Farmers eligible for USDA programs would reap the benefits of a “skinny” farm bill that recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives, extending government food security programs until 2031, increasing funding support for local food programs and loan borrower limits for producers, and scaling up rural mental health and community development programs.
But despite these changes, unfair policies and restrictions remain in place. As a result, many low-income families — including those on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — may be unable to receive the food stamps they need. And those with aid will still struggle, given the high cost of groceries.
Bobby Smith
Mary Frances Phillips
So what steps can Americans take to address this issue and protect their own food security? History offers a lesson for mitigating the impact of an unreliable food system.
In the late 1960s, the Black Panther Party built its own food infrastructure as a centerpiece of its community programming in Oakland, Calif. Founded in October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party developed the Free Breakfast Program for Children and the Free Food Program to ensure families received the foods recommended to sustain their health amid racialized economic insecurity.
The food justice work of the Black Panther Party stems from a long Black tradition of emancipatory food power, a practice by which Black communities leveraged food to protect themselves from oppression that limited access to nutrition. Historically, this practice was localized, but the Black Panther Party expanded its food programs nationwide, including in Illinois, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
The book The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs by the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation provides blueprints for creating food programs that go beyond messaging, showing how to get food into the hands of those who need it. Recognizing that recommended diets exceeded what many households could afford or access, the Black Panther Party built programs to make guidance real.
For example, the Free Breakfast Program for Children included strategic logistics for food procurement and preparation, menu design, storage, staffing and serving. Financial support came from multiple sources, including local grocers, churches and private donors.
The Free Food Program extended this model through mass grocery distribution, which enabled Black families to navigate the “spiraling food prices” and “long-range effect of high food prices,” which made it hard for Black families to get quality food and adequate nutrition.
But the Black Panther Party’s food justice activism extended beyond Black communities. It transported its food justice model into prisons, addressing food insecurity in the context of political imprisonment.
Ericka Huggins and the other young women of the New Haven Black Panther Party, who were imprisoned in 1969 alongside her at the Connecticut Correctional Institution for Women in Niantic, Connecticut (historically known as Niantic; now known as the York Correctional Institution), attended to one another’s basic needs, including food, through a Black Panther care practice.
While prison food often functions as a punishment measure, the women understood this vulnerable population needed whatever nutritious food was available, despite the abundance of heavily processed products that contained disproportionately high levels of sugar and salt.
In a situation where much of what was served was barely recognizable as food, they gave the most salvaged portions to pregnant women.
Prisoners assigned to kitchen duty, attuned to the realities of hunger, slipped extra food onto their trays and included a handwritten note — a small gesture of solidarity meant to evade the notice of correctional officers. These small acts of redistribution quietly countered the prison’s punitive practices.
The Black Panther Party’s food justice efforts provide a guiding light during dark times when America’s food story is constantly being rewritten. And while the conditions and circumstances surrounding their food justice work differ from today’s challenges, what remains the same is that Black communities can offer blueprints for navigating moments when people are unable to meet their food needs.
Bobby J. Smith II serves as an associate professor of African American studies at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign and is author of the James Beard Award-nominated book “Food Power Politics” and is a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project.
Mary Frances Phillips serves as an associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project. She is the author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins.