This is the first full history of Operation Breadbasket, the interfaith economic justice program that transformed into Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH (now the Rainbow PUSH Coalition). Begun by Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement, Breadbasket was directed by Jackson. Author Martin L. Deppe was one of Breadbasket's founding pastors. He digs deeply into the program's past to update the meager narrative about Breadbasket, add details to King's and Jackson's roles, and tell Breadbasket's little-known ...
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This is the first full history of Operation Breadbasket, the interfaith economic justice program that transformed into Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH (now the Rainbow PUSH Coalition). Begun by Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement, Breadbasket was directed by Jackson. Author Martin L. Deppe was one of Breadbasket's founding pastors. He digs deeply into the program's past to update the meager narrative about Breadbasket, add details to King's and Jackson's roles, and tell Breadbasket's little-known story. Under the motto "Your Ministers Fight for Jobs and Rights," the program put bread on the tables of the city's African American families in the form of steady jobs. Deppe details how Breadbasket used the power of the pulpit to persuade businesses that sought black dollars to also employ a fair share of blacks. Though they favored negotiations, Breadbasket pastors also organized effective boycotts, as they did after one manager declared that he was "not about to let Negro preachers tell him what to do." Over six years, Breadbasket's efforts netted forty-five hundred jobs and sharply increased commerce involving black-owned businesses. Economic gains on Chicago's South Side amounted to $57.5 million annually by 1971. Deppe traces Breadbasket's history from its early "Don't Buy" campaigns through a string of achievements related to black employment and black-owned products, services, and businesses. To the emerging call for black power, Bread basket offered a program that actually empowered the black community, helping it engage the mainstream economic powers on an equal footing. Deppe recounts plans for Breadbasket's national expansion; its sponsored business expos; and the Saturday Breadbasket gatherings, a hugely popular black-pride forum. Deppe shows how the program evolved in response to growing pains, changing alliances, and the King assassination. Breadbasket's rich history, as told here, offers a still-viable model for attaining economic justice today.
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Add this copy of Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights to cart. $101.28, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2017 by University of Georgia Press.
Add this copy of Operation Breadbasket: an Untold Story of Civil Rights to cart. $162.07, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by University of Georgia Press.
Add this copy of Operation Breadbasket: an Untold Story of Civil Rights to cart. $211.96, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2017 by University of Georgia Press.
Here is a book veterans of the civil rights movement in the 1960's will want to read and one that current activists should read. Operation Breadbasket - Untold Story, tells the story of the unheralded leaders of the SCLC program based in Chicago that broke a market stranglehold by white businesses in Black communities and empowered Black businesses in their own neighborhoods and beyond. It brought clergy leaders from local Southside churches to work together in a disciplined fashion to analyze product distribution, sales patterns and employment practices of large food and beverage chains doing business in Black shopping centers. When the economic data obtained from the companies disclosed bottom line profits flowing out of consumers purses into vendors pockets without re-investment in new job opportunities for residents, negotiations began. Corporate officers were slow to recognize clergy as a equals at the bargaining table until the preachers went back to their pulpits and mobilized their congregations around effective product boycotts. When pickets showed up and sales numbers began declining in neighborhood stores, management "got religion" and began serious negotiations resulting in significant increases in new jobs, job training and promotions for Black residents soon followed by new contracts for Black owned and operated vendors. Author Reverend Martin Deppe chronicles these achievements with documentation of actual hiring numbers and earning / contract dollar impact from his extensive files as a participant on the clergy Steering (negotiating) Committee. He also sheds light on internal organizational dynamics of the SCLC movement activities during the Chicago campaign that brought Dr. Martin Luther King to the city. In many respects, the disappointment with the outcome of that more publicized effort that focused primarily on open housing was ameliorated by the successes of Operation Breadbasket. And Breadbasket also launched the high profile career of Reverend Jesse Jackson who came to Chicago as a seminary student and wound up the national director. Deppe sensitively addresses issues of Jackson's leadership style that both succeeded in the expansion of Breadbasket into a mass movement utilizing professional entertainment qualities as well as accelerated his own political ambitions within the city and beyond. The take away for today's movement is how significant outcomes in the struggle for justice can be achieved by leaders committed to solidarity and engaged in strategic planning and disciplined actions.
