Operation Breadbasket

Operation Breadbasket, program begun in 1962 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) that aimed at improving the economic status of African Americans through a boycott of white-owned and white-operated businesses that refused to employ African Americans or to buy products sold by African American-owned businesses. After initial successes, the program gradually increased in scope until the early 1970s.

Leon Sullivan, pastor of Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia, is often credited with developing the strategy at the centre of Operation Breadbasket. After witnessing a boycott Sullivan led in Philadelphia in 1958, the SCLC asked him to organize a similar campaign in Atlanta. The campaign there, which began in 1962 and represented the start of Operation Breadbasket, won promises of 5,000 jobs at local companies. In the wake of that success, the SCLC established similar campaigns in other Southern cities. It also targeted Chicago, placing the civil rights activist Jesse Jackson in charge of its efforts in that city in 1966. Jackson led a campaign that focused on white-owned grocery, soft drink, and dairy companies that made large profits in African American neighbourhoods. Jackson also advocated support of African American banks as a route to economic development for black communities. At those banks, he argued, African American business owners would be less likely to face discrimination when applying for loans.

The strategy pursued in each Operation Breadbasket campaign followed a similar pattern. SCLC leaders began by sending letters to companies so as to gather information about employment categories and numbers, as well as the numbers of African Americans employed. They usually found that African Americans were either excluded from employment entirely or relegated to the lowest-paying jobs. Leaders then attempted to educate companies about the effects of employment discrimination and low wages on African American families, such as poverty and inadequate housing. Companies that refused to change their hiring practices were targeted for a boycott.

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Operation Breadbasket also included Black Christmas and Black Easter campaigns, which urged African Americans to do their holiday shopping at stores owned by blacks. Those campaigns drew substantial attention to the program’s overall goals. In addition, leaders called for middle-class and wealthy blacks to invite lower-income African Americans into their holiday celebrations, and they organized parades celebrating African American heritage. Operation Breadbasket expanded further in scope in 1967 when Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of the SCLC, appointed Jackson to be the program’s national director. It subsequently incorporated efforts such as the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C., and organized support for political candidates.

After King was assassinated in 1968, however, tensions escalated between Jackson and the new SCLC president, Ralph Abernathy, who argued about control of the SCLC and power in the civil rights movement. Abernathy tried unsuccessfully to move Jackson and the Operation Breadbasket staff from Chicago to Atlanta, the headquarters for the SCLC. Finally, in 1971, Jackson left the SCLC to found Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity). The SCLC retained the Operation Breadbasket program, but it became far less active than it had been in previous years.