National Rainbow Coalition/PUSH

The roots of the National Rainbow Coalition/PUSH can be traced to Operation Breadbasket, the organization launched by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1962. Its purpose was to harness collective purchasing power to create economic opportunities in African American communities.

Operation Breadbasket expanded to Chicago in 1966, with Jesse Jackson at its head. Jackson became national director of the group a year later. When tension developed between Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, who had moved into the leadership position at the SCLC, Jackson resigned and founded People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), a separate economic empowerment organization, in 1971.

After Jackson's first presidential campaign in 1984, he launched the National Rainbow Coalition to unite African Americans and other disadvantaged groups to work for political equity and opportunity. In 1996, the National Rainbow Coalition and Operation PUSH, which had undergone a name change to People United to Serve Humanity, merged to form the Rainbow PUSH Coalition with international headquarters in Chicago.

When Jackson left the SCLC and founded PUSH, he initially continued to use the same strategies to advance economic opportunity that he had used in directing Operation Breadbasket, but he later developed strategies that were particular to PUSH. Control, reciprocity, and parity were the concepts undergirding Jackson's plans. He felt that African Americans could control their own economic destiny if they understood how to use the resources they already possessed.

Gaining that control required reciprocity, which Jackson defined as a mutually beneficial relationship with American corporations and financial institutions. Parity required that the African American community receive an equitable return on their investments. To achieve these objectives, Jackson devised a “Marshall Plan for African Americans.” The plan could succeed only if Jackson could convince major corporations to finance it. His strategy called for selecting companies that sold products that African Americans were known to consume in substantial numbers.

If requests for contracts, deposits, and employment opportunities went unmet, Operation PUSH would organize a boycott. He intended the plan to benefit not only African American businesses but also African American bankers, lawyers, publishers, janitors, and garbage collectors. Jackson targeted not just individual corporations but also international chains and even entire industries.

By 1974, Operation PUSH had agreements with General Foods, Avon Products, the Joseph Schlitz Company, Quaker Oats, and Miller Brewing, in addition to an African American-Hispanic agreement with the Southland Corporation. A “Don't Choke on Coke” boycott against Coca-Cola led to a $34 million agreement between PUSH and the Atlanta-based company that the Jackson camp called historic. Coke also agreed to appoint 32 African American wholesalers within the year, to lend $1.5 million to African American entrepreneurs entering the beverage industry, and to name an African American to its board of directors. The first African American board member, Donald F. McHenry, was named in 1981.

In addition to economic initiatives, PUSH directed its energies toward social and political development using direct action campaigns, a weekly radio broadcast, and awards that honored prominent blacks in the United States and abroad. PUSH also developed reading programs for children and created PUSH Excel, a program that emphasized keeping inner-city youth in school while helping them to find jobs.

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