﻿Hi, I’m Clint Smith, this is Crash Course Black American History and today we’re learning
about Reverend Jesse Jackson and Operation PUSH. Operation PUSH was an organization founded in 1971
as a supplement to and continuation of the civil rights victories of the 1960s,
as well as a response to the War on Poverty, the Watts Rebellion of 1965,
and the subsequent rebellions that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
PUSH attempted to fill a void in largely urban, poor, and predominantly Black centers. Its leader,
the Reverend Jesse Jackson worked directly with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was a powerful,
important voice during the Civil Rights Movement. But the organization itself,
as well as Reverend Jackson, occasionally struggled with public image issues. So today
we’ll be discussing this landmark organization, its founding, its successes, and its downfall.
Let’s start the show. [intro]
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s saw important strides for Black Americans.
Part of a global movement of Black pride, post-colonial struggles, and a burgeoning
sense of diasporic solidarity, the Civil Rights Movement was marked by both social and
legislative victories in the United States. Some of these victories included the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 (which banned various forms of discrimination in employment,
institutions, and privately-owned public accommodations) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
(which prevented state and local governments from denying citizens equal access to voting rights).
The 1960s also marked the era of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society,” which
saw significant legislative and social policy pushes to reduce poverty nationwide. It was
the largest social reform agenda in modern history. It included the establishment of
a job corps for 100,000 disadvantaged men, a Community Action program that allowed people
to tackle poverty in their own communities, plans to help unemployed people find sustainable work,
money for farmers to purchase land, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and help for
unemployed parents entering the workforce. Johnson’s Great Society also established some
landmark programs that still exist today, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and Head Start.
But Johnson’s Great Society failed to address some key issues in the fight to eliminate poverty.
Some said his policies didn’t go far enough. For example, many wanted Johnson to include
a universal basic income or guaranteed jobs for the unemployed. Additionally, the Great Society
didn’t address the issues that emerged from global capitalism, such as large corporations
shifting their operations to low-wage markets, which caused a decline in the number of stable
and well-paid manufacturing jobs that for so long had been the catalyst of upward mobility
for millions of people in America. And some of the Great Society programs were
racially biased. They increased opportunities and access for white families, but didn’t address the
needs of poor Black Americans. Because the spread of integration had led to so-called “white flight”
(where white families would move out of integrated neighborhoods) this also caused a more informal
form of segregation that had lasting impacts. Public schools with predominantly Black students,
received little federal funding, meaning they had fewer resources, which exacerbated
already existing racial inequality. In response to the shortcomings of
government-sponsored social programs, Black people nationwide continued the
freedom struggle. They achieved most success by founding small, grassroots organizations from
within the community that could meet their needs in a more specific way.
One successful example of this type of grassroots organizing (that eventually snowballed into a
nationwide organization) was Operation PUSH (an acronym that originally stood for People United to
“Save” Humanity that was later changed to People United to “Serve” Humanity). The organization
was founded by Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1971 with the specific mission to improve the economic
conditions of Black Americans in Chicago. Let’s learn more about Rev.
Jackson in the Thought Bubble. Rev. Jesse Jackson was born Jesse Burns
(later adopting the name Jackson from his step-father) on October 8th 1941 in Greenville,
South Carolina. Growing up in the segregated South, he excelled in school and sports.
Jackson’s forays into political organizing and social activism began in college,
where he became heavily involved in local civil rights demonstrations. In 1964,
he graduated from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College in Greensboro,
North Carolina with a bachelor’s in sociology. After graduation he traveled to Selma, Alabama
to march with Dr. King, and became active in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The SCLC was (and remains to this day) a landmark civil rights organization. Alongside the SCLC,
Jackson helped coordinate civil rights protests across the South.
In 1966 King appointed Jackson as the first director of Operation Breadbasket
in Chicago. Operation Breadbasket was an offshoot of the SCLC that got more jobs for Black Americans
by organizing various levels of boycotts against companies that refused to hire Black employees.
Jackson was with King when he was assassinated on April 4th 1968. Jackson was just 26 years old.
Within a couple years, Jackson exited from the SCLC under a cloud of accusations from
other leaders (namely Ralph Abernathy) that he was using the organization for his own personal gain.
