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Rainbow/PUSH

American non-profit organization

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ9066006 ↗
Source-derived summary

Rainbow/PUSH is an American nonprofit organization formed as a merger of two nonprofit organizations founded by Jesse Jackson: Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and the National Rainbow Coalition. The organizations pursue social justice, civil rights, and political activism.

In December 1971, Jackson resigned from Operation Breadbasket after clashing with Ralph Abernathy and founded Operation PUSH. In 1984, Jackson founded the National Rainbow Coalition. It merged with PUSH in 1996. The combined organization's national headquarters is on the South Side of Chicago and it has regional branches in Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Atlanta, Silicon Valley, New Orleans, and Boston.

Operation PUSH raised public awareness to initiate corporate action and government sponsorship. The National Rainbow Coalition became a prominent political organization that raised public awareness of numerous political issues and consolidated a large voting bloc. The merged entity has undertaken numerous social initiatives.

PUSH

Operation PUSH, an acronym for People United to Save (later Serve) Humanity, was an organization that advocated black self-help and achieved a broad audience for its liberal stances on social justice and civil rights.

Operation PUSH's origins can be traced to a factional split in Operation Breadbasket, an affiliate of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Rainbow/PUSH” as american non-profit organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1971, 1984, 1996—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1971. The account is most persuasive where Rainbow, PUSH and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as american non-profit organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9066006. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1984 and 1996.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Rainbow/PUSH”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Rainbow/PUSH primary sources, Rainbow/PUSH archive and Rainbow research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Rainbow/PUSH”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Rainbow/PUSH” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.