User:ThatOnePerson25/Free Breakfast for Children

California
The Black Panther Party (BPP) focused attention on giving poor students access to nutritious meals. In a 1969 Senate hearing, the BPP had fed more poor school children than the State of California. The success of the program and national attention led to a dramatic increase in the National School Lunch Program’s budget in 1973. In addition, the BPP pressured Congress to expand the National School Breakfast program to all public schools in 1975.

It would be a decade or more before free breakfasts would become almost universally available to poor children. In California, the party pushed Ronald Reagan's administration to create a state-wide free breakfast program, and while the federally funded School Breakfast Program was first piloted in 1966, Congress only permanently authorized it in 1975.

Minneapolis
The success of the program was not limited to Oakland. Free breakfast programs were spread throughout the country with Minneapolis Public Schools having significantly higher participation than Oakland schools. The increased participation was a result of a larger black community than Oakland because Minneapolis was much larger overall. The larger black community led to 11,500 out of 34,000 Minneapolitan students benefiting from the BPP's Free Breakfast program. The BPP’s establishment of Free Breakfast has allowed more than just Oakland children to attend school while being fed.

Washington State
The Washington chapter of the Black Panther Party utilized community resources to help fund the Free Breakfast Program. BPP members protested in front of Safeway grocery stores which resulted in the store donating $100 weekly to help fund the creation of meals. In addition to this, famous entertainers, like Jimi Hendrix who was a Seattle native, sent monetary donations to the Seattle chapter of the BPP's Free Breakfast Program.

The support was not limited to monetary gains. The Washington chapter served White and Asian families which increased community support and allowed the chapter to expand to five different locations that provided free breakfast to economically disadvantaged children. Beyond providing free meals, the Washington chapter sent out free groceries every Wednesday to families in the Seattle community.

The Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party met the needs of numerous ethnic groups because the black population in Seattle was not as high as in other areas. The attention to their specific community needs earned the Seattle chapter a reputation being of being influential both in Washington and in the United States, in general. The Seattle, Washington, chapter of the Black Panthers Party’s Free Breakfast program lasted longer than the majority of other programs continuing to provide free breakfast to impoverished children past the chapter’s official closing date in 1977.

Chicago[edit]
Fred Hampton, leader of the Chicago local, helped organize a number of community programs. These included five different breakfast programs on the West Side, a free medical center, a door-to-door program of health services (which offered testing for sickle cell anemia), and 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 with wide success, and Hampton's audiences and organized contingent grew by the day.

The Illinois chapter of the Free Breakfast program served more than 400 children every morning. The success of this program motivated government entities to act as shown in the city of Chicago’s choice to use federal funds to provide hot breakfast to poor children across the city. In addition to that, the BPP free health care clinics across Chicago motivated party members to make appeals to the Chicago Board of Health advocating for similar clinics in impoverished areas in Chicago.

Black Panther Party's Survival Programs
The BPP offered a variety of health and social services as part of its survival programs to help support local communities against racism. The BPP also provided schooling for everyone and education for adults who wished to continue their degree alongside childcare. Communities were also provided with many necessities that they had been neglected like medical care, medical research, and ambulance services. The BPP helped provide financial aid through cooperative housing and employment assistance. The BPP also provided many necessities that were unavailable to the poor in the community like free plumbing, home maintenance, and pest control along with protective escort for the elderly (Alkebulan, 2007; Hilliard, 2008; Nelson, 2011; Witt, 2007).

Women
The Black Panther Party began as a predominantly male organization, but later grew to recruit large numbers of women. The Party recruited primarily women to staff the Free Breakfast for Children program. This often reinforced traditional gender norms, which gained push back from the Party's women in the effort to achieve gender equality. The Party's service programs were deeply gendered and often relied on women to fill service roles. The Free Breakfast program highlighted the gender struggles within the Black Panther program, as women were reinforced into maternal roles in the program’s kitchens and serving roles. However, as women's participation within the Free Breakfast Program increased, men were encouraged to join. The addition of men challenged the traditional patriarchal roles of the Black Panther Party because work in the kitchen was viewed as a "woman's job." Sexism was still prevalent within the party, but the black community's need for aid based programs was encouraged to be prioritized over traditional gender roles. Government Action

The success of the Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for Children program helped reduce hunger and food insecurity while pressuring state and federal governments to expand their own services. The program showed how hunger could affect a child's ability to learn and advocated for the need of similar programs nationwide. The program showed the government's failure in the War on Poverty and their lack of support for addressing childhood hunger.

Within six months, the Black Panther Party had Free Breakfast Programs distributed in 23 cities across the United States and had served over 20,000 kids between 1969 and 1970 alone.

The BPP had over 5,000 members spread out in 45 chapters across the United States which inspired federally funded programs in schools to provide free meals. Established in 1966, the US Department of Agriculture would create school breakfast programs for underprivileged children. These programs are inherently rooted in the Black Panther Party’s belief that children cannot learn without adequate nutrition.