Operation Breadbasket
Operation Breadbasket

Author: Martin L. Deppe

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2017-02-01

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0820350451

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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, Breadbasket 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.

Operation Breadbasket
Operation Breadbasket

Author: Martin L. Deppe

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0820350478

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"Operation Breadbasket is a narrative of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Operation Breadbasket, 1966-1971, an economic empowerment project that Martin Luther King Jr brought to Chicago as part of the Chicago Freedom Movement. Rev. Martin L. Deppe was a founding and active member of Breadbasket's steering committee throughout the life of this program. Using the power of the pulpit to galvanize consumer support including occasional economic withdrawal ("Don't Buy") efforts, the participating ministers, the project negotiated for a fair share of jobs in the African American community of Chicago, and in time added products and services originating from that community. By the end of six years, Breadbasket's fifteen "covenants" with milk, soft drink, chain store and other consumer-oriented industries, brought approximately $57 million dollars of new income into the black community annually. The program ended when the project's national director, Rev. Jesse Jackson, resigned in December 1971, and essentially took the program out of SCLC into his own Operation PUSH, later Rainbow PUSH. This book is both a history of Operation Breadbasket, and a memoir of life in it as written by one of Breadbasket's most active participants. Deppe uses his extensive files--steering committee minutes, memoranda, brochures, letters, sermonic material, Chicago Defender archives, colleagues' files--along with extensive new research, including interviews with several surviving participants."--Provided by publisher.

A Decisive Decade
A Decisive Decade

Author: Robert B McKersie

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2013-08-05

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0809332450

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The deeply personal story of a historic time in Chicago, Robert B. McKersie’s A Decisive Decade follows the unfolding action of the Civil Rights Movement as it played out in the Windy City. McKersie’s participation as a white activist for black rights offers a unique, firsthand viewpoint on the debates, boycotts, marches, and negotiations that would forever change the face of race relations in Chicago and the United States at large. Described within are McKersie’s intimate observations on events as they developed during his participation in such historic occasions as the impassioned marches for open housing in Chicago; the campaign to end school segregation under Chicago Schools Superintendent Benjamin Willis; Operation Breadbasket’s push to develop economic opportunities for black citizens; and dialogs with corporations to provide more jobs for blacks in Chicago. In addition, McKersie provides up close and personal descriptions of the iconic Civil Rights leaders who spearheaded some of the most formative battles of Chicago’s Civil Rights movement, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Reverend Jesse Jackson, Timuel Black Jr. and W. Alvin Pitcher. The author illumines the tensions experienced by two major institutions in responding to the demands of the civil rights movement: the university and the church. Packed with historical detail and personal anecdotes of these history-making years, A Decisive Decade offers a never-before-seen perspective on one of our nation’s most tumultuous eras.

To Redeem the Soul of America
To Redeem the Soul of America

Author: Adam Fairclough

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 9780820323466

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To Redeem the Soul of America looks beyond the towering figure of Martin Luther King, Jr., to disclose the full workings of the organization that supported him. As Adam Fairclough reveals the dynamics within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he shows how Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson, Wyatt Walker, Andrew Young, and others also played a hand in the triumphs of Selma and Birmingham and the frustrations of Albany and Chicago. Joining a charismatic leader with an inspired group of activists, the SCLC built a bridge from the black proletariat to the white liberal elite and then, finally, to the halls of Congress and the White House.

Ebony
Ebony

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1967-08

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13:

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EBONY is the flagship magazine of Johnson Publishing. Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson, it still maintains the highest global circulation of any African American-focused magazine.

The Cambridge Guide to African American History
The Cambridge Guide to African American History

Author: Raymond Gavins

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2016-02-15

Total Pages: 351

ISBN-13: 1107103398

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Intended for high school and college students, teachers, adult educational groups, and general readers, this book is of value to them primarily as a learning and reference tool. It also provides a critical perspective on the actions and legacies of ordinary and elite blacks and their non-black allies.

The Chicago Freedom Movement
The Chicago Freedom Movement

Author: Mary Lou Finley

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 0813166527

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Six months after the Selma to Montgomery marches and just weeks after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a group from Martin Luther King Jr.'s staff arrived in Chicago, eager to apply his nonviolent approach to social change in a northern city. Once there, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined the locally based Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO) to form the Chicago Freedom Movement. The open housing demonstrations they organized eventually resulted in a controversial agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley and other city leaders, the fallout of which has historically led some to conclude that the movement was largely ineffective. In this important volume, an eminent team of scholars and activists offer an alternative assessment of the Chicago Freedom Movement's impact on race relations and social justice, both in the city and across the nation. Building upon recent works, the contributors reexamine the movement and illuminate its lasting contributions in order to challenge conventional perceptions that have underestimated its impressive legacy.

The Economic Civil Rights Movement
The Economic Civil Rights Movement

Author: Michael Ezra

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-17

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 113627474X

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Economic inequalities have been perhaps the most enduring problem facing African Americans since the civil rights movement, despite the attention they have received from activists. Although the civil rights movement dealt successfully with injustices like disenfranchisement and segregated public accommodations, economic disparities between blacks and whites remain sharp, and the wealth gap between the two groups has widened in the twenty-first century. The Economic Civil Rights Movement is a collection of thirteen original essays that analyze the significance of economic power to the black freedom struggle by exploring how African Americans fought for increased economic autonomy in an attempt to improve the quality of their lives. It covers a wide range of campaigns ranging from the World War II era through the civil rights and black power movements and beyond. The unfinished business of the civil rights movement primarily is economic. This book turns backward toward history to examine the ways African Americans have engaged this continuing challenge.