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Augmenting his homey style of speech, Jackson, once a conventional suit-and-tie dresser, has turned casual and has also taken to an Afro haircut. He wears a huge medallion bearing an image of U.S. Olympic Track Stars John Carlos and Tommie Smith, their clenched fists raised high in their defiant Black Power salute at Mexico City. Jackson was dressed that way in a recent talk at Harvard University's Eliot House, where he delighted black and white students with his opening words: "Now y'all have to 'scuse me 'cause I'm just a country preacher here in this big citadel of learning."
Some of Chicago's tough-minded businessmen have learned the hard way that Jesse Jackson is no country preacher. They have felt the black-pocketbook power of his Operation Breadbasket, which permits Jackson to enjoy testing his theories in the arena of practical action. Estimating that blacks constitute a consumer market that spends about $36 billion per year, Jackson figures this represents a potentially decisive leverage to wrest concessions from white businessmen. "We are the margin of profit of every major item produced in America from General Motors cars down to Kellogg's Corn Flakes," he contends. "If we've got his margin of profit, we've got his genitals." Theoretically, if all blacks were to act in concert, that statement might be credible; practically, it is of course a vast exaggeration.
Appointed by King in 1966 to establish a Breadbasket office in Chicago, Jackson works out of a dingy building in the South Side ghetto. He began by marshaling the support of many of the community's ministers. Their strategy was simple: they first demanded to see the employment records of a target company in their neighborhood. They then told the company how many more jobs it must offer to blacks and at what levels. It told them which black products must be displayed on their shelves. If the company would not sign a statement of agreement, the ministers spread the word: Do not buy there.
The first firm that Breadbasket approached was a dairy, Country Delight, Inc., which refused to disclose any of its records. On the following Sunday, the call for a boycott was heard in 100 black churches. Within three days, Country Delight agreed to offer 44 new or upgraded jobs to blacks—a full 20% of its employment. It took ten days for Breadbasket to crack High-Low Foods, Inc., a Chicago grocery chain with 54 stores. It agreed to hire 183 blacks in jobs ranging from department managers to delivery boys. One badly managed grocery chain, Red Rooster, Inc., was boycotted by blacks who objected to its inferior meat. It could not take the pressure and went out of business. Its bitter president called Jackson "a liar and a phony," while other white executives complained that they were being victimized by an extortionist. Obviously, however, blacks had long been more severely victimized by high prices, surly service and shoddy products, as well as job discrimination, in many ghetto stores.
Monopoly on Rats
Breadbasket's most spectacular success was its 16-week drive against A.& P., which operates more than 40 markets in Chicago's black neighborhoods. The chain finally surrendered. It not only signed a compact to hire 268 more blacks, including twelve as