Free Breakfast for Children
The Free Breakfast for School Children Program was a community service program run by the Black Panther Party. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area. Initiated in January 1969 at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland, California, 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]
Survival Programs
In the mid-1960s, Black Panther Party chapters developed a series of social programs to provide needed services to black and poor people. Their intent was to promote "a model for an alternative, more humane social scheme." These "serve the people programs," of which there came to be more than 60,[2] were renamed Survival Programs in 1971[3] and were operated by Party members under the slogan "survival pending revolution."
One such program was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, which began in January 1969[4] at one small Catholic church in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, and spread to many cities in America where there were Party chapters. Thousands of poor and hungry children were fed free breakfasts every day by the Party under this program. The Panthers believed that "Children cannot reach their full academic potential if they have empty stomachs." The magnitude and powerful impact of this program was such that the federal government adopted a similar program for public schools across the country. The FBI assailed the free breakfast program as nothing more than a propaganda tool used by the Party to carry out its communist agenda. Furthermore, the FBI denounced the Party itself as a group of communist outlaws bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.[1][4]
Chicago
In Chicago, the 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 met wide success, and Hampton's audiences and organized contingent grew by the day.[5]
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Rise of the Black Panther Party". Black Panther Party.org. Retrieved December 14, 2012.
- ↑ "Black Panther Party Community Programs (1966-1982)". The Black Panther Party Research Project. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
- ↑ Churchill, Ward (2014). "'To Disrupt, Discredit and Destroy' The FBI's Secret War against the Black Panther Party". In Cleaver, Kathleen; Katsiaficas, George. Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Black Panthers and Their Legacy. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. p. 87. ISBN 1-135-29832-7.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/community-organizing/item/942-honoring-the-44th-anniversary-of-the-black-panthers-free-breakfast-program
- ↑ Baggins, Brian. "History of the Black Panther Party". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 2007-10-16.
References
- Katsiaficas, George N.; Kathleen Cleaver (March 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 (May 2004). We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. South End Press. pp. 69–70. ISBN 0-89608-718-2.
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