Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH

His leadership and organizational skills caught the attention of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Jackson marched with Dr. King and the SCLC from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, and when the organization joined the Chicago Freedom Movement in 1966, Jackson was appointed the director of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of SCLC that focused on securing employment opportunities for Black people.

Under Jackson's leadership, Operation Breadbasket worked to open up economic opportunities to disaffected Black people in Chicago. Their methods, using boycotts or the threat thereof against businesses to extract jobs and other economic investments from large white-owned companies, proved controversial but effective. Early on, Jackson and Operation Breadbasket targeted grocery stores chains with a large presence in the Black community, demanding these companies hire more community members in both entry-level and management positions and provide shelf space for products made by Black-owned businesses.

Over the years after the assassination of Dr. King, Operation Breadbasket continued to grow under the leadership of Jackson, providing him with a platform from which to lead the Civil Rights Movement in the urban North.

The Black Expo grew larger in each successive year, creating a large monetary influx for Operation Breadbasket, and in turn, the SCLC. Rev. Jackson and other Operation Breadbasket leaders decided to incorporate the Black Expo separate from the organizational auspices of Operation Breadbasket and the SCLC, allowing them to better control the use of the funds they raised.

As a sign of the organization’s clout, Standard Oil agreed to investigate Jackson's claims that Black gasoline dealers were receiving less gasoline and paying more for it than white dealers.

Jackson and PUSH continued to leverage the threat of boycotts to extract concessions from major corporations. These agreements, called “Covenants,” often required businesses to hire more Black workers, deposit money into Black-owned banks, purchase products and services from Black suppliers, and to add Black people to the senior-most levels of management, including the board of directors. While PUSH argued that these measures were vital to achieving economic equality, Jackson’s detractors referred to these tactics as “shakedowns.”

The lack of focus put a strain on the organization’s finances. Ultimately, PUSH reinvented itself to focus on urban education. Its PUSH-Excel programs were designed to improve educational attainment, allowing it to access government contracts to provide crucial funding. This type of reinvention has become the hallmark of the civil rights organization, as it has adapted to the changing political, social, and economic landscapes in the United States to remain active during these last fifty years.