Successful cooperative businesses create wealth and help their members accumulate wealth. In the first three years of its existence, BIG Wash Laundromat, for example, returned dividends to the original investors equal to 185 percent of their holdings (David Montgomery, 1999). After four years they paid off one of their two bank loans, and at least one share of stock sold for six times its original value (Rita Bright, personal communication). Worker-owners of Cooperative Home Care Associates earned annual dividends between $250 and $500 on their initial investment of $1,000 during the first ten years in existence (Sigmund Shipp, 2000). A study of 15 Mutual Benefit Service Sector Cooperatives in California found that these co-ops provided higher wages for members than the national minimum wage and wages higher than entry-level jobs in retail and manufacturing for unskilled, non-English-speaking immigrants (their members). Some engaged in profitsharing and were able to return surplus earnings to members. Six of 15 provided some form of benefits (Nancy Conover et al., 1993). Childspace develops worker-owned, child care cooperatives which provide above average salaries for the industry, with full medical coverage, child-care services for all worker-owners, and access to a career ladder. The Childspace Development Training Institute also instituted an individual development account program for worker-owners whose incomes are 200 percent or less of the federal poverty level (Christine Clamp, 2001). The above is anecdotal evidence from onetime case studies of specific cooperatives. Most of these are also examples from majoritypeople-of-color-owned and majority-womenowned cooperatives. Such examples of wealth creation exist around the country for mainstream populations as well as for marginal populations, and across the globe as well. Is this typical?' Are such achievements generalizable? The original title of this paper was: How Cooperative Ownership of Businesses and Homes Contributes to Wealth Accumulation in African American Communities: Preliminary Analysis. This was to be an exploration into how cooperative ownership creates and builds wealth, especially for those who do not start with much wealth. I quickly found that few scholars have addressed this issue, and most of what does exist is not from official data. In fact, there is not much data or analysis at all on wealth accumulation from co-op ownership in general, let alone from predominantly AfricanAmerican-owned cooperatives. In general, most cooperatives do not trade publicly or even trade much stock at all, and sometimes they do not distribute dividends. Often much of the co-op's wealth is retained in the enterprise and not distributed. Therefore, calculating return on investment is difficult. In addition, cooperative businesses are not identified as a separate category in government statistics, and so traditional data sets are difficult or impossible to use. Below I discuss what is known in this area. I end with questions and issues that need to be addressed if more progress is to be made on this topic.