“Food justice is a holistic and structural view of the food system that sees healthy food as a human right and addresses structural barriers to that right.” - Food Print

The Black Panther Party (BPP) of the late twentieth century worked towards a broad vision of the liberation of Black people in the United States. They are well-known for championing radical politics and challenging police brutality. Perhaps less famed is their embrace of food justice.  As an organization deeply grounded  in the Black community, they  developed nationwide food programs serving low-income people of color. The BPP saw food as a method to uplift the Black community, most notably through its Free Breakfast for Children Program, which provided youth across the country with healthy breakfast before school. This program and others initiated by the BPP were a vigorous critique of the American food system that failed to feed its hungry poor and created a blueprint for current food justice movements. Today, as the COVID-19 pandemic increases food insecurity - often along lines of racial and economic inequality - it is vital to learn from the successes of the BPP’s social programs and build food systems that empower low-income people of color.

The Free Breakfast for Children Program began in Oakland, California in 1969, with a morning meal served in a church to 11 children. The Black Panthers created the program to fuel revolutionary change for the survival of Black People. Within a year, this sentiment was spread and the program embraced by every city with a Black Panther Party chapter — a total of  36 sites — serving 20,000 children in Black communities. To make this possible, party members and volunteers solicited food donations from local grocery stores and worked with nutritionists to determine healthy options for school children. The food was served free of charge. The party even listed stores that refused to participate in the program in their newspaper to put pressure on the community to support its food program, stating of those that contributed little: “this is not enough, especially from those that thrive off of the Black Community like leeches.” 

The Free Breakfast for Children Program had immediately apparent results for black youth, who no longer suffered from hunger pains and were able to focus on learning during school rather than wondering where their next meal would come from. Ruth Beckford, who helped coordinate the program in Oakland, said, “the school principal came down and told us how different the children were. They weren’t falling asleep in class, they weren’t crying with stomach cramps.” The BPP knew that the ability to develop math and reading skills would provide the next generation of Black Americans with the tools for political and socioeconomic mobility — a feat made possible by nourishing meals in the morning throughout the school years. Providing free breakfasts was only one of many social efforts that the BPP accomplished.  Other endeavors included transportation assistance, education, free healthcare clinics, tuberculosis and sickle-cell anemia testing, legal aid, and free shoes for the homeless in low-income and Black communities.

The BPP is most well known for the use of militant tactics in their efforts to combat racial and police violence. But to the Panthers, it was just one part in a much larger effort for Black liberation, which included many profoundly peaceful and community power building efforts. This logic, unfortunately, was not present at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), where director J. Edgar Hoover wrote about the Party’s food distribution: “[the Panthers] create an image of civility, assume community control of Negroes, and … fill adolescent children with their insidious poison.” The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) attempted to hinder the efforts of the program by harassing church leaders who hosted free breakfasts, questioning or arresting Party members who worked at the events, and sometimes destroying the food or spreading rumors about the safety of the meals. The Black Panther’s work was in fact a threat, but only to racialized capitalist America. The Party’s social programs made clear the harms racial capitalism had inflicted upon black communities and proved socialism had merit, laying groundwork for an unrealized class and racial mobilization. Both the FBI and the BPP knew that food justice would help liberate low-income and minority communities from the bounds of hunger and give them more power, though this fact was construed as dangerous to the former. 

In 1969, the head of the US National Lunch Program admitted that the Black Panthers were feeding a greater number of low-income children than the State of California. By 1975, the School Breakfast Program was officially authorized by the US government and now feeds over 14.6 million children. Without the Panthers, seen as radicals by the public and as a threat by the FBI, this national program with universal benefits for low-income youth might not exist today.

But food insecurity was not solved in the 1970s. And the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened conditions in the past year, particularly for at-risk minority and low-income communities. Feeding America, a non-profit network of nationwide food banks, reports that 42 million people may experience food insecurity this year, and racial disparities persist. Some 21 percent of Black individuals may struggle with food insecurity, compared to 11 percent of white individuals. Fifty years ago, the BPP saw a moment of need in vulnerable communities, and took swift and expansive action to address the inequity. Now, policymakers must progress towards an effective food supply chain, create and expand food assistance programs, and work to alleviate racial/ethnic divides in food insecurity. 

Food justice cannot be separated from environmental justice. Our current food production system involves large scale farming, low diversity crop cultivation, long-distance transport of products, and overuse of pesticides and fertilizers. Hazardous agribusiness facilities are often located in low-income and minority communities. On the other hand, promoting locally-produced, sustainable, and ethical food cultivation both protects vulnerable populations’ access to healthy food and reduces the devastating climate impacts of our agricultural system. We can learn from the BPP’s method of using grassroots activism to change national priorities.  

One promising avenue for such impact are Food Policy Councils. Food Policy Councils (FPCs) are at the intersection of food and environmental justice. These councils may represent local or state populations and serve to examine how their food system operates and provide policy recommendations. Since 1982, FPCs have fostered discourse from stakeholders and advocacy to create sustainable food systems which challenge the industrialization of crop production and aim to connect people to healthy food and those who grew it. FPCs can be part of a national effort for environmental and food justice that puts the needs of marginalized communities at the forefront. 

The BPP’s revolutionary efforts to distribute healthy food to low-income populations and racial or ethnic minorities across the nation inform much of today’s work for food justice. The Black Panthers portrayed hunger as the result of inequitable resource distribution and exploitive structures of power, and demonstrated how it could be combated with social programs that have enjoyed enduring success. However, American communities still face food insecurity in 2021. In the wake of a pandemic and confronting an ever-pressing climate crisis, developing a community-based, sustainable food system that uplifts low-income people and people of color is an absolute necessity.