When she started scouting for loans to finance a community-owned supermarket early last year, Harlem's Cora T. Walker could hardly complain about discrimination. White banks, local antipoverty agencies and well-to-do Negroes were equally uninterested. "We had no assets and no balance sheets," she explains, "and my board of directors couldn't give any personal guarantees." But before long, Miss Walker and the 16-member board of the Harlem River Consumers Cooperative found a hidden asset—in the fact that the people they were trying to help were willing to help themselves.
This week, with the backing...
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