It was established in 1974 by Theophilus Smith, a former staff member of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee In the late 1960s the Black-led civil rights movement shifted its focus from strictly legal and policy changes to developing a Black Power Movement that included a call for economic self-determination.
There were numerous efforts: Fannie Lou Hamer led the creation of Black Freedom Farm Cooperative.
It raised funds for a Detroit-based printing press and bookstore linked to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
In Minneapolis, there was an effort to establish a food coop on the Northside's Plymouth avenue during the same time period.
In the early 1970s, white radicals and college-based anti-war activists in Minneapolis and St Paul had founded more than two dozen natural food co-operatives, which were owned and operated almost entirely by volunteer members.
Members of the hippie counter-culture and the anti-war movement in the Twin Cities were inspired by the desire to "feed the people" and perhaps by some knowledge of other food co-ops in the United States.
Although the connections were mostly unexplored at the time, the food co-op movement can be traced in part back to both the Rochdale movement in England and the history of economic cooperation in the African American community (see Jessica Gordon Nembhard's book Collective Courage).
The second group argued that the co-operatives should sell processed food products, white sugar, and canned goods that were familiar to working people.
They argued that selling cheaper goods would make co-ops more accessible to the working class, and would allow them to better deliver a message of revolution to those they felt were most in need of it.
They invited the neighborhood to participate [3] They published a manifesto explaining their criticisms of the existing co-op movement.
The group had members in many of the co-ops around town, and their membership was strongest at the People's Warehouse (a distributor servicing many of the cooperatively-run businesses in the Twin Cities) and at the Beanery.
's leader Theophilus Smith criticized former Black Panther Mo Burton [10]and used bullying tactics.
Members were known by code names and organized in disconnected cells in order to throw off the FBI, and were expected to unquestioningly follow directives from elusive leader, Theophilus (Theo) Smith.
However he describes it not as a cult, but as a failed social experiment that "blew up in the lab, so to speak, flinging the research staff far and wide.