Today the city will officially honor the late Rev. Leon H. Sullivan, the human rights leader and founder of Opportunities Industrialization Center and Progress Plaza, the nation’s first Black-owned shopping center.

There will be a celebration for Sullivan at Zion Baptist Church, where his international movement all began, on what would have been his 100th birthday.

Local, national and international leaders and dignitaries will gather to honor Sullivan, the visionary and builder, known affectionately as “The Lion of Zion.”

He is well deserving of the honors that will be bestowed upon him today.

While a gifted orator, Sullivan was a doer.

In 1964, Sullivan founded and led Zion members to open the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, Inc. (OIC) with the first school in an abandoned Philadelphia jail.

The non-profit provided job and skills training and matched its graduates up with the employment needs of Philadelphia businesses and institutions. The undertaking was so successful it was replicated in cities across the United States. In 1969, OIC International was created to create employment-training services on a global scale.

In 1968, four years after building OIC, Sullivan rallied his church members to build Progress Plaza, the first shopping center in America built, owned and managed by African Americans.

Congressman Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, recalled the importance of Progress Plaza during its 50th anniversary in 2018.

“At that time people were talking about ‘burn, baby, burn,’” said Evans. “He wrote a book called ‘Build, Brother, Build.’ That was the fundamental difference. I tried to model myself after him when I got elected to the state legislature in 1980 and duplicate what he did with Progress Plaza.”

Sullivan also led a group of ministers to organize a boycott of various businesses that practiced job discrimination against Blacks in Philadelphia, which he referred to as “selective patronage.” The slogan was “Don’t buy where you don’t work” and the boycott was extremely effective. Sullivan estimated the boycott produced thousands of jobs for African Americans in a period of four years.

In addition to founding OIC and Progress Plaza, Sullivan was a longtime General Motors board member and anti-apartheid activist.

In 1977, Sullivan developed a code of conduct for companies operating in South Africa called the Sullivan Principles, as an alternative to complete disinvestment. As part of the board of directors at General Motors, Sullivan lobbied GM and other large corporations to voluntarily withdraw from doing business in South Africa while the system of apartheid was still in effect.

Sullivan was a practical visionary who impacted the lives of thousands of people in Philadelphia, the nation and the world. He has left an enduring legacy.