In 1962, Deppe was the white minister to a predominately African-American Methodist congregation in Chicago, making this scholarly study notable for both his perspective and access as a participant, as well as his sensitive perception of his status as an ally. Breadbasket drew on 1920s boycott tactics in the black community to "don't shop where you can't work," and scaled up harnessing consumer power to integrate particularly service and food industry businesses's workforces and supply chains. Deppe gives a detailed view of the organizational mechanics and protest tactics (and in a large, northern city), as well as the early community organizing of Jesse Jackson.

This nonfiction book is a comprehensive look at the movement originated by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1966 known as Operation Breadbasket. Civil rights leaders and members of the clergy banded together to force business to integrate African-Americans into their companies through jobs, contracts, banking at black banks and placing products made by African-Americans in their stores. The different companies ranged from dairies, groceries stores, factory jobs and more. Representatives from the company would meet with members of the clergy from Operation Breadbasket to form a covenant which would lay out plans necessary before action would be taken on behalf of the black community. Boycotts, picketing, leaflets and a complete divergence of African American funds would incur if a covenant was not made or if the covenant was broken. There were numerous gains in all the desired areas but too often a covenant would be broken and eventually Operation Breadbasket would give way to Operation Push, headed by Jesse Jackson.

This was a really interesting book. I had never heard of Operation Breadbasket so learning of this grassroots movement focused on including black members of the community throughout company structures through jobs, contracts and banking was moving. But this book had many flaws mostly around the chronology of the story and the bias of the author. While it was amazing to learn all of this information from someone heavily involved in the movement, Deppe was unable to remove his own bias to inform objectively. His opinion of people and decisions negative or positive was blaringly obvious and somewhat distracting. I would have liked to learn of this without the bias coloring the conversation. But the narrative was my main issue. Because the story wasn’t told chronologically, the narrative would jump erratically to follow one train of thought and then to another. The history was never allowed to gain any rhythm and at times was hard to follow.

While my interest has definitely been piqued after reading this book, this wasn’t a book I overtly enjoyed. I’m leaving it more informed about this particular subject but the obvious bias and narrative took a lot away from the story of this civil rights movement.