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| Rev. Sullivan and OIC. December, 2007 |
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| The man is an inspiration. |
He was a force of Nature.
Reverend Leon H. Sullivan
At the age of eight, a boy tried to purchase a Coca-Cola in a drugstore on Capitol Street in Charleston, West Virginia in 1930. The black child was refused service. The proprietor said, "Stand on your feet, boy. You can't sit here." That incident triggered a lifelong commitment to solving racial injustice. That boy grew up to become the famed civil rights activist, Reverend Leon H. Sullivan.
Sullivan attended college on sports scholarships and also worked in a steel mill to pay for his tuition. After college he attended the Union Theological Seminary and served as Adam Clayton Powell’s assistant minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church In New York city.
In the 1950’s Sullivan became minister of the Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia. By the 1960’s the church congregation grew to over 4,000 members.
Sullivan believed the key to social justice and racial equality was jobs. He asked many large Philadelphia businesses to hire blacks but was largely ignored. Sullivan started a boycott of those businesses that did not employ blacks. The boycott was successful.
Getting a job and keeping a job, however, was two separate issues. Sullivan found that blacks needed training to get better job opportunities. Sullivan formed the Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) and the Zion Investment Association (ZIA). The first OIC started at an abandoned police station in North Philadelphia. ZIA raised funds to invest in new businesses.
Under Sullivan’s leadership, blacks got better paying jobs that helped to stabilized families and reduced welfare rolls. New supermarkets and convenience stores opened in the so-called “high crime areas” of the city. Such success gained national attention and Sullivan’s program expanded to cities across the nation. OIC eventually went international and provided job training to poor Africans.
However, South Africa was ruled under an apartheid system. Blacks were not allowed to have better paying jobs. As a recognized international civil rights leader, that also was General Motors’ first black board member, Sullivan used his corporate clout to organize a multinational boycott of South Africa. The boycott, which took several years, was very successful. Eventually, the South African government bowed to the demands of the international community and freed Nelson Mandela from prison. Mandela became South Africa’s first black President in 1994.
The Global Sullivan Principles of Corporate Social Responsibility (1977)
- Nonsegregation of the races in all eating, comfort, and work facilities.
- Equal and fair employment practices for all employees.
- Equal pay for all employees doing equal or comparable work for the same period of time.
- Initiation of and development of training programs that will prepare, in substantial numbers, blacks and other nonwhites for supervisory, administrative, clerical, and technical jobs.
- Increasing the number of blacks and other nonwhites in management and supervisory positions.
- Improving the quality of life for blacks and other nonwhites outside the work environment in such areas as housing, transportation, school, recreation, and health facilities.
- Working to eliminate laws and customs that impede social, economic, and political justice. (Added in 1984.)
Reverend Sullivan died in 2001 at the age of 79.
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For Information of Rev. Sullivan Click here.
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