He formally resigned in 1971. Thanks Thought Bubble.
That same year, in 1971, Jackson founded Operation PUSH. Although the organization
struggled financially in its early years, PUSH was able to raise money from notable Black Americans.
PUSH sought to improve the economic and social conditions of Black people
domestically and internationally. To that end they hosted a number of
direct action campaigns, had a weekly radio broadcast, and gave out awards to prominent
Black people in the US and abroad. Jackson saw his work as part of what would become known as
a “Rainbow Coalition,”--a phrase originally coined by Black Panther leader Fred Hampton—which
referred to a group of diverse Americans working together to fight for justice for all.
One of the cornerstones of PUSH’s agenda was weekly Saturday morning rallies at the Hyde Park
Headquarters of PUSH in Chicago. Strategically scheduled for Saturday so that Jackson,
a self-professed “country preacher,” would not have to compete with other ministers on Sunday,
the rallies were an important source of Jackson’s influence in the community.
Operation PUSH established several key social programs
that looked to improve the circumstances of Black people in the Chicago
community. Jackson established a platform to help Black homeowners, workers, and businesses and
founded PUSH Excel, a program that focused on keeping Black youth in school and helped them
with job placement after graduation. The program also successfully lobbied
organizations and major corporations with a heavy presence in the Black community to
adopt affirmative action programs, which included getting companies to commit to
hiring more Black people and people of color as executives and supervisors.
PUSH held vigils and boycotts to win these important employment concessions
and even managed to get several major corporations to sign voluntary agreements to hire more Black
people, increase business with minorities, donate money to Black colleges and other organizations,
and increase ads in Black publications. But despite these important gains, PUSH
suffered under the weight of public scrutiny. Jackson’s high-profile image in the community,
and his role as the face of PUSH, meant that criticism of Jackson was difficult to disentangle
from criticism of the organization as a whole. In 1983, Jackson launched his presidential campaign,
and formally resigned from his leadership position within the organization.
In 1984, after he ended his presidential campaign, Jackson formally launched a new organization,
the National Rainbow Coalition, which sought equal rights for all Americans.
The new group positioned themselves as a counter to President Ronald Reagan’s economic agenda,
known as “Reaganomics.” “Reaganomics” called for widespread tax cuts,
a decrease in spending for social programs, and deregulation of domestic markets.
Many Black leaders believed that Reagan’s policies contributed to unemployment and
economic instability in Black communities. Jackson’s speech at the 1984 Democratic National
Convention was, like the organization he would found, called “The Rainbow Coalition” and looked
to unite disenfranchised people from all walks of life (poor whites, Black people, Latino people,
youth, Asian Americans, Native Americans, disabled people, small farmers, and others).
As Jackson said, “America is not like a blanket — one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the
same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors,
many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black,
the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the
environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled
make up the American quilt. Even in our fractured state, all of us count and fit somewhere.”
In 1996, Jackson’s new organization, the National Rainbow Coalition,
and Jackson’s old organization, Operation PUSH, merged to form a new hybrid organization,
the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The merger continued the mission of the previous two organizations
which sought to protect and gain civil rights through economic and educational initiatives,
and to promote peace and justice worldwide. The new organization also pushed aggressively
for Black involvement in new emerging sectors of American society such as Wall Street,
telecommunications, and in Silicon Valley.
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition is still operational and continues to promote these ideals today.
Jackson’s vision served as a bridge from the victories of the Civil Rights Movement
of the 1950s and 1960s to today, extending the mission of social activists and allies.
His work addressed the political and economic disparities in the Black American community,
as well as in communities of color worldwide. Despite its many permutations and pitfalls over
the years, what Operation PUSH and its legacy show us is the strength, power, and potential of
grassroots organizing, not only within the Black community, but through communities nationwide.
As Jackson himself noted, it’s important to: "Hold your head high, stick your chest out.
You can make it. It gets dark sometimes but the morning comes. Keep hope alive."
Operation PUSH shows the way that the energy of the Civil Rights Movement moved, changed,
and evolved beyond the 1960s and helped shape the landscape of contemporary activism.
Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time. Crash Course is made with the help of
all these nice people and our animation team is Thought Cafe.
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