Black Panther's Breakfast Program

In the context of memory, it is important to understand that the Black Panther’s breakfast program for children occurred during the civil rights era for African Americans in the 1960’s. During this period, the civil rights witnessed the influential figure of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. Though MLK called for nonviolent protests to achieve civil rights, the black panther party had opposing ideas as they favored the ideologies of Malcolm X and the call for immediate action through impending violence to achieve their goals of social equality. Originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization was founded in Oakland, CA in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton as a means to serve the black community and to protect against

This idea of exclusion and fact of having unequal rights leads one to realize why the BPP was noted for committing acts of violence. The BPP represented individuals in the African American community that had reached their breaking point in many ways.

What was the Free Breakfast Program?
The free breakfast program for children, which was initiated by the Black Panther party, was a program that was formed in January 1969 at St. Augustine Episcopal Church in Oakland, California (Robertson). The objective of the program was to feed less fortunate children a nice warm meal for breakfast, something that many of these children were not accustom to. The majority of the children who received these meals were apart of families that struggled to provide them with proper nutrition. Many, if not all, the children that the BPP served were African American, as the BPP primarily sought out to help and serve the black community. “We know that youngsters can’t learn at school if they are hungry, they rebel against learning and say the hell with school,” as stated by Randolph Albury, who was first in charge of the breakfast program (Stein). Notably, many of the children found members

The main American memory of the Black Panthers that is prevalent today is one that paints the BPP as a radical hate group of African American individuals, who wore all black clothing wielding guns. This dominant memory may be due to the efforts of the federal government and the FBI to silence the Black Panthers. According to released COINTELPRO surveillance files from 1969, which covered the Black Panthers, the FBI is noted in the documents for referring to the BPP as a “black nationalist hate group. (COINTELPRO)” COINTELPRO was notably a counterintelligence program led by FBI director Edgar J. Hoover that strived to stop the influence of the BPP on the black community and to ultimately destroy the black panther party as an organization (Robertson). The FBI noted in these files that the BPP was an organization that supported “the use of guns and guerrilla tactic in its revolutionary programs to end the oppression of the black man (COINTELPRO).” The FBI also stated that the BPP called for the “killing of policemen and followed the doctrine of the Chinese communists (COINTELPRO).” When looking at the breakfast program for children, the files also reveal that the FBI felt the program was simply a means to indoctrinate the children into the