My Sit-Down With MLK’s Father in 1968 Sparked My Passion to Feed Atlanta’s Homeless

Gussie Ann Breedlove, born in 1949, is a 76-year-old descendant of the family of Sarah Breedlove, a.k.a Madam C. J. Walker. She’s a devout Christian missionary, a serial entrepreneur, a restaurateur, and one of six children of South Georgia sharecroppers. Her parents taught her the importance of farming, food cultivation, and land ownership from a young age. Her father eventually saved enough money to buy several acres of land and built a small fortune as a pulp farmer, which Breedlove said made him a target for some of his white neighbors.

Breedlove has spent the past several decades feeding Atlanta’s largely Black homeless population. She’s a longtime member of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where she developed a working relationship with the late Martin Luther King Sr., Hosea Williams, and other prominent activists while partnering with the Atlanta Community Food Bank. She’s also the author of “The Chosen Book of Truth Explosion: The Memoir of Social Activist G. A. Breedlove.”

This account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

My dad was a farmer. He was a sharecropper with the white folks. My mom, she was a farmer as well. And then she did side work with white people — babysitting, scrubbing floors, but she mostly worked in the fields.

My grandmother was a midwife. She would have a horse and buggy, and she would go across the woods and deliver babies. She would take food on the back of the wagon. I was one of her caretakers. I would sit on the back of the wagon as we’d go across the woods with the food.

As a child, we didn’t consider prejudice because we were so young. All we knew was struggles, and we had to endure whatever we had. We grew up to stick together and help one another, and we worked in the fields together. We were just happy kids. We didn’t feel like we were mistreated or oppressed until we got a little older.

I guess it was around probably 9 or 10 years old when we was working the fields and the buses would come by, and we was called names. We couldn’t go to school like the white children. We worked the fields for them to go to school because we was the ones living on their land.

I met this young man — he was a nice young man. His name was Amos. Got married to him, and then we had children. But I couldn’t stay with him because he was a womanizer, so I had to let that go.

I came to Atlanta in about 1968. We wanted to come to a place where it was more inviting for different opportunities. I wanted my children to have better opportunities. 

I thank God that I brought my kids here, and they became successful. We got into housing and we helped a lot of people out of poverty into housing. So I began to do my missionary work.

And then I began to meet people at the church there, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and got acquainted with Daddy King [Martin Luther King Sr.].

It was right after that I joined the church. He called me Daughter. And we would sit down at the table, and he would tell me about nonviolence. He said, “You can’t have violence in your heart and you’re trying to do missionary work.” He began to explain to me exactly what I needed to do. I left after that, and I began to go into other towns and do research and see what was needed in those areas. When I came back, he was dead.

Then I began to talk to Rev. Roberts. He was a pastor after Dr. King Sr. passed. From that point on, I just went on my way and began to just get into outreach. I still had my restaurant going. That’s when I started getting to cook for Hosea Williams, for the homeless.

It’s different now because we as African American people didn’t stick to the recipe. Our eyes got on the wrong thing. White people kept their eyes on properties, and we were selling our properties. We was too busy about stuff of the world — cars, houses, expensive clothes, bags — all kinds of other things of the world. But the main ingredient was, is, to keep your property. And now you see, well, mom and pop stores — no more on the corners. You could go to mom and pop stores and buy what you wanted, and the money was coming back into the neighborhoods. Now you go into the Black neighborhoods and the mom and pop stores are gone.

We need to teach people how to grow the food. On my family side, the Breedloves, we have almost over 800 acres of land. We need to come together as a people and pool our resources. We need to be entrepreneurs. That’s why Madam C. J. Walker was out there with Booker T. Washington. They taught African American people how to make monies and to come together as business owners, entrepreneurs.

If we can go back to that, from the root, we could be more successful. God said, “I’ll supply all your needs according to His riches and glory.” We don’t have to be beggars.