Charles O. Prejean Tribute written by John Zippert

Charles was born on May 6, 1941, in Lafayette, Louisiana, the third of seven children of Oran and Edolia Prejean. The grandson of sharecroppers, he grew up in the segregated, low-income society of 1940s and 1950s Louisiana. He attended Catholic primary and secondary schools before entering the Society of the Divine Word Seminary in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, with the intention of becoming a priest. Guided by faith, he ultimately discerned that he could serve more effectively as a layperson, working to improve the conditions of Black people and their communities. He went on to complete his formal education, earning a degree from the University of Southwest Louisiana in Lafayette.

Charles worked closely with Father Albert J. McKnight, CSSP, a Black Catholic priest from Brooklyn, NY, who pastored Black churches in southwest Louisiana, including St. Paul’s, Charles’ home church in Lafayette. Beginning as a teenager and continuing through seminary and college, Charles volunteered with Father McKnight in adult literacy classes and cooperative business development. He later became the first manager of the Southern Consumers Cooperative, a holding company that included a bakery, a statewide loan company, work with sweet potato farmers, and other cooperative enterprises.

With Father McKnight, his younger brother Fred, and two others, Charles attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He said the historic civil rights demonstration in the nation’s capital changed the trajectory of his life, inspiring him to dedicate himself fully to uplifting the Black community.

In 1966, Charles, Father McKnight, Carol Prejean, and John Zippert convened a series of meetings, supported by the Southern Regional Council, the American Friends Service Committee, and others, to bring together cooperative and credit union leaders from Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana. These leaders had been organizing family farmers and other low-income people through the civil rights movement in pursuit of economic justice.



Out of these meetings came the Southern Cooperative Development Program (SCDP), a Ford Foundation–funded effort to expand cooperative development in four Southern states, and the plan to organize the Federation of Southern Cooperatives as a regional voice for the cooperative movement that grew out of the civil rights struggle.

Read More