The Black Panther Party and the Free Breakfast Program: Feeding a Movement

Food Series #3 of 4. The Black Panthers are often misrepresented or their significance is minimized in popular thought and opinion. The everyday organizing is often lost and an overemphasis on the Panther’s clashes with law enforcement overshadow the substantial community programs, the Service to the People Programs, offered by the Black Panther Party on the local level. Additionally, the dominant narrative highlights the men of the Panther party, yet women made up 2/3 of the membership and set a community-focused revolutionary agenda. Instead of viewing Black power movements like the Panthers as the antithesis of the non-violent civil rights movement, it is important to recognize that civil rights and Black power movements such as the Black Panthers, both emanate from a centuries-long Black freedom struggle. As former Panther Ericka Huggins states, “We were making history. It wasn’t nice and clean. It was complex.”

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Austin, Curtis. Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party. University of Arkansas Press. 2008.

Bloom, Joshua, Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. University of California Press, 2016.

Foner, Philip S. ed. The Black Panthers Speak. Lippincott. 1970.

Harrington, Michael. The Other America: Poverty in the United States. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Jones, Charles E. , ed. The Black Panther Party (Reconsidered). Black Classic Press. 1998.

Katz, Michael B. The Undeserving Poor: America’s Enduring Confrontation with Poverty. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Levine, Susan. School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Newton, Huey P. Revolutionary Suicide. Penguin Classics. 2009.

Orleck, Annelise. Storming Caesar’s Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006.

Orleck, Annelise, and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian, eds. The War on Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964-1980. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011.

Peniel, E.Joseph, ed. The Black Power Movement: Rethinking The Civil Rights-Black Power Era. Routledge. 2006.

The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation. Black Panther Party : Service to the People Programs. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.

Arinna Hermida. “Mapping the Black Panther Party in Key Cities.”

An Oral History with Ericka Huggins, Interviews conducted by Fiona Thompson in 2007, Oral History Center University of California, The Bancroft Library.

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