Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966–1971

by Martin L. Deppe

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.

Genres: History

312 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2017

Reviews

[Stacie C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This nonfiction book is a comprehensive look at the movement originated by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 known as Operation Breadbasket. Civil rights leaders and members of the clergy banded together to force business to integrate African-Americans into their companies through jobs, contracts, banking at black banks and placing products made by African-Americans in their stores. The different companies ranged from dairies, groceries stores, factory jobs and more. Representatives from the company would meet with members of the clergy from Operation Breadbasket to form a covenant which would lay out plans necessary before action would be taken on behalf of the black community. Boycotts, picketing, leaflets and a complete divergence of African American funds would incur if a covenant was not made or if the covenant was broken. There were numerous gains in all the desired areas but too often a covenant would be broken and eventually Operation Breadbasket would give way to Operation Push, headed by Jesse Jackson.

This was a really interesting book. I had never heard of Operation Breadbasket so learning of this grassroots movement focused on including black members of the community throughout company structures through jobs, contracts and banking was moving. But this book had many flaws mostly around the chronology of the story and the bias of the author. While it was amazing to learn all of this information from someone heavily involved in the movement, Deppe was unable to remove his own bias to inform objectively. His opinion of people and decisions negative or positive was blaringly obvious and somewhat distracting. I would have liked to learn of this without the bias coloring the conversation. But the narrative was my main issue. Because the story wasn’t told chronologically, the narrative would jump erratically to follow one train of thought and then to another. The history was never allowed to gain any rhythm and at times was hard to follow.

While my interest has definitely been piqued after reading this book, this wasn’t a book I overtly enjoyed. I’m leaving it more informed about this particular subject but the obvious bias and narrative took a lot away from the story of this civil rights movement.

Thank you Netgalley for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Viral · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good overview of Operation Breadbasket - an underappreciated component of the Civil Rights Movement that helped launch the political profile of Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. The book itself is fairly focused on this, but I think it's value comes from an understanding of how this set the stage for much of modern Black liberalism in urban America.

Rev. Martin L. Deppe was an active participant in Chicago's Operation Breadbasket, and he describes in detail how this campaign worked during the late 60s to try to deliver on MLK's vision of good jobs and opportunities for Black folks. The central logic was to take the protest movement energy of the Jim Crow South, which was largely focused on formalized state-driven legal segregation, and use similar tactics of boycotts and pressure campaigns against white-run corporations in the North, to pressure them into hiring Black workers and bringing jobs and opportunities to the Black community, which struggled with a persistently high unemployment rate. While some Great Society programming was focused on this, there was a desire and appreciation to do this on their own terms, and not simply through government handouts.

At first, the Operation was pretty successful, bullying factories and warehouses and grocers to hire more Black workers and give them raises. But as time went on, there were tensions within the movement about how to hold companies accountable (many reneged on their promises almost as soon as the attention moved past them), how to juggle so many active boycott campaigns at once without causing an overwhelm that disempowers the movement, and the ultimate economic vision that was being demanded. While Dr. King and some others envisioned this push as part of a broader vision of economic redistribution, there were many others whose worldviews were more aspirationally capitalist, arguing for just a chance at the American Dream. Ultimately, the Operation folded, and the work of these pressure campaigns instead became the work of the Rainbow PUSH (People United to Serve Humanity) Coalition, that Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. would champion for years to come (and help launch his political career with).

Deppe touches on this briefly in the book, but I would argue this story of Black pastors attempting to both find a niche within the American capitalist economy while trying to secure economic redistribution for their community is *the* prototype for most modern urban Black liberalism. Much of the rhetoric from the pastors then feels like it could be used almost verbatim today, and reminds me of how many centrist/establishment Black politicians in big cities talk today. There is an awareness that their people have specific needs, alongside a desire to prove that all Black people want are chances, not "handouts". While some at the time understood the duplicitous nature of President Nixon's embrace of "black capitalism", it's not that far off from what many were advocating for. The contradictions embedded in this really help explain the very real frustrations so many working class Black folks feel today.

A really underappreciated aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, and while the book doesn't really do a great job of connecting it to the broader implications of this work, I think it's worth engaging with.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of SCLC's Operation Breadbasket.