Entry · catalog no. 5025
Free Breakfast for School Children
/ /fri ˈbrɛkfəst fɔr skul ˈtʃɪldrən/ /FREE BREK-fust for skool CHIL-dren
proper noun · Oakland, California · 1960s
✓ Verified
1.
The Black Panther Party's Free Breakfast for School Children Program, in which volunteers cooked and served breakfast in churches and community halls before school. It began in Oakland and spread to other cities.
“The Panthers were feeding kids before school every morning while the city was still arguing about it.”
Origin & Attribution
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in Oakland in October 1966. It launched the program on January 20, 1969, at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Oakland, where eleven children sat down to a breakfast of eggs, cereal, meat, oranges and chocolate milk. Chapters in other cities copied it. The Panthers are often remembered chiefly for armed patrols, but the breakfast program was among their best-known community efforts, and it belongs to a long Black tradition of mutual aid. How much it shaped later federal school-meal policy is argued, not settled.
1966
Black Panther Party founded in Oakland
1969
First breakfast served at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Oakland, California · 1960s
Spoken by
Black Bay Area residents, Panther alumni, historians
$FREEBRThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady57 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1969
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
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Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceCenter for Asian American Media (CAAM), 'On January 20, 1969, the first Free Breakfast for School Children program is launched by the Black Panther Party at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Oakland' (600 State Street Black history series)
online
See also