Father Albert McKnight, a black priest from Louisiana and founder of a large and growing federation of poor people's cooperatives in the South, yesterday briefed a group of 20 students at the Business School on the cooperative movement's potential.

"All our thinking is geared to developing enterprises that can not only support themselves, but support the whole black movement when outside financial support is withdrawn," McKnight said. "If the people are together, they can take over the political controls in some of the Deep South states."

The cooperatives McKnight referred to range from credit unions and handicraft shops to buyers' groups and sweet potato farms. Located in almost half of the southern states, they comprise a three year old, 116-member Federation of Southern Cooperatives, he said. Once-solid resistance from Southern whites has subsided partly, and, McKnight said, the cooperatives have now grown to a point where they are collectively worth over half a million dollars and claim over 3000 members.

Little Capital

Because it is a poor people's movement, however, the Federation has had difficulty raising capital internally.

To remedy the financial woes, Ford Foundation-hired consultants last year recommended creation of a Southern Cooperative Development Program (SCDP) and an accompanying fund. The SCDP is financed through sales of two types of shares: one for members of the cooperatives, and a second kind for institutions and foundations.

In the first 12 months of the six-year, $50 million drive, the fund has raised $1 million. McKnight said he will try to meet Harvard Treasurer George F. Bennet, overseer of Harvard's $1 billion endowment, next week to sound out Harvard's interest in purchasing shares of the SCDP.