set
of lights far downtown told him it was 1:57. Seconds later it told him
the temperature was 39 degrees.
"What now?" Feldt asked.
"What?"
"The big sigh."
"Oh, I was just thinking. How it's all different this time."
"We're all thirty years older, dad."
"No. Something else, too. The—what would you call it—the
immediacy?"
"You want to call it that, you call it that. Only what the hell are you
talking about?"
"Well, back with the band in the old days, you were right there. They
were right there. Swaying there right in front of the stand and you
were singing right to them. I saw kids falling in love right in front of
me. Maybe they got married after that. Maybe they didn't get
married. But I was reaching them, I was communicating."
"When I hear an actor use the word 'communicate', I leave the
room."
"This time around I can't get any feeling that I'm reaching anybody,
that it makes any difference."
The party sounds burst in on them. The producer stood in the
doorway. "What, are you memorizing those reviews? Come on,
everybody's asking where you are."
"Here we are."
"Yeah, but come on. They want you, Van. Sibi's at the piano. You're
on."
"Sing Melancholy Baby," Van Richie said. But, he went out into the
bright, crowded room and over to the piano.
In a corner of the room, Ben listened, smiling and tapping his foot to
the rhythm of the song. The room had quieted down while Van
Richie was singing. There was a crash of applause when he
finished.
"Such a little voice," a woman said to Ben. He recognized her as one
of the writers' wives. "What did you do for it, Ben? Arthur said you
did something perfectly amazing."
Ben shrugged. "Not so amazing. We had a little belt made. About—"
he stretched the thumb and middle finger of one hand "—six inches
high, maybe an inch-and-a-half thick. It was a transmitter, actually—
a miniature radio station."
"But I never saw any wires. What did he have, batteries?"
"Transistors. Like the astronauts in the space capsules. He wore the
whole thing under his clothes. We had an amplifier in the wings to
pick up the signal and beam it out to the house speakers." Ben
laughed. "It probably loused up a few radios in the neighborhood but
it worked."
"I think it's just incredible. That little voice!"