Operation Breadbasket

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Operation Breadbasket was an organization dedicated to improving the economic conditions of black communities across the United States of America.

Operation Breadbasket was founded as a department of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1962. Nearly all the early activities were in Atlanta and other Southern cities.

A key figure in the history of Operation Breadbasket was Jesse Jackson. In 1964, Jackson, then twenty two, left his native South Carolina to study at the Chicago Theological Seminary. A year later, he participated in King's movement in Selma. Although King was suspicious of Jackson’s intense personal ambition and hunger for attention, he gradually gave him greater responsibilities. When Jackson returned from Selma, he threw himself into King’s effort to establish a beachhead in Chicago.

In 1966, King selected Jackson to be head of the the Chicago chapter of the SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket. Influenced by the example of Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia, a key goal of the organization was to foster “selective buying” (boycotts) as a means to pressure white businesses to hire blacks and purchase goods and services from black contractors. Sullivan had many precursors, of course. One was Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a wealthy doctor and community leader on the South Side and key financial contributor to Operation Breadbasket. Before he moved from Mississippi to Chicago, Howard had developed a national reputation as a civil rights leader, surgeon, and entrepreneur.

As head of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, Howard had successfully organized a boycott of service-stations that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Jackson’s application of these methods, however, had a seamier aspect including cronyism and strong-arming businesses to donate money to Operation Breadbasket.

Noah Robinson, Jr., who had just graduated from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania, came to Chicago in 1969, to become full-time director of the Commercial Division of Operation Breadbasket. Robinson was Jesse Jackson’s half-brother and sometime rival.

In December 1971, Jackson had a falling out with Ralph Abernathy, King's successor as head of the national SCLC. Jackson and his allies broke off and formed the wholly independent Operation PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity). The founding goals were similar to those of the Operation Breadbasket. Despite Jackson's departure, Operation Breadbasket continued for a brief time under Robinson's leadership.

[edit] References

• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954 in Glenn Feldman, ed., Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (2004 book), 68-95.
• David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito. T.R.M. Howard M.D.: A Mississippi Doctor in Chicago Civil Rights, A.M.E. Church Review (July-September 2001), 50-59.