Free Breakfast for Children
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In January, 1969, the Free Breakfast for School Children Program was initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland by the Black Panther Party. Free Breakfast for Children Program was a program started by the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area. Initially run out of a St. Augustine's Church in Oakland, the Program became so popular that by the end of the year, the Panthers set up kitchens in cities across the nation, feeding over 10,000 children every day before they went to school. [1]
[edit] Survival Programs
At the street level the Black Panther Party began to develop a series of social programs to provide needed services to black and poor people, promoting thereby, at the same time, a model for an alternative, more humane social scheme. These programs, of which there came to be more than 35, were eventually referred to as Survival Programs, and were operated by Party members under the slogan "survival pending revolution." The first such program was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which spread from being operated at one small Catholic church, to every major city in America where there was a Party chapter. Thousands upon thousands of poor and hungry children were fed free breakfasts every day by the Party under this program. The magnitude and powerful impact of this program was such that the federal government was pressed and shamed into adopting a similar program for public schools across the country, while the FBI assailed the free breakfast program as nothing more than a propaganda tool used by the Party to carry out its "communist" agenda. More insidiously, the FBI denounced the Party itself as a group of communist outlaws bent on overthrowing the U.S. government. [2]
[edit] Chicago
In Chicago, the outstanding leader of the Panthers local, Fred Hampton, led five different breakfast programs on the West Side, helped create a free medical center, and initiated a door to door program of health services which test for sickle cell anemia, and encourage blood drives for the Cook County Hospital. The Chicago party also reached out to local gangs to clean up their acts, get them away from crime and bring them into the class war. The Party's efforts meet wide success, and Hampton's audiences and organized contingent grew by the day.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ "Rise of the Black Panther Party", The Black Panther Party
- ^ "Rise of the Black Panther Party", The Black Panther Party
- ^ Basgen, Brian "History of the Black Panther Party, Marxists Internet Archive"
Rise of the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party. Retrieved on 2007-10-16.
Basgen, Brian. History of the Black Panther Party. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved on 2007-10-16.
Katsiaficas, George N.; Kathleen Cleaver (2001). Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Their Legacy. Routledge, pp. 87-89. ISBN 0-415-92783-8.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia (2004). We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. South End Press, pp. 69-70. ISBN 0-896-08718-2.
