Fatima Shaik Considers Her Search Through Economie Journals
March 15, 2021
In the 1950s, my father discovered a pile of wet ledgers on the back of a dump truck in our neighborhood. He brought them to our house, dried them on our sunny porch, and put them into the closet. In 1997, I opened and read them. What I found was a treasure trove, one that could contribute significantly to our understanding of Black history and literature.
Approximately 3,000 pages of French handwriting distributed throughout 24 journals described the lives of Black men in their own words. The journals, containing the minutes of meetings from 1836-1935 of the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle in New Orleans, contained the names of soldiers, activists, lovers, and builders of a community that nurtured my family and spoke to America, but were silenced.
By Andru Okun Correspondent
Long before Fatima Shaik set out to tell the story of the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle (the Economy and Mutual Aid Association) of New Orleans, the group’s records were nearly lost. In the 1950s, when Shaik was a child, her father salvaged a collection of ledgers destined for the dump. Full of elegant French script, the books dated back to 1836 and contained the history of a Black mutual aid society formed before the Civil War.
The ledgers sat for decades in Shaik’s family home where she rediscovered them as an adult. “I realized that not only were these books old, but they told a story about America that few people alive had heard.”
Black activism is often lost to time. The Historic New Orleans Collection wants to change that
The Historic New Orleans Collection plans to do that by featuring three authors behind publications that amplify those lost voices. Author: Charisse Gibson (WWL) Updated: 6:33 PM CST March 3, 2021
NEW ORLEANS Black History month may have come to an end but Black History is American History and the Historic New Orleans Collection continues to look to that history as a way to advance a conversation that began more than a century ago, through the voices of black activists.
Now, by way of a new symposium, they re inviting the public to add their voices to that dialogue.
Retired SPU professor’s new book may have you asking, where’s a mutual aid society for me?
Updated Feb 25, 2021;
5 Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood by retired Saint Peter s University professor Fatima Shaik
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Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhoodby Fatima Shaik (The Historic New Orleans Collection, February 25, 2021, $34.95).
Out today, Feb. 25, from retired Saint Peter’s University professor Fatima Shaik comes a book that is a reminder of how lacking the history most of us learn in school is.
“Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood” gives people relegated to that curriculum’s footnotes a portrait that shows how multifaceted they were. It also hints at how much more they could accomplish (on top of what they already did) if they weren’t limited by a system increasingly designed to use them in someone else’s favor.
“Spotlight on Lifelong Learning” with Laura Loth, is a weekly look at some of the exciting public conversations upcoming around Memphis. Laura Loth is a professor at Rhodes College.
You may have asked yourselves more than a few times this week what in the world is this 2021 purgatory we’re living in, with the pandemic, boil alerts, and burst water mains in Memphis. If anyone comes to mind when we think about hell, it’s medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri, who moved on 700 years ago this month. On Thursday at 5 pm, the University of Memphis presents a talk on Dante and American Popular Culture with Elizabeth Coggeshall of Florida State University and Dennis Looney of the Modern Languages Association. Coggeshall will discuss her website called