Black Women, Civil Rights, and Grocery Stores in the Chicago Freedom Movement

How did Black women civil rights activists transform neighborhood grocery stores into arenas of intense struggles for Black freedom? Despite extensive historical research on the civil rights movement, there has been surprisingly little research that explicitly examines Black women’s activism in the movement. Using archival materials, newspapers, memoirs, and oral histories, this paper uses the case of the Women of Operation Breadbasket’s 1967-1969 Bad Meat Campaign to demonstrate how Black women activists used pre-existing gendered social relations surrounding food to mobilize Black mothers and community members to fight racism in their local grocery stores. Led by Black women preachers in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, the Women of Operation Breadbasket merged womanist thinking with food activism to facilitate a multidimensional civil rights agenda with the racialized politics of food at the center. This article traces the development of these dynamics and uncovers how Black women civil rights activists took on grocery stores as a pathway to Black freedom. The article concludes with insights on how this case expands our understanding of Black women’s activism in the movement and shows how their legacy shapes current struggles for food justice against food disparities in Black communities.