Beginning in 1940, the Dorchester Cooperative Center worked to involve African Americans in Liberty County in politics by helping organize voters and teaching local residents about the United States and Georgia constitutions, the activities of state and national representatives, how legislators voted on issues, candidates for office, community goals, ballot marking, and behavior at the polls. In 1953, it formed a branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 1961, it gained national attention when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, working with the American Missionary Association, established Leadership Training Programs and Citizenship Schools at Dorchester Academy to train grassroots leaders from across the South, who then returned home to organize and train others. Influential Southern Christian Leadership Conference figures who frequented the center included Educational Director Dorothy Cotton, supervisor of teacher training Septima Clark, and Citizenship Program Administrator Andrew Young, and notable civil rights leaders who attended its programs included Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker, and Dr. Kartin Luther King Jr. David L. Lewis, King’s biographer, contended that King planned his 1963 Birmingham campaign while staying at Dorchester Academy in Elizabeth B. Moore Hall. Although membership steadily declined, the organization, now known as the Dorchester Improvement Association, still exists and continues to educate and support African Americans in Liberty County. Cooperation also shaped its economic life: when the Farmers Co-op wanted to buy a tractor, twenty families pooled their resources to purchase one cooperatively, and the debt was fully repaid within three years